Negative Postings (SAP Library - FI Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable)

Negative Postings

Use

Reverse and adjustment postings can also be marked as negative postings. Negative postings are used to reduce the transaction figures in G/L, customer, and vendor accounts. This allows you to give the transaction figures (following the reversal) the status they would have had without posting the reversed document and its reversal document. This type of reversal is called a negative posting.

Integration

Other applications have to mark reversal transactions that affect Accounting with a checkbox. This obligation to inform is independent of the marking of negative postings in FI and applies to reversals for:

Customer billing documents and credit memos (SD)
Order settlements (CO)
Invoice verification (LO)
Goods movements (MM)

Negative postings give rise to changes in the reconciliation between documents and transaction figures. A debit item marked as a negative posting reduces the credit transaction figures, a credit item correspondingly reduces the debit transaction figures. These changes are considered in the standard reconciliation programs and various standard reports (for example, SAPF070 and RFBELJ00).

Prerequisites

Permit negative postings. You do this per company code in Customizing for Financial Accounting according to account type in General Ledger Accounting/Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable → Business Transactions → Document Reversal → Permit Negative Postings

Features

Reversal

You must specify the reasons for the reversal transaction. For each reason, you specify whether negative postings are to be generated. The reversal reason is noted in the header of the reversed document. This additional information cannot be accessed in reversals which take place via invoice verification (MM) or billing (SD).

If the reversed document had already been revaluated, additional line items are generated during reversal for resetting the foreign currency valuation. The system automatically marks these items as negative postings.

If the reversed document already contains negative postings, then the corresponding line items in the reversal document are not negative postings.

Accrual/deferral documents for reverse postings

You must enter a reason for a reverse posting when entering an accrual/deferral document. The reason for the reverse posting is noted in the accrual/deferral document and used as a reversal reason during resetting. You can enter any reversal reason for which a reversal with an alternative posting date can be carried out.

Residual items

The system marks residual items as negative postings. This prevents debit and credit transaction figures increasing simply because of the creation of residual items.

Outstanding payables and receivables that the system generates according to an amount entered in the field Difference postings are also automatically marked as negative postings.

Adjustment documents

In order to exclude the effects of incorrect postings on the transaction figures, you can enter adjustment documents in which individual line items are marked as negative postings.

If, for example, you posted a line item to the wrong account, you can use an adjustment document to correct the wrong account using a negative posting, and make the posting to the correct account.

Adjustment postings of this sort are only possible for document types specifically defined for this.

To mark individual line items as negative postings when entering a document, select the field Negative posting under More data.

Automatic postings

If you mark manually entered document items as negative postings, this does not affect the generation of automatic postings such as tax postings for example. These are not immediately marked as negative postings. You can however mark the relevant items as negative postings within a supplementary account assignment. The account must not however be marked for supplementary account assignment in the master record.

During automatic account determination, you have to mark individual items of the document as negative postings for those transactions where debit and credit postings affect different accounts.

Line item display

The indicator for negative postings is available as a display field for the line item display.

Activities

To enter reversal and accrual/deferral documents, you have to specify reversal reasons. For each reversal reason, specify whether negative postings are to be created in the reversal document and whether the reversal date may differ from the posting date of the document to be reversed. You define reversal reasons in Customizing for Financial Accounting according to account type in General Ledger Accounting/Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable → Business Transactions → Document Reversal → Define Reasons for Reversal

You define document types for adjustment postings in Customizing for Financial Accounting under Financial Accounting Global Settings →  Document → Document header → Define Document Types

If you want to see the indicator for negative postings in the line item display, you must either create appropriate display variants or expand existing variants. You do this in Customizing for Financial Accounting according to account type in General Ledger Accounting (G/L Accounts) and/or Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable (Customer/Vendor Accounts) → Line Items → Line Item Display → Define Line Layout