Transaction types are used to differentiate transactions within an account. They, for instance, allow you to portray horizontal account development, e.g. ‘opening balance - acquisitions - retirements - transfers - closing balance.’ This is of great interest for certain balance sheet accounts - not only for the consolidated financial statements. In addition to SAP’s pre-conceived transaction types, the customer can also define further differentiating criteria in a similar way in Customizing, and in coding management, determine for each G/L account whether their entry is required or optional.

If you have implemented the subsidiary ledger FI-AA for fixed assets, you can employ this system’s additional asset transaction types. These transaction types have supplementary criteria and are assigned to those mentioned above.

Management of carry-forward balances for balance sheet accounts, for example, takes care of carrying forward the transaction types used in periodic transactions to the initial data set of the following year; these are stored in the consolidation staging ledger.