Entering content frameObject documentation Account Life in Financial Accounting (FI) Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

You can define the minimum life documents remain in the system by company code, account type, and account number interval. When you archive documents, the system selects only those documents that have exceeded this minimum life.

For documents with cleared items, the system calculates the minimum life starting from the clearing date of the individual line items. For all other documents, calculation starts from the document posting date. The system checks which documents are to be archived on the key date you enter when executing the archiving program.

If the minimum life is the same for several company codes, you can enter an asterisk (*) in the company code column. If this is not the case, enter the appropriate company code. The system always uses the more detailed entry.

To determine the account type life, the system always uses the most detailed entry for account type. Entries using "*" are of course less specific than those where a particular account type or company code are specified.

Note, however, that if you specify a company code but make a generic entry (*) for document type, or you specify a document type but make a generic entry for company code, both entries are equally unspecific. In this situation (shown in the example below) the system uses the entry with the maximum number of days.

Caution

If a minimum life has not been specified for an account type or for specific accounts, the system uses a default of 9999 days. This applies to customer, vendor, and G/L accounts as well as assets and materials accounts.

The system requires you to enter G/L account numbers. This means that if you enter a number range for D or K account types (customer or vendor), you will need to use the numbers of the corresponding reconciliation accounts.

You define the minimum life of documents per account type or per account if every account of a certain account type or certain accounts in general are of interest to you.

Example

You define a minimum life of 90 days for customer and vendor accounts in all company codes. You define a minimum life of 60 days for G/L accounts. The auditor always checks the accounts kept for free advertising gifts. You specify a longer life for these accounts (360 days) so that the documents relating to these accounts are still available online at the end of the year. You have customer account documents in company code 0001 and you need these documents to remain in the system longer than other accounts. You therefore specify a life of 180 days for the reconciliation account (140100) for these documents.

You can also define secondary index and archive index lives for accounts. For more information, see Index Life in Financial Accounting (FI).

You define account lives, secondary index and archive index lives in Customizing under Financial Accounting Global Settings ® Document ® Accounting Document Archiving ® Archiving, Account Type Life.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

In the fiscal year of the local currency changeover you may not reduce the secondary indexes of documents that were reconciled in the current fiscal year. To guarantee this, the account type life must have been set up in Customizing accordingly. See also local currency changeover note under Index Life in Financial Accounting (FI).

Leaving content frame