SAP Fiscal Year Variant Configuration
This document provides details on how to configure fiscal year variants in SAP and explains various options which are available to cater to business requirements e.g. Calendar Year as fiscal year, shortened fiscal year or fiscal year variant where the posting periods do not correspond to calendar months.
Scenarios
The fiscal year is a time period used to prepare the financial statements in organizations. Based on the business needs some organizations have fiscal years which start from Jan to Dec and some Apr to Mar etc. Fiscal year can be further divided into shorter time frames which can be months which are referred to as periods.
In SAP the fiscal year is assigned as a variant. Posting periods can further be defined in each fiscal year variant. SAP allows a maximum of 16 posting periods in each fiscal year. It consists of 12 regular posting periods and 4 special periods which can be used for audit or tax adjustments to already closed periods. One fiscal year variant can be assigned to multiple company codes.
However when posting periods are defined there can be different scenarios, based on which the periods need to be defined in SAP:
- Fiscal Year of organization is same as Calendar Year
- Organisation follows a Non-Calendar Fiscal Year
The document aims to provide details of the configurations required to define the posting periods for the above scenarios.
Solutions
The configurations for the fiscal year and corresponding period details can be done in SPRO settings as per details given below:
- Path: Financial Accounting >> Financial Accounting Global settings >> Fiscal Year >> maintain Fiscal year variant (maintain shortened fiscal year)
- Transaction Code: OB29
Scenario 1: Fiscal Year of organization is same as Calendar Year
In the OB29 initial screen as given below we would need to click on New Entries.
In the new entries screen a new fiscal year variant (it has to be unique) has to be defined, details to be provided are the description and the indicator Calendar Yr needs to be checked. The changes have to be saved.
In the above example, each fiscal year of a fiscal year variant uses the same number of periods and the posting periods always start and end at the same day of the year. As in the above example the fiscal year is calendar year dependent so it will be 12 posting periods.
Scenario 2: Organisation follows a Non-Calendar Fiscal Year
When organization follows a Non calendar year fiscal year, the posting periods need to be defined by assigning ending dates to each period. It can have between 1 to 16 posting periods. If the non-calendar year does not start at January 1st the periods of the year which belong to the former or the coming fiscal year must get an annual displacement indicator (-1, +1).
To start in the OB29 initial screen as given below we would need to click on New Entries. In the new entries screen the details to be entered are Fiscal year variant, description and the no. of posting periods and special posting periods. The changes need to be saved.
User would then need to go back to the main screen of OB29, and select the new fiscal year defined earlier and double click on Periods and enter the details as given below.While defining the periods in the example below assumption is organization uses Apr to Mar posting periods.
The configuration needs to be to cater to the fact that the months which fall in the next (Jan to Mar) needs to have a year shift indicator -1 maintained as given below.
Another point to note is the day limit for February should be 29 to be prepared for leap years.
Related Content
help.sap.com:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/96/8b2fc843ce11d189ee0000e81ddfac/content.htm
Have a question:
I had this scenario where I had mapped 0CALMONTH to 0CALDAY as time conversion
and it was not compounded with Fiscal Year Variant.
So would you suggest this compounding to always be there?
Please provide inputs.
Thanks.
Hello Rashmi, As far as I understand, the above document explains the FVY in Financials and not the BW scenario as I can understand from your question to the author. I hope I am right !
Hi Rashmi,
As correctly pointed out by Suresh the document for fiscal year variant is for SAP FI. However the compounding which you have mentioned is correct for BW scenario.
Thanks,
Neel
hello everyone
is there a situation or a scenario where we can use only 12 posting periods without needing the 4 special posting periods. My assumption was we need them whether we use full 12 regular +4 special or shorten the fiscal year like 8 posting periods and use the rest 4 for special.
Would there be a business case or situation where you will never need the special posting periods?
thanks
SRK
Hi Srikanth,
Irrespective of how you have defined your fiscal year, you can also use special periods. Special periods subdivide the year-end closing period. They therefore merely divide the last posting period into several closing periods.
A fiscal year usually has 12 posting periods. In General Ledger Accounting, you can define up to four special periods.If you do not need 12 posting periods, you can use the posting periods that are not required as special periods. If you use these additional closing periods, you must specify the number you require in the field No. special periods. when defining the fiscal year variants. You cannot exceed a maximum of 16 periods.
Thanks,
Neel