Chart of accounts

Once you define the account groups and G/L accounts you can see the structure of the chart:

When you post an accounting relevant business transaction in a company code, the values of that transaction are saved into G/L accounts that belong to the chart of account assigned to the company code.

The chart of accounts basic data contains the fields you can see in the following image:

A chart of accounts can be created from scratch. However, it’s recommended to use another chart as a reference. You could follow these steps:

In the following video you can see the steps for creating a chart of accounts using another as a reference:

You can create charts of accounts for different purposes.

Each company code needs an operational chart of accounts, which contains a set of G/L accounts that can be used when posting accounting documents. Once defined, it can be used in many company codes. See the following explanatory image:

The use of an alternative country chart of accounts is optional, since you could comply with the country accounting standards just with the operational chart of accounts assigned to the company code.

However, the organization might have chosen the approach of using a global controlling area to have a cross-company code controlling. This approach entails using the same operational chart of accounts for all the companies involved.

If the involved companies are located in different countries, most likely the single operational chart used will be focused in meeting the group standards, but won’t meet the local standards of each and every country.

To address this issue and comply with the country accounting standards, you should create a country chart of accounts for each country in the scope, and then you assign it to the involved company codes located in that country. See the following self-explanatory image:

Then you must link every G/L account of the operational chart to the corresponding G/L account of the country chart, at company code level. This is done with the field “Alternative account No.” and each G/L account of the country chart can be assigned only once to a G/L account of the company code. See the following self-explanatory image:

This is an optional chart of accounts used to get consolidated financial statements for the group.

There are 2 main reasons to use it:

Once the group chart of accounts has been created, you assign it to the operational charts used in the group, such as the following example:

Then you must link the G/L accounts of the operational chart of accounts to the corresponding G/L account of the group chart. To do that you have to set the “Group account number” field in the G/L account master data, such as the following example:

This is usually a n-to-one relationship (N G/L operational accounts – 1 G/L group account).

After creating a chart of accounts, no matter whether it’s operational or country or group, you will surely want to get a financial statement report with its accounts.

To achieve that you will also need to create a financial statement version for each chart created.

The following objects have been mentioned in this topic and you should consider going over them:

This approcach gives priority to comply with the country accounting standards. The group accounting requirements are met with the use of an additional group chart. Therefore, in order to meet the country regulations, there is an operational chart for each country where the group operates.

Because of that, a global controlling area can’t be used, as it would require that all companies have the same operational chart and fiscal year variant.

As an example of this approach, in the following video we create 2 companies located in Germany and Spain following these steps:

This approcach is focused in having just 1 global controlling area for all the companies of the group, having  the same operational chart of accounts although they are from different countries. In order to meet the country accounting requirements, an additional country chart of accounts is required for each country.

As an example of this approach, in the following video we create 2 companies located in France and Italy following these steps:

These are some Fiori apps related to this topic:

These are some transactions codes to access some of the points related to this topic: