LEARN ABOUT SAP SPECIAL GENERAL LEDGER TRANSACTIONS Page 1 of 8

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LEARN ABOUT SAP SPECIAL GENERAL

LEDGER TRANSACTIONS

November 15, 2012, by Pete, Comments are off

Introduction To Sap Special

General Ledger Transactions
All the transactions carried out by a business must be reflected in
the general ledger accounts in order for them to be available and
displayed in the financial statements like the balance sheet or the
profit and loss statement. The vendor and customer accounts are
created as sub ledger accounts. These are linked to the general
ledger by means of the vendor and customer reconciliation
accounts respectively.

Therefore, if any entry is passed to any of the vendor or the

customer account, then a duplicate entry is passed to the
corresponding reconciliation account in the general ledger.

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It is necessary at times to post some special transactions related

to vendors and customers to general ledger accounts, other than
the vendor and customer reconciliation accounts. This allows the
special transactions to be displayed separately in the general
ledger as well as the sub ledger. Such a requirement may arise
because of statutory reporting requirements or for some other
internal reasons.

For example, in normal general ledger transactions, the accounts

payable is netted against the accounts receivable for a partner
who acts both as a vendor as well as a customer while executing
the automatic payment program. But in case of certain special
transactions like down payments, the down payment amount
must not be netted with the receivables or payables. Therefore, a
transaction like down payment must be considered as a special
general ledger transaction.

In order to record the special general ledger transactions

separately from the normal general ledger transactions,
alternative reconciliation accounts are defined. The special
general ledger transactions are then posted to these alternative
reconciliation accounts in the general ledger. This allows the
balance of these transactions to be displayed separately on the
balance sheet.

The following major special general ledger transactions are

available in the standard SAP system. The special general ledger
indicators used to identify the special general ledger transactions
are mentioned in the brackets:

• Down payments (A)

• Down payment requests (F)
• Bills of exchange receivable (B)
• Letter of Credit (L)
• Payment requests (P)
• Guarantees (G)
• Reserves for bad debt (E)
• Security deposits (H)

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Different Types Of Special

General Ledger Transactions
The special general ledger transactions are categorized into
different types on the basis of business as well as technical factors.
This results in two different classifications of special general
ledger transactions.

The business related factors represent the main purposes of the

special general ledger transactions are used. On the basis of the
business related factors the special general ledger transactions
can be categorized into the following three types:

• RELATED TO DOWN PAYMENTS: The down payment

requests and down payments are the special general ledger
transactions provided by SAP to deal with business scenarios
where an advance payment is made by a customer or is made
to a vendor, for future delivery or receipt of products and
services respectively.
• RELATED TO BILLS OF EXCHANGE: Bills of exchange
are used by businesses when transporting goods across
countries. These special ledger transactions are provided by
SAP to deal with business scenarios where businesses are
involved in exchange of goods across countries via the
banking channel using bills of exchange.
• OTHER SPECIAL GENERAL LEDGER
TRANSACTIONS: SAP allows other special general ledger
transactions such as Security deposits, etc. to be configured
as per the requirements of the business. These configurations
can be done by defining the special G/L indicator, posting
keys and the alternative reconciliation accounts.

On the basis of technical factors the special general ledger

transactions can be classified into the following three categories:

• REAL POSTINGS: These are special general ledger

transactions which have freely definable offsetting entry
account. They usually form an item on the balance sheet. E.g.
down payments. These postings are reflected in the line-item

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display of the sub ledger accounts and affect the overall

balance of the sub ledger accounts.
• STATISTICAL POSTINGS: These are special general
ledger transactions where the offsetting account always
remains the same. The offsetting account can be defined
while configuration of a statistical special general ledger
posting. The system then posts the offsetting entry
automatically to the offsetting account defined during the
configuration.
• NOTED ITEMS: These items serve as a reminder about the
payments which are to be made or payments which are to be
received. They are not displayed in the accounts but can be
processed using a Dunning or payment program. These
special general ledgers postings do not update the account
balances and merely appear in the account line-item reports
as an open item. These open items act as a reminder about
the pending payments.

Configuring Special General

Ledger Transactions
STEP 1: The special general ledger transactions are identified by
means of special G/L indicators. Execute the transaction code
FBKP to display the screen as shown below.

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FIGURE 1 (EXECUTE THE TRANSACTION CODE FBKP)

STEP 2: Click on the special G/L link to display all the special
general ledger transactions as shown in the screenshot below.

FIGURE 2 (LIST OF SPECIAL G/L INDICATORS)

STEP 3: Click on the create button to define a new special

general ledger transaction. Enter the details in the pop-up
window as shown in the screenshot below.

FIGURE 3 (DEFINE THE NEW SPECIAL G/L INDICATOR)

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STEP 4: Click on the continue button and enter the details as

shown in the screenshot below. The selections shown below
indicate that the new G/L indicator is of the type down payment
and is treated as a noted item. The posting key 09 will be used for
making a debit entry and the posting key 19 will be used to make a
credit entry when using this transaction. The posting key also
defines the account type (customer or vendor) to which the
posting is made.

FIGURE 4 (ENTER THE DETAILS FOR THE NEW SPECIAL G/L

INDICATOR)

STEP 5: Click on the accounts button to define the alternate

reconciliation accounts. The alternative reconciliation accounts
are mapped to the vendor or customer reconciliation accounts as
shown in the screenshot below.

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FIGURE 5 (DEFINE THE ALTERNATIVE GENERAL LEDGER

ACCOUNT)

STEP 6: Click on the save button to save the new configuration.

A success message indicating the changes have been saved is
displayed. Whenever a posting is now made with the newly
defined special G/L indicator, the accounting entries are posted to
the alternate general ledger account.

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About the Author: Pete

Pete has been working with SAP
technologies for over 10 years. He started
out as an ABAP consultant and then
moved on to BW where he has worked
many different clients covering a wide
variety of industries. "I love introducing
SAP technology (especially BI) to new
clients and showing them how they can
go from zero to hero within their business
in super fast time". Contact me on twitter
@PeterMoxon

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