Defining Adjustment Accounts 

Purpose

Adjustment accounts collect postings in FI resulting from differences in values between the FI and CO components. Primary cost elements in the CO component correspond to the profit and loss accounts in Financial Accounting. Secondary cost elements exist only in CO and have no equivalent in FI. CO postings that cross company code, business area or functional area boundaries, and which contain primary and secondary costs, must be transferred to FI. Only then is it possible to produce a reconciled profit and loss statement and balance sheet.

Process Flow

Primary cost elements provide two alternatives:

If you want to execute the reconciliation posting, the corresponding accounts must exist in FI for all affected primary cost elements in all company codes in which the reconciliation postings are to be made. It is not sufficient to create the accounts in the chart of accounts only.

To do this you must select Account determination for primary cost elements during account determination.

You need create adjustment accounts and maintain their assignments for secondary cost element postings. The R/3 System executes the reconciliation postings on an adjustment account found with account determination.

Adjustment accounts should not be used for other posting transactions within FI for reasons of clarity.

The account group to which your adjustment accounts belong can vary depending on the chart of accounts you are using.

To ensure that the adjustment account can be recorded in the transaction currency, you must deselect the field Balances in local currency only in the master record of the adjustment account.

To create accounts in FI, choose:

Accounting ® Financial accounting ® General ledger ® Master records ® Create

For more information on defining accounts, see the SAP Library under Financials.

You can also create adjustment accounts in Customizing for Cost and Revenue Element Accounting. Choose Reconciliation Ledger ® Maintain Adjustment Accounts for Reconciliation Postings ® Create Adjustment Accounts (See: Maintain Adjustment Accounts For Reconciliation Postings).

Taxes and Overhead Rates

Reconciliation postings are currently executed without taxes and overhead rates.

For accounts that correspond to primary cost elements, postings without tax (at least) are normally not allowed. You specify this in the master data. You can only post to this type of account using a tax code.

The reconciliation posting transaction is not tax-relevant in FI. If you still want to post non-tax-relevant business transactions, you can store a tax code in the company code that defines a tax rate of zero. For posting of non-tax-relevant business transactions, the system sets this indicator automatically. In Customizing for Accounting, choose:

Financial Accounting Global Settings ® Tax on Sales/Purchases ® Posting ® Assign tax codes for non-taxable transactions (see: Assign Tax Codes For Non-Taxable Transactions).

Alternatively, you can set the account master data to allow postings without taxes. To do so, choose:

Accounting ® Financial Accounting ® General ledger ® Master records ® Change

And select Posting without taxes allowed for the account.

To prevent manual postings being made without taxes, you must create a corresponding Validation within Customizing.

To do this, see Customizing for General Controlling, under Account Assignment Logic ® Define Validation (see: Defining Validation).