Technical Articles
Changing Fiscal Year Variants/ Shortened (Extended) Fiscal Year
Update from July 2019 to to remove the option of “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? In principle the recommended approach is to do a re-migration.
Here you have in principle two options:
- Create a new company in the existing tenant
this option allows you to keep the historical data, re-use existing configurations and master data information (as long as not org dependent).
Drawback: Certain master data have to be re-migrated (with a new key, e.g. Fixed Assets or company), not all configuration can be changed (Veto checks)
Or - Start in fresh system
Advantage of this approach is, that you start fresh and have the chance to optimize your system configuration. In addition you can re-use the same IDs, names, etc. because there is no usage of the “existing data”
Disadvantage: it is a re-implementation, even if you can download data and copy the solution profile from your existing tenant.
If you stay in the same tenant (option 1), then you can reuse the configuration, all company independent data and all existing postings stay in the system. Following steps I see as the key steps to achieve it:
- 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 - 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. - 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. - 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 Purchase Orderss and Sales Orders you need to check if you need to migrate them, re-using is no option.
Remark:
For data download you can use reports, OWLs and the download tool of your ByDesign system.
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)
- Add the new company specific data to the master data for the new company.
- 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. - 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. - 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 SE
Did someone followed this protocol and if so could you pls. share your experience. That would be great.
Marlene Katzschner - We were recently acquired and will need to switch from a fiscal year to a calendar year. We have just under 550 employees in byD and a large amount of engineering and manufacturing data. Before I submitting an incident I need to learn more about this process. Would you be the correct person to get in touch with directly? I need to plan this internal project out and in order to do so I need more information about the process.
Jennifer Knaus
jknaus@aurora.aero
We are going trough the same process as well now. Jen did you compete your transition?
Dear Diederik,
if you are interested in adjusting your fiscal year variant, please get in contact with me either using an incident or an email to the above email address.
I have done the change of the fiscal year variant already for a few customers w/o issues and would recommend to see if this works for you. For the remigration please keep in mind that this is a larger project with the same issues as every other migration (e.g. open POs have to be migrated, open items to be migrated, etc.)
Best regards
Marlene
Sorry for the late response! No, we have not completed the transition yet. We chose option 1, re-migration, but we wanted to additional benefit of changing our accounting structure and better use of account determination groups. We used data extraction and migration where possible. SAP has been very helpful throughout the process and I feel confident that we'll end up with a better system all around when we go live with the re-migration in Jan 2019.
Hi Marlene，
Do customers need to migrate the data from new test tenant to production tenant after all implementation and test are done in new test tenant?
Thanks,
Eda
Hi Eda
for the described case of migration to a new company in the same tenant you proceed the same way as any other migration.
Best regards.
Marlene
Update July 2019:
I removed the option of changing the fiscal year variant technically because the service is no longer offered.
Hi Marlene,
that means that creating a new Org Structure and change the URL will be the only options left, right?
Regards
Hi Marlene,
What would need to be done for open production orders and existing demand plans in this type of implementation? Do these need to be closed out first and then change the demand plans to the new site ID's to generate proposals from MRP?
Regards,
Ger
Hi Marlene
Is there another approach to changing the existing fiscal year variant (standard) of a company with postings already? Basically, we do not want to create new companies in our tenant (these would stay the same). However, to differentiate postings before and after acquisition, we need to add one more period to split the month when the acquisition happens, which is in the current year. Is there a way to add an additional period for this one-time requirement? Kindly advise, thank you.
Hi Eunice,
in principle adding additional periods (or extending fiscal years) is no option at all. This is not allowed technically and if I remember right, also legally forbidden in certain countries.
But another point to think of:
Assuming you would migrate fresh, then you would have one period for the time before and one after the acquisition. Would this be an option for you? Maybe you raise an incident to support and ask for advice (maybe there is a customer specific chargeable approach for this, but I cannot judge from here.) And please do not post periods that fall after acquisition.
Hope that helps you a little bit.
Best regards
Marlene
Dear All
There is a service available from SAP to change the fiscal year variant.
When a customer needs to change from one fiscal year variant to another in ByD, e.g. fiscal calendar = calendar year to deferred fiscal, this can only be achieved using “Non-calendar
based” fiscal year variants defined by a customer with shortened fiscal years. This change of the FYV, which has impact on existing postings, is not possible from the UI, when the first
posting is done.
The Fiscal Year variant service offers the customer to change from one SAP pre-delivered Fiscal Year Variant to a customer specific one, without a complete reimplementation of
ByDesign.
The service can offer the following:
• Perform all steps required in a new escalation test tenant and then in the production tenant of the customer
• Support in defining a new (non-calendar based) Fiscal Year Variant (covering the old and the new Fiscal Year Variant
• Assign this new Fiscal Year Variant to the existing Set of books*
• Use the new Fiscal Year Variants in all existing financial documents*
Please contact Eran Flax or Eli Toledano to arrange this change.
Please note, there is a charge for this service.
Regards
John