Carrying Forward Balances (SAP Library - FI Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable)

Carrying Forward Balances

Use

This process involves carrying forward account balances into the new fiscal year. The balance to be carried forward is shown in the account balance display. To carry forward balances, you can use separate programs for G/L accounts, and for customer and vendor accounts.

Caution

You therefore do not even have to carry out the balance carry forward manually if you have already posted to the new fiscal year.

The balance carry forward is executed as follows:

Balance Sheet and Customer and Vendor Accounts

The balances on the balance sheet accounts are simply carried forward into the new fiscal year.

Additional account assignments are transferred.

Profit and Loss Accounts

Profit and loss accounts are carried forward to retained earnings accounts. The balances of the profit and loss accounts are set to 0.

Additional account assignments are not transferred.
Transaction currencies are no longer applicable and the profit and loss accounts are summarized in local currency.

Prerequisites

Balance Sheet and Customer and Vendor Accounts

There are no prerequisites for carrying forward balance sheet and customer and vendor accounts.

Profit and Loss Accounts

The following prerequisites must be fulfilled for profit and loss accounts:

Specify a profit and loss account type in the master record of every profit and loss account. This is a key, under which you define a retained earnings account for each chart of accounts.

You must define your retained earnings account.

You can make the setting in Customizing under Financial Accounting → General Ledger Accounting ® Business Transactions ® Closing ® Carrying Forward ® Define Retained Earnings Account

You can make the settings for the Special Purpose Ledger in Customizing for Financial Accounting under Special Purpose Ledger → Periodic Processing → Balance Carry Forward → Retained Earnings Accounts → Maintain Local/Global Retained Earnings Accounts.

Note

Most companies use only one retained earnings account. If you use the profit and loss account type, you can use more than one retained earnings account. This might be useful for example, for international corporations that have to meet various requirements when producing the profit and loss statement. For more information, see Special Features of Profit and Loss Accounts

Features

General Functions

Automatically Adjusting Balances Carried Forward

When you carry forward the balances for G/L accounts at the end of a fiscal year, the system automatically adjusts the balances when you post values to the previous year. The system uses an indicator to determine whether the balances have been carried forward. Once this has been done, the balance is automatically carried forward whenever a posting is made, even when a posting is made to the previous year. It is therefore not necessary to execute the balance carry forward again.

Account Adjustment

If, in the new fiscal year, you find that a G/L account was mistakenly set up as a P&L account in the prior year instead of as a balance sheet account (or vice versa), you should rerun the balance carry forward program after adjusting the G/L account master record so that the balance carried forward can be adjusted.

Special Features in General Ledger Accounting

Parallel Currencies

If you run parallel currencies in the general ledger, and the second or third currency is the group currency, the balances are run in this group currency in ledger 00, and carried forward as part of the balance carry forward.

If you run parallel currencies in other additional general ledgers than ledger 00, you have to carry out the balance carry forward separately for the parallel general ledgers.

Special Features in the Special Purpose Ledgers

User-Defined Field Movements

If you carry forward additional account assignments, such as profit center or functional area, to the new fiscal year, or you want to summarize using additional account assignments, you must assign field movements for balance sheet and profit and loss accounts to your ledger. To assign the field movements, choose the following in Customizing for Financial Accounting: Special Purpose Ledger → Periodic Processing → Balance Carry Forward → Assign Field Movements.

Caution

If you want to use a field movement for balance sheet accounts, your field movement must contain the dimension Account. However, the field movement for profit and loss accounts must not contain the dimension Account (except for when you want to change the account using a user exit).

Secondary Cost Elements

In the standard system, the program only carries forward G/L accounts from Financial Accounting. If you also want to carry forward secondary cost elements in your ledger, you do this with a user exit (transaction SMOD/CMOD, enhancement GVTRS001).

Activities

You run the balance carry forward program as follows:

G/L Accounts

From the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Accounting → Financial Accounting → General Ledger → Periodic Processing → Closing → Carry Forward → Balance Carryforward.

Customer and Vendor Accounts

From the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Accounting → Financial Accounting → Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable → Periodic Processing → Closing → Carryforward → Balances.

Note

You can only carry forward balances in Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable for individual accounts. In General Ledger Accounting, however, you have to carry forward balances for all G/L accounts.

Special Purpose Ledger

From the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Accounting → Financial Accounting → Special Purpose Ledger → Periodic Processing → Balance Carryforward.