When you display or change line items, they are displayed in a standard sort sequence. The standard sort sequence is determined internally by the system. The system uses selected fields within the document to do this.
You can change the sort sequence in the line item display. In addition, you can choose the fields you want to sort by. If you require any additional fields, you can specify them in the system.
Standard Sort Sequence
The system uses certain selected document fields for the standard sort sequence. These include:
Clearing date
Clearing document number
Assignment
Fiscal year
Document number
Cleared line items are always sorted according to clearing date, clearing document number, and the remaining fields. Clearing transactions can therefore be considered in context. Open items are always sorted according to the assignment field and the remaining fields, since the clearing date and clearing document number fields are not filled for open items.
Grouping Line Items
You can group line items from accounts that you want to process together. To do this, you make the same entry in the field
Assignment
for each line item in the group.
The contents of the
Assignment
field are used in particular
To sort line items during display, clearing, and changing
As a selection term
When clearing payments with the
Posting with clearing
and
Incoming or outgoing payment
functions
For account maintenance when clearing an account
For the functions for displaying and changing line items
For the subdivision of one-time accounts and head-office accounts
Filling the Assignment Field
You are free to determine the content of this field. You have two options:
You can have the system make an entry in the field automatically. To do this, you must enter a key in the master record of the account. This key represents the required layout rules for the
Assignment
field. This allows you to determine account-specific sort sequences for line item display.
You can make an entry in the field manually when you enter the document if you do not want a line item to be filled according to the layout rule in the master record.
The layout rule in the master record specifies which entry from the document header or line item is entered in the field
Assignment
at the time of posting. You define the possible keys and the corresponding layout rules in the
Financial Accounting Implementation Guide
. Layout rules have already been defined in the standard system. SAP recommends that you use these layout rules.
Example
In the master record of the special G/L account
Down payments received
, you have specified that the customer account number is entered in the field
Assignment
when you post a document. All documents posted to this account are sorted according to customer account number and displayed in ascending order in the line item display.
You can change the key for the layout rule in the master record at any time. The new layout rule takes effect from the time of the change: All line items posted after the change are displayed according to the new layout rule in the line item display. The assignment remains unchanged, however, for the documents that have already been posted.
Layout Rules for the Assignment Field
If you want to define your own rules for the
Assignment
field, for each rule you must enter a key and up to four fields, whose contents are then placed in the
Assignment
field. The field contents are transferred in the sequence in which you name them. For the layout rules, you can use all the fields in the document header and all the fields contained in the relevant line items.
If you wish, you can transfer only part of the contents of a particular field to the field
Assignment
. To do this, specify the position from which the field contents are displayed and the number of characters to be transferred.
Example
The length of the cost center is 10 characters in the standard system. If you use only six character numbers in your company, you can omit the first four characters for the display. Therefore, you specify for the field
Cost center
that six characters are displayed from the fifth character.
The layout rules for the field
Assignment
are valid for all clients.