An accrual object contains all the data that is required to accrue a business transaction.The data can be used to control the following processes for this business transaction:
Calculating accruals
Posting accruals
Managing accruals
Example
An accrual object could be a leasing contract or a rental agreement, for example.
An accrual object contains all the data for an individual business transaction. The various accruals can be calculated and posted from this data. The data is in the nature of a contract or contract item, and is composed of the following characteristics:
Total amount to be accrued
Total quantity to be accrued (as optional additional information, it is not used to calculate the accrual)
Life over which the amount is to be accrued
An
accrual object category
contains a number of accrual objects that depict business transactions of a similar nature. For example, you can use the accrual object category
RENT
to group together all accrual objects that have been created for the accrual of rental agreements. You define accrual object categories in Customizing for
Manual Accruals
under
.
Note
You cannot use accrual object categories to depict hierarchies of accrual objects.
An accrual object is composed of the basic data listed below; this data is time-dependent. In a history, the data is saved for the following individual categories:
Header data
The life of an accrual object is defined in the header data.
Additional account assignments
For each accrual object, you can define additional account assignments that can be passed on when you post the accruals, for example, cost center, profit center, and so on.
Parameters
You can define your own parameters for an accrual object and use them in the account determination and in your accrual methods.
Item data
In the item data you split an accrual object into individual accrual items. This means that you split the accruals connected to the accrual object according to topics and define, for example, how the cost and revenue sides of the accruals are to be dealt with, and how the accruals are to be defined according to the different accounting principles. You define a separate accrual item for each combination of accrual type and accounting principle.
Each item contains the total amount to be accrued, the quantity to be accrued, and the accrual method to be used.
Caution
In the
Accrual Engine
, you differentiate between an accrual object and an accrual
sub
object. This differentiation is
not
relevant in
Manual Accruals
; here an accrual subobject is the same as an accrual object.
The following posting data is saved for each accrual object:
Line items
Accrual Engine documents are saved as posted line items.
Totals values
The Accrual Engine documents are summarized at fiscal year level as total values.
Header data
In order to be able to execute the postings for an accrual object, the object must have a specific status. This status is stored in the basic data and in the posting data.