Technical Articles

Praful Jain

January 15, 2019 2 minute read

Extension Ledgers in S/4 HANA

Hello All,

Will try to explain the concept of Extension ledger in comparision to standard ledger with my recent experiences of projects.

Extension ledgers are one of the powerful options that can be used for Management reporting. These ledgers staple the data on top of Standard ledgers,hence no data duplications as number of extension ledgers can point to 1 Standard ledger.There are 2 types of ledgers in SAP S/4 HANA:

Standard Ledgers
Extension Ledgers

Comparision of Standard Ledger and Extension Ledger:

Standard Ledger	Extension Ledger
This is an independent ledger and standard ledger is an underlying ledger.	The underlying ledger is a standard ledger.
Postings made to standard ledgers will only be reflected in standard ledger.	Postings made to standard ledger will form part of reports of extension ledgers linked to standard ledger.
Total Balance = Balance in Standard Ledger	Total Balance = Balance in Standard Ledger + Balance in Extension Ledger
Postings can be specifically made in standard ledger	Postings can be specifically made in extension ledger
If you are on Classic GL and migrate to S/4 HANA, you cannot activate standard ledgers on day 1 (Subsequent activation of standard ledger is possible though)	Extension Ledgers can be activated in S/4 HANA even if you were on classic GL in ECC.
Many Standard ledgers can be created to reporting	Many Extension ledgers can be added on top of Standard ledger. (N:1 is possible)

When Extension ledgers can be activated?

This can be activated in S/4 HANA.
Unlike standard ledgers, Extension ledgers can be activated in S/4 HANA even if you were not on New-GL and not used Ledgers in ECC.
Extension ledgers are non-disruptive, hence can be actived at any period of time.

Where is the data of Extension ledger stored?

It is stored in ACDOCA table only.
Postings made to standard ledger are not stored in extenstion ledger specifically.(below example will help you in better understanding)

Example: You have your standard ledger as 0L and Extension ledger as ZX .

If you post a document to 0L. ACDOCA will be updated with ledger posting to 0L only, However when you try to extract reports like FAGLL03 for ledger ZX, all the postings of 0L+ZX will be calculated for balances.
If you post a document to ZX. ACDOCA will be updated with ledger posting to ZX only,hence influencing the balances of ledger ZX.

Config: The setup of extension ledger is very simple.

I will try to update this blog with use cases for extension ledger. Happy to get some suggestions and use cases in comments.

Thanks

Praful Jain.

20 Comments

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Manik Jain

January 17, 2019 at 4:03 am

Hi Praful,

Nice blog.

It will be more useful if you can add use of Non-leading ledgers also!!

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

January 17, 2019 at 10:36 pm

Hi Manik,

Thanks for your comments.

Non-Leading ledgers and Leading ledgers form part of standard ledgers. You can append extension ledgers on any of the standard ledgers.

Hope this explains.

Thanks

Praful

Marssel Vilaça

January 17, 2019 at 1:39 pm

Thanks for sharing, Praful!

I would add about Extension Ledger is that isn't available for Fixed Assets in Paralell Control, and the new release 1809 bring new types of this Ledger.

Regards

Marssel

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

January 17, 2019 at 10:37 pm

Hi Marssel,

Thanks.

Good point about Fixed assets, can you please point to new types of ledgers in 1809?

Thanks

Praful.

Gaurav Agarwal

January 18, 2019 at 10:10 am

Good overview Praful!.

New type of ledgers are prediction ledgers. Checkout my blog on that:

https://blogs.sap.com/?p=731173

Also simulation ledger concept not covered above, which is also a type of extension ledger.

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

January 19, 2019 at 10:37 am

Thanks Gaurav.

Have gone through your blog and its informative.

However, unable to get through the simulation ledger, what will be the usecase for this.

Thanks

Praful.

Gaurav Agarwal

January 19, 2019 at 12:38 pm

Simulation ledger is right now released only for forex revaluation use case. There will be more use cases released by SAP in future for simulation ledger.

Checkout below blog from Srinath Gogineni which explain the simulation ledger for forex valuation use case is very detailed manner:

https://sapexperts.wispubs.com/financials/articles/how-to-use-the-extension-ledger-functionality-in-sap-s-4hana-finance?id=c1626ee98a864580b258870f123ce233#.XEMaMlwzbIU

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

January 20, 2019 at 5:25 am

Thanks Gaurav

Philippe Gauthier

January 21, 2019 at 9:35 am

Hello Praful Jain

Thanks Gaurav Agarwal about your input.

There are some case, which extend ledger can't be used for a local requirement if it's based on leading ledger. For ie in France, there is one case we can't because extend ledger present all postings even CO, or we need to publish all posting booked in local ledger for legal authority.

So choice to activate this approach versus to create a new ledger should take in consideration the legal localization and can have a major impact in the global architecture.

Of course, the new features based on it are not created to answer topics on legal domain.

Thanks for your blog

Philippe

CA Zunaid Hingora

August 9, 2019 at 11:27 am

Hi Praful,

Your blog is very very informative. Thank you. But i have one small doubt. Please guide. Inspite of having standard Ledgers, why we need extension ledger? Can you give some information on this please?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Zunaid

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

September 28, 2019 at 5:07 am

Hi Zunaid,

Extension ledger is needed as an adjustment ledgers or re-org of values of standard ledger . The main advantage is its ability to staple the values on top of standard ledger.

The advantages include;

No data redundancy as it pulls all the data posted to its base ledger (standard Ledger)

Thanks

Suba Rayudu Bendhanam

September 17, 2019 at 3:12 am

Hi Praful,

Thanks for your blog,

I have a small drought on Extension ledger functionality.

If i post a entry only for Extension ledger ,ACDOCA updates only Extension ledger docs , if i look the report FAGLL03 by selecting extension ledger and Expense GL and company code i can see standard ledger(Historical ) as well as Extension ledger documents , if i choose B/S sheet GL i can see only Extension ledger document .

Moreover it seems no Technical difference b/w Non- Leading ledger and Extension ledger as look like both the ledgers functioning is same .

Can any one help me with the technical difference b/w Non- leading and Extension ledger .

Thanks,

Subbu.

Praful Jain

Blog Post Author

September 28, 2019 at 5:11 am

Hi Subbu,

Non Leading ledger is a standard ledger it means you need to specifically post to that ledger.

In extension ledger even if you dont post in it, it pulls data from its linked standard ledger. You can add extension ledger on top of Non leading ledger but you cannot add non leading ledger on top of extension ledger.My example in blog can help you understand.

Thanks

Praful.

Rama Yengisetty

February 5, 2020 at 2:40 pm

Hello Praful,

Based on the information provided here, is there a possibility that Extension ledger is a replacement to the non-leading ledger? please elaborate.

Thank you

Ram

Torsten Heck

February 11, 2020 at 11:11 am

Hi Praful,

nice blog, thanks!

What´s about the integration to CO?

I know, that the leading ledger is integrated. But is there also a way to transfer bookings from the extension ledger to CO? Or from a non-leading Ledger to CO?

Thanks and best regards,

Torsten

Jigang Zhang 张吉刚

September 3, 2020 at 8:53 am

Thanks for sharing this.

Ankit Deshwal

September 4, 2020 at 10:54 am

Hi Praful,

We have implemented the Extended Ledger for the sales Document and during invoice creation the entries are getting created and saved in ACDOCA.

The way we see the actual ledger accounting document, we are not able to see the accounting document for Extended Ledger when we click on Accuouting button in VF03. Also, the accounting document is not getting updated in the Document flow.

Can you please confirm if this is the standard functionality or I am missing anything?

Edwin Weijers

May 7, 2021 at 7:54 am

For a customer we discovered that in S/4NANA 2020 it is possible to create an extension ledger on an extension ledger that is on s standard ledger. Creating the top extenion ledger the

pfkey4 input options for the base ledger va;ues on;y show the standard ledgers. However when you ignore this and put in the extemsion ledger as the ase ledger for a 2nd extension ledger, the syste, accepts this. It also works with ledger specific postings.

for reporting ypi can report on:

base ledger
base ledger + extension ledger 1
base ledger + extension ;edger 1 + extemsion ledger 2

My customer has a requirement to report like that. i have never seen this stacked extension ledgers, but it seems to work.

Can we just do this or are there any restrictions? How many extesion ledgers van be stacked?

best regards, Edwin

Paulo Vitoriano

May 8, 2021 at 11:48 am

Hi Praful,

What would you think about having Extension Ledger for Accruals postings?

Thank you,

Paulo

functional support

January 12, 2022 at 5:43 am

Hi Praful,

I am activating Commitment Budget functionality in SAP S4 HANA 1909. While defining extension ledger system is not showing extension ledger type "Prediction and Simulation and extension". The screenshot is attached for reference.

Thanks,

Sarvagya Satbhaiya

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Extension Ledgers in S/4 HANA

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