Update from September 2018 to explain the new option “change fiscal year”:

Your company got aquired by a company with a deferred calendar year? Usually this is the time, when you might need to think of changing the fiscal year variant.

What other option do you have now?

You have in principle two options:

1. Re-Migration
   Creating a new company with the new fiscal year variant and migrate the data of the existing tenant to the new company (in short: re-implementation of the company)
   or
2. Service to replace fiscal year variant
   Contact the SAP Cloud Service Center and check if there is the possibility to replace the current fiscal year variant with the new fiscal year variant with the chargeable service “Fiscal Year Variant change”. This is usually the best choice, if the requirement is to quickly move to the new fiscal year variant, but all accounting settings can stay as they are (no addition set of books required, no other account principle, …)

For option 2 we require the new target fiscal year variant. The approach is that fiscal year is merged with the feature of “shortened fiscal years“, e.g. if you move from Calendar Year to April – March, then you need a shortened fiscal year to “bridge” the Jan – March period. The years are in sequence, which means 2018 the shortened year after 2018 is 2019, and then 2020 starts …

For option 1 you have the option to set up the company in the same or a fresh tenant. If you stay in the same tenant, then you can reuse the company independent data and need to follow this steps to achieve this:

1. Request a new test tenant
2. Create a new company in the new tenant in parallel to the old company
   Advantage: master data can be re-used, at least the company independent part;
   historical data are still available
3. Create the new Set of Books
   Fiscal year variant is a key field for the Set of Books definition, that why it cannot be changed.
   The Chart of Accounts, etc. can be reused.
4. Assign the new company to the new Set of Books
   You cannot assign a subsequent Set of Books to a company after the first posting.
   But even if it would be technically okay, after my evaluations I do not think, it is a good approach for a new fiscal year variant.
5. Extract all open transactions and migrate them to the new Set of Books
   Similar to a standard migration, you need to migrate open items. For open POs and SO you need to check if you need to migrate them, re-using is no option.
   For data download you can use reports and OWLs. In addition SAP offers services to extract data with tools.
   Before the upload
   • Please check especially with respect to Fixed Assets, that the right values are used. Also the Fixed Asset IDs cannot be re-used.
   • Ensure that the old bank accounts data are not valid any longer (otherwise bank statement processing will determine the “old” bank accounts and clear old items)
6. Add the new company specific data to the master data for the new company.
7. All employees have to be transfered to the new company
   unfortunately “fire and re-hire” is the only option.
   Recommendation: define a new determination reason, e.g. “Reorg” to see the transfers for the re-org.
8. Update User Access Rights:
   You have to ensure, that the employees can only create and edit data for the new company. So check the access rights of all your employees.
   For self services the new cost centers will be defaulted.
9. Last but not least: Delimit the old company by maintaining the end date
   The validity of an organizational unit is considered when creating new data. So you will get an error when creating e.g. POs for the old company.

Feedback is welcome.

Marlene Katzschner
SAP Cloud Service Center