Organizational Units and Basic Settings 

Definition

Elements of the SAP System logical structure, important for Financial Accounting.

Organizational units are used to structure business functions and for reporting. The organizational units of Financial Accounting are used for external reporting purposes, that is, they fulfil requirements that your business is subject to from external parties, for example, legal regulations. The financial statements for example, are created based on the organizational units of Financial Accounting.

Basic settings in Financial Accounting are Customizing settings that you have to make in order to be able to carry out processes in Financial Accounting.

Use

You create your company-specific organizational structure in the SAP System by defining the organizational units and making the basic settings. Defining organizational units for Financial Accounting is obligatory, that is, you have to define these units in order to be able to implement the Financial Accounting component.

Organizational unit

Definition

Client

Obligatory

Company

Optional

Company code

Obligatory

Business area

Optional

Basic setting

 

Chart of accounts

Obligatory

Fiscal year

Obligatory

Currencies

Obligatory

Integration

In the SAP System, you define the relevant organizational units for each component that you are implementing. For example, for Sales and Distribution, you define sales organizations, distribution channels, and divisions (product groups). Similarly, for Purchasing, you define purchasing organizations, evaluation levels, plants, and storage locations. The organizational units are independent of one another at this stage.

Components and Organizational Units

Component

Organizational unit

Sales and Distribution

Sales organization, ...

Logistics

Purchasing organization, ...

Financial Accounting

Company code, ...

Controlling

Controlling area, ...

Human Resources

Employee groups, ...

 

To transfer data between the individual components, you have to assign the organizational units to each other. You only need to make these assignments once in the system. Whenever you enter data subsequently, it is automatically transferred.

For example, invoices that are posted in SD are transferred to FI.