Migration to New General Ledger Accounting

Purpose

New General Ledger Accounting offers the following advantages:

  • Integration of managerial and financial accounting, including segment reporting

  • Easy extensibility

  • New procedures for parallel accounting

  • Acceleration of period-end closing (fast close)

  • Improved transparency

  • Corporate governance

  • Reduced ongoing costs

Many different migration scenarios are imaginable for the transition from classic General Ledger Accounting to new General Ledger Accounting, ranging from the straightforward merge of existing ledgers to a totally new conception of accounting, such as the introduction of segment reporting for compliance with new accounting principles. In particular in the case of a new conception of accounting, there are two aspects to the transition to new General Ledger Accounting: firstly, a conceptual business part, and secondly, a technical part dealing with the migration of the existing accounting data to the new structures for General Ledger Accounting.

Prerequisites

The prerequisite for the migration from classic General Ledger Accounting to new General Ledger Accounting is the successful upgrade of your SAP system to SAP ERP 5.0 or SAP ERP 6.0.

Employees involved in the migration project need to have attended the AC210 and AC212 courses or have equivalent knowledge.

Implementation Considerations

The new features relate to very extensive changes, the transition to new General Ledger Accounting is very complex, and the data volume involved is not to be underestimated. A comprehensive analysis of your situation at the outset and the detailed planning of the migration are crucial to the success of the migration.

Recommendation Recommendation

We therefore recommend setting up an individual project for the migration, entailing project phases, milestones, and so forth, and taking the appropriate steps to ensure sufficient testing and training.

End of the recommendation.

Preparing and performing the steps relating to the technical part of the migration of the data is of central importance for such a project and must be conducted with extreme caution and thoroughness to ensure that the principles of orderly accounting are still upheld after the migration.

To achieve a high degree of safety in this respect, SAP accompanies each migration project with the SAP General Ledger Migration Service . This mandatory technical service relates to the standard migration scenarios and contains a scenario-specific General Ledger Migration Cockpit and service sessions to ensure the quality of the data and of the migration project. The service sessions are performed by the General Ledger Migration Back Office that has been set up especially for this purpose.

For more information, see the following section and SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/GLMIG. After your application for the service has been received, the General Ledger Migration Cockpit is made available to you. Arrangements are then made to provide the appropriate service sessions.

Features

The SAP General Ledger Migration Service covers the following services:

  • The General Ledger Migration Cockpit for performing the migration

    • Process tree that guides you through the individual migration activities, specific to the scenario used

    • Monitoring of the migration steps with status administration

  • Remote service session for scenario validation and system analysis

    • Where required, consistency checks on the target Customizing settings of new General Ledger Accounting

  • Remote service session for the test validation

    • Technical plausibility checks in a test system after the data has been migrated

  • Development support provided by the General Ledger Migration Back Office

The General Ledger Migration Cockpit offers the advantage that it guides you step by step through the migration of your data, specific to your scenario. The standardized procedure – together with the service sessions provided throughout the duration of the project by SAP specialists via the General Ledger Migration Back Office – contributes significantly towards optimizing migration projects.

The above contents relate to support for the technical migration of source data from the classic applications to new General Ledger Accounting.

You can obtain support in creating the blueprint and in customizing new General Ledger Accounting either from SAP Consulting of the SAP international subsidiary for your region or from consulting partners. For example, the consultants can provide support in elaborating a concept for new General Ledger Accounting, in planning the implementation project, or in performing individual reviews.

The SAP General Ledger Migration Service supports the following scenarios:

  • Scenario / Pack 1 : Merging of the “FI Ledgers”

    Merging of the data from classic General Ledger Accounting, the consolidation staging ledger, and the ledger for cost of sales accounting

    Advantages:

    • Reduced data redundancy

    • Reduced effort for year-end closing operations

    • Standardized reporting

  • Scenario / Pack 2 : Merging of FI Ledgers, Profit Center Ledgers, and/or Special Purpose Ledgers

    Scenario 1 plus merging of the data from classic Profit Center Accounting and/or the data from a special purpose ledger comparable with a general ledger

    Advantages:

    • Integration of Profit Center Accounting in new General Ledger Accounting

    • Discontinuation of the use of a special purpose ledger used as a general ledger

    • Posting data can be traced more effectively

    • Improvements to integrated reporting

  • Scenario / Pack 3 : Merging of FI Ledgers, Profit Center Ledgers, and/or Special Purpose Ledgers with Document Splitting (such as for reporting at profit center, segment, or business area level)

    Document splitting allows reporting to be performed at the level of additional dimensions, such as profit centers, segments, or business areas. In this scenario, document splitting is implemented concurrently with the migration to new General Ledger Accounting.

    Advantages:

    • Flexible reporting at the level of entities other than the company code

  • Scenario / Pack 4 : Merging of FI Ledgers, Profit Center Ledgers, and/or Special Purpose Ledgers with Switch from Account Approach to Ledger Approach

    Portrayal of parallel accounting using parallel ledgers instead of parallel accounts

    Advantages:

    • More transparent charts of accounts and reporting

    • Enhanced traceability of the posting data

  • Scenario / Pack 5 : Merging of FI Ledgers, Profit Center Ledgers, and/or Special Purpose Ledgers with Document Splitting and Switch from Account Approach to Ledger Approach

    For more information, see the descriptions provided for scenarios 2,3, and 4.

Other than these scenarios for the switch from classic to new General Ledger Accounting, the SAP General Ledger Migration Service also offers scenarios for making subsequent changes in new General Ledger Accounting after it has been implemented:

  • Scenario / Pack 6 : Subsequent Implementation of Document Splitting

    Document splitting allows comprehensive reporting to be performed at the level of additional dimensions, such as profit centers, segments, or business areas. In this scenario, document splitting is implemented after the migration to new General Ledger Accounting.

    Advantages:

    • Flexible reporting at the level of entities other than the company code

    • Reduced complexity of the original migration project for implementing new General Ledger Accounting as a result of postponing the implementation of document splitting until after the migration.

  • Scenario / Pack 7 : Subsequent Implementation of an Additional Ledger

    You can activate an additional non-leading ledger to meet additional reporting requirementsand build the data in this new ledger.

  • Scenario / Pack 8 : Subsequent Switch from Account Approach to Ledger Approach

    You can portray parallel accounting using parallel ledgers in place of using existing parallel accounts.

    Advantages:

    • More transparent charts of accounts and reporting

    • Enhanced traceability of the posting data

    • Original migration project for implementing new General Ledger Accounting is made less complex by performing the migration and the switch to the ledger solution at different times

Any scenarios that differ from these standard scenarios are migrated on a project-specific basis. For such scenarios, the migration is performed on the basis of the scenario corresponding most closely to the customer’s scenario.

If, for example, you do not use classic Profit Center Accounting (EC-PCA) but you would like to implement profit center accounting with new General Ledger Accounting, you use scenario 3. Generally, customer-specific scenarios require additional consulting support.

Notes on this Documentation

This documentation is not intended to provide details on the functions in new General Ledger Accounting; instead, it deals with specific matters relating to the migration or to the supported scenarios for building additional data in new General Ledger Accounting.

This documentation covers the common standard scenarios that are supported by SAP. It describes the individual migration phases using migration guides and assists you in analyzing the initial situation in your system prior to the migration.

Any scenarios that differ from the standard scenarios have their own individual complexity, which prevents a standard description from applying to them. Such scenarios are migrated on a project-by-project basis and require additional steps.