Tag Archives: accounts

Concept Of General Ledger Accounts

The SAP general ledger is similar to the general ledger used by accountants to record business transactions using the double entry accounting system. The general ledger accounts are used by the businesses to record all the day to day transactions. These transactions, recorded throughout a certain period are then used later on to create the financial statements like the balance sheet, profit and loss statement and the cash flow statement. This same data can also be used to create reports for internal reporting and auditing purposes. The same data can be provided to modules like business intelligence to carry out advance analysis.

It is necessary to enter information about the general ledger account into ypur SAP system before you can used it to record business transactions. The master record of the general ledger account contains all the information which is needed by other modules to use that account. Some of this information is specific to a company code like the currency in which the account balances are maintained, whereas some of the information about the general ledger account is common across company codes like the description of a tax account.

The general ledger master record has a total of six tabs to store the various blocks of information about the general ledger account. Three of the tabs contain information about the general ledger account which is specific to a company code while the other three tabs contain information about the general ledger account which will remain common across all company codes. On the basis of the information being entered for a general ledger account, it can be created in the following three ways:

•  IN COMPANY CODE:The company code data includes three tabs i.e. control data, bank data and information. These three tabs include information about the G/L account which is specific to the particular company code in which the G/L account is being created like the tolerance group of the account.

• IN CHART OF ACCOUNTS:The chart of accounts data of the G/L account includes three tabs i.e. description, keyword and information as shown in figure 2 below. The Chart of Accounts data about the general ledger is common across company codes like the account number. This data can be entered once at the Chart of Account level and can be used by multiple company codes. This saves the user from entering the same data again and again. It also ensures greater consistency and reduces the possibility of errors due to manual data entry.