Purpose

In Flexible Real Estate Management, accruals and deferrals are used to post rents and operating costs (that are paid in advance or in arrears) to the correct periods as the revenue is earned or benefits received from the expense.

For more information, refer to Accruals and Deferrals in RE-FX .

The accrual/deferral functions in the accounting component of Flexible Real Estate Management are based on the SAP Accrual Engine tool.

For more information, also refer to Manual Accruals

Prerequisites

Customizing:

Make the required settings in Customizing for Flexible Real Estate Management . Choose:

SAP Customizing Implementation Guide → Flexible Real Estate Management → Accounting → Accrual/Deferral

For more information on the Customizing settings, refer to the IMG documentation Accrual/Deferral Using Accrual Engine in RE Environment using the same path. Also refer to Accruals and Deferrals in RE-FX .

Master Data:

You entered more than one month for the frequency term (on the Posting Parameters tab page) for contracts for which you want to post accruals or deferrals. You specified In Advance or In Arrears for the payment form.

The cash flow of the contracts is current.

Process Flow

You select the contracts and at the same time transfer the data to the Accrual Engine. The Accrual Engine calculates and posts the accruals and deferrals.

If you execute an accrual/deferral run to post the accruals and deferrals, Accrual Engine documents are generated and transferred automatically to Financial Accounting, where FI documents are generated from them.

I. Accrual/Deferral: Contracts

You use this function to transfer data of RE-FX contracts to the Accrual Engine where accrual/deferral postings are generated. To make this posting possible, the system automatically creates an accrual object for each contract. For each cash flow record, it creates an accrual subobject.

On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose:

Accounting → Flexible Real Estate Management → Accounting → Accrual/Deferral → Accrual/Deferral: Contracts

Enter the contracts for which you want to post accruals/deferrals, and execute the function.

The accrual/deferral is posted and you receive a list of the contracts with the amounts posted. You have the following options for processing:

Display of error and posting log

Individual document display

The system generates an allocation posting for deferrals.

For more information, refer to Example: Deferral of Rent Paid in Advance .

For accruals, accrual types have to be set up in Customizing so that they do not generate an allocation posting.

For information, refer to Example: Accrual of Rent Paid in Arrears

To check if the accrual or deferral was posted, you can look at the contracts involved. On the Overviews tab page of the contract, choose the Partner Cash Flow . The accrual or deferral is updated in the cash flow and displayed in the status.

II. Display Accrual/Deferral Results

You use this function to display the results of the accrual/deferral. Here you can see the accrual or deferral amounts distributed to the correct periods.

On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose:

Accounting → Flexible Real Estate Management → Accounting → Accrual/Deferral → Display Accrual/Deferral Results

On the Display of Accruals from Real Estate screen, enter the contracts for which accrual/deferral was posted, and choose Execute.

A navigation tree appears where your contracts (accrual objects) are displayed by company code.

You can navigate to the accrual subobject that was generated for each cash flow item in each contract. There you can see the accrual (or deferral) amounts and the cumulative amounts for each period (month). You also see the postings and the accounts.

Calculated Accruals Tab Page

Here you see the calculated accrual/deferral amounts for each period.

Postings Tab Page

Here you see the allocation posting in the Accrual Engine and the periodic revenue recognition items.

Posted Totals Tab Page

Here you see the accrual/deferral amounts summarized for a year.

Accts Tab Page

Here you see the accounts determined using the account determination, along with the document types.

For more information on the structure of an accrual object, refer to Editing an Accrual Object .

Result

The cash flow records (costs and revenue) of the contracts are distributed in the form of plan values to the correct periods for your financial statements. If later receivables or credit memos arise on the contracts, then these are reflected in the cash flow, and they are automatically considered during the next accrual/deferral run.

III. Reversal of Accrual/Deferral Postings (Reversal of the Data Transfer)

You can reverse the accrual/deferral postings. On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose:

Accounting → Flexible Real Estate Management → Accounting → Accrual/Deferral → Reversal of Accrual/Deferral Postings

Enter the contracts for which you want to reverse accruals/deferrals.

Or instead, in the Run ID (Run to Be Reversed) field, you can enter the ID of an accrual run in which you performed several accruals/deferrals together.

Execute the program.

An overview of reversed accrual objects appears. There you can see the status of the reversal and the reversed amounts.

Result

The accrued or deferred items are reversed. In master data processing for the contract, you can check the status to see if the accrual/deferral was reversed (see note for step I. Accrual/Deferral: Contracts above).