Chart Of Accounts (COA)
COA is a group of General Ledger (G/L) accounts that records the transactions of an organization in a structured way. For each G/L account, COA consists account number, account name, language and other control fields. Every company code must be assigned a chart of accounts. In accordance with the variant principle, it is possible to assign one chart of accounts to several company codes - if the company codes have the same requirements for the COA setup. The Controlling (CO) component and the Financial Accounting (FI) component use the same chart of accounts. If company codes use cross-company code controlling, then the company must use the same chart of accounts.
Types of COA
Operating chart of accounts- It contains the G/L accounts that we use for daily posting in our company code. Financial accounting(FI) and Controlling(CO) both use this COA. It must be assigned to a company code i.e mandatory .
Group chart of accounts- The group chart of accounts contains the G/L accounts that are used by the entire corporate group , and is used to consolidate the reports for the entire group. This enables group reporting. Eg- A corporate group has companies at different locations and wants to be seen as one. Assigning a group chart of accounts to a company code is optional.
Country specific chart of accounts- It contains the G/L accounts that are required to meet a specific country's legal reporting requirements. Asssigning a country specific chart of accounts to a company code is optional.
Path:-
In OB13 select New Entries. Enter information in the fields and SAVE. Thus COA is created.
Account Groups
Chart of accounts contains different types of G/L accounts and these can be in hundreds depending on the company's requirements. So in order to manage and control a large number of G/L accounts in SAP, they are arranged in Account groups. While creating a G/L account account group has to be specified.
Path:-
Account group determines:
a. The number interval from which the account number is selected when a G/L account is created. Standard COA are recommended in most countries. And these are created so that the number of accounts belonging to same functional area begin with same digits.
Example:- In OBD4 transaction , we get to see all the account groups with their respective company codes. Here all the Asset G/L accounts will have a number range from 2000 to 2999.
b. The screen layout(field status) for creating G/L accounts in company code specific area.
The accounts within a functional area require the same fields for storing information when entering and processing business transactions. Using the account group, we define the fields required for each functional area.
Select one account group and click on "Field Status". We get the following screen.
Double click on one of the fields to see the field status controls. We get the following .Here we choose the fields that are necessary to our G/L account creation.
Field Status Group
During a document entry FSG controls which fields are required(mandatory) for entry , which are optional or not required during a particular transaction.
FSGs are independent of company code, attached instead to the Field Status Vaiant (FSV). A separate variant exists in each company code for FSG in the system. The name of the variant is identical to the company code .FSG is assigned at the time of G/L master data creation. In the above image we can manage the field status controls. They are:-
a. Suppress- If we want to suppress a field like currency, then while making a document entry it won't be visible on the screen.
b. Required- A field which is crucial/important in nature while documenting the entry . It is mandatory to be filled .
c. Optional- If a field is selected as optional , then at the time of posting a entry we can make a entry to that field or not , depends on our choice.
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