Ledger Approach in New Asset Accounting

You can use parallel ledgers to handle parallel accounting principles. You have to assign a
separate accounting principle to each parallel ledger.

Integration

For the ledger approach, you have to make Customizing settings in the General Ledger
Accounting (New) (FI-GL) and Asset Accounting (New) (FI-AA) SAP components.

Note

The values of the leading ledger are posted to Controlling (CO). In Asset Accounting, these are
the values of the depreciation area to which the leading ledger is assigned.

The values of all other depreciation areas are not posted to CO. However, the system behaves
differently if you are using the business function Parallel Valuation of Cost of Goods
Manufactured (FIN_CO_COGM); in that case, even the values of parallel depreciation areas
flow into CO.

Prerequisites

You have made the following settings in Customizing:

 You have defined your ledgers and ledger groups. A ledger group represents the ledgers
of only one accounting principle.
 You have defined your accounting principles. Just one accounting principle is assigned to
each ledger group.
 For each accounting principle, you have created a real (posting) depreciation area and
assigned the accounting principle to it that represents the given valuation. You need
further depreciation areas for financial reporting (for example, for foreign currencies), for
instance if you manage parallel currencies in the assigned leading or non-leading ledger.
You also have to assign an accounting principle to all further depreciation areas (for
example, investment support).

The assignment of an accounting principle to the ledger group means that each
depreciation area is assigned indirectly to a ledger group.

Features

Each real depreciation area of a valuation (accounting principle) carries all values of its own
financial reporting.
For an additional (parallel) depreciation area, you do not have to create its own account set.
Instead you use the account set of the leading depreciation area. With the ledger approach,
therefore, you do not have to create any new accounts in the chart of accounts or in the company
code. You also do not have to create a new financial statement version.

Posting APC Values for Parallel Valuations

For each depreciation area, you specify in Customizing how changes to asset values and
depreciation are posted to the general ledger (for example, Area Posts in Realtime).

For each type of valuation (that is, for each accounting principle), the system posts separate
documents with the valuation-specific values in real time. This means that subsequent posting of
asset values for parallel valuation is not necessary.

Also reserve for special depreciation that comes from special tax depreciation (so-called reserve
for special depreciation areas) post in realtime (Area Posts APC in Realtime and Depreciation
Periodically).

Investment Support

If you want to handle investment support, you have to create an additional real depreciation area
for each accounting principle. For further parallel currencies that you manage in General Ledger
Accounting and Asset Accounting, you have to create investment support areas in each needed
currency.

For more information, see Example Scenarios for the Ledger Approach in New Asset
Accounting.

Different Fiscal Year Variants

You can enter a separate fiscal year variant for each depreciation area in Asset Accounting. The
start and end dates of this fiscal year variant have to be the same as the start and end dates of the
fiscal year variant of the company code. With the ledger approach, the system also allows a
posting in a ledger that is not the representative ledger of the ledger group (of the assigned
accounting principle) and is assigned to any fiscal year variant. The system then derives the
period from the posting date. The depreciation, however, is determined as before using the fiscal
year variant of the depreciation area of the posting.

Activities

You need to make the following Customizing settings:

 Define depreciation areas (in Customizing for Asset Accounting (New) under
Valuation Depreciation Areas Define Depreciation Areas ).

You specify that a depreciation area is for a certain valuation by assigning an accounting
principle to it.
 Determine a depreciation area, for which you enter the account determination. Then
assign this depreciation area as an alternative depreciation to all other depreciation areas.
 Specify whether changes to asset values or depreciation of the depreciation area are
posted to the general ledger. In each set of depreciation areas, to which the same ledger
group is assigned, there is always just one depreciation area that posts in real time and
manages APC.
 Specify the primary purpose of the depreciation area using the area type (in Customizing
for Asset Accounting (New) under Valuation Depreciation Areas Define
Depreciation Areas Specify Area Type ).
 Specify if the new area is allowed to adopt APC values, and if yes, from which
depreciation area (in Customizing for Asset Accounting (New) under Valuation
Depreciation Areas Specify Transfer of APC Values ). The following also applies: The
depreciation area that posting in real time always has the setting 00 – no value
transfer. The transfer of values is only allowed from a set of depreciation areas, to
which the same accounting principle is assigned.
 Specify if the new area is allowed to adopt depreciation terms, and if yes, from which
depreciation area (in Customizing for Asset Accounting (New) under Valuation
Depreciation Areas Specify Transfer of Depreciation Terms ). The following also
applies: The depreciation area that posting in real time always has the setting 00 – no
transfer of terms. The transfer of parameters is only allowed from a set of
depreciation areas, to which the same accounting principle is assigned.
 Specify the currency in which your new depreciation area is allowed to be managed (in
Customizing for Asset Accounting (New) under Valuation Depreciation Areas
Define Depreciation Areas for Foreign Currencies ). For each parallel currency (or each
currency type) that is assigned to the company code or non-leading ledger in the general
ledger (additional local currency of company code and currency 2 and 3 of the non-
leading ledger), the following applies: You have to create a non-posting area, and the
currency must be assigned to this area.
 Specify the role of the currency and the valuation approach (in Customizing for Asset
Accounting (New) under Valuation Depreciation Areas Specify the Use of Parallel
Currencies ).