Subgroup Maintenance (SAP Library - Consolidation (FI-LC))

Subgroup Maintenance

You maintain subgroups in the Implementation Guide or in the consolidation menu using the menu options Master data ® Subgroups. You can then select one of the following options.

Create

Change

Display

Delete

You must maintain the global parameters for the subgroup. You must also assign the individual companies of the subgroup along with the company-related details to the consolidation steps. Using the Consolidated entity pushbutton, you can switch to an additional screen in Subgroup Maintenance. On this screen, you can enter information pertaining to the companies included in the consolidated entity. In particular, you can define certain default requirements for each subgroup. This default information was also entered in company maintenance, independent of the subgroup. Any requirements entered for a specific subgroup always take precedence over the default requirements.

Creating a subgroup

Follow these steps to create a subgroup:

Subgroups are identified by a three character ID. You must enter the year, period, and version for subgroups. The period effects only period-driven displays and updates of the group share. The composition of the subgroup, however, is stored in the system as year and version dependent. A deciding factor in the composition of subgroups is the investment version derived from the consolidation version (for more information read Versions).

When creating subgroups, you can use existing subgroups as a reference for your new subgroup. Furthermore, you can generate a list of possible companies to be used as the reference by entering an interval of companies and/or by entering a country key. If you enter the country key, all the companies in that particular country will be displayed for suggestion.

Subgroups, like companies, are assigned to a ledger. Therefore, you need to make sure that within a ledger the same group currency is consistently used. You can (and should) store all subgroups with the same group currency in the same ledger. If a company is contained in several subgroups which have different group currencies, the company must be stored in several ledgers (for more information read Ledgers).

An exception to this are the so-called local currency groups. In a local currency group, the group currency can differ from the ledger currency. All the companies in the local currency group must have the same local currency. The consolidation steps are carried out in the local currency (= group currency). The advantage of local currency groups is that you do not need to create a separate ledger for them, thus avoiding redundancy in the data sets.

You must assign a description, a consolidation frequency, a currency, and a validation group to each subgroup. You can also assign consolidation activity group and a report group to subgroups. When you assign a consolidation activity group to a subgroup, all the consolidation activities can be bundled for execution (for more information, read Bundling Consolidation Activities ). When you assign a report group to a subgroup, the reports can be printed as a bundle (for more information, read Bundling Reports).

You must assign the following to each subgroup: the companies with their respective consolidation of investments method, and, if necessary, the proportion and the consolidation activities to be performed.

Since subgroups have a hierarchical structure, you must identify at least one company as the parent company. When multiple groups are tiered (hierarchical), the top parent company is marked. In horizontal structures, you can identify more than one company as the parent company (non-hierarchical groups). Parent companies are consolidated at 100%, but no consolidation of investments takes place for these companies.

You can display the group share of each of the companies in the subgroup master record using the pushbutton Group shares. To do this, you need to first maintain the company investment relationships in the changes in investments table. The system will then compute the calculated group shares.

For each company, you can enter the following data in the Consolidated entity maintenance screen:

Exclusion indicator for a company in the consolidation (subgroup specific)
Reason for inclusion or exclusion for the company (subgroup specific)
Company type (trading partner, purchase method, affiliated, or joint venture company) from the point of view of the parent company
Company type from the point of view of the entire subgroup

In the detail screen for maintaining the consolidated entity, you can also store or display the following information for each company:

You can specify the date of the first consolidation and the beginning of the goodwill amortization by subgroup.

In addition to the calculated group share, the calculated shares with voting power, without voting power, retained capital, as well as the direct investment of the intermediate parent will be displayed. These values are derived from the corresponding specifications in the changes of investments table and calculated by the system. See also the topics General Information on Table Maintenance and Calculating Group Shares in the section "Consolidation of Investments".

Another function key allows you to display a Graphic Representation of the subgroup.

Under Info system ® Master data in the menu, you can print out lists of the subgroups you created. You can also get information about the subgroup hierarchy including the assigned rollup companies. For more information, read Printing Master Data, Financial Data and Control Parameters.

Creating a subgroup in a new version

If you want to create a subgroup with the same company ID in another consolidation version, choose Subgroup ® Change. You could, for example, manage a subgroup in a new version with a different consolidation frequency.

You need to enter the subgroup, fiscal year, period and new version in the initial screen.