Details about New GL features and usage in SAP

1. General Ledger Accounting (FI-GL) (New)
The central task of G/L accounting is to provide a comprehensive picture of external accounting
and accounts. Recording all business transactions (primary postings as well as settlements from
internal accounting) in a software system that is fully integrated with all the other operational
areas of a company ensures that the accounting data is always complete and accurate.
Beyond fulfilling the legal requirements, General Ledger Accounting also fulfills other
requirements for modern accounting:
- Parallel Accounting
General Ledger Accounting allows you to perform parallel accounting by managing several
parallel ledgers for different accounting principles.
- Integration of Legal and Management Reporting
In General Ledger Accounting, you can perform internal management reporting in parallel with
legal reporting. For this purpose, the Profit Center Accounting functions are integrated with
General Ledger Accounting. Furthermore, you can generate financial statements for any
dimension (such as profit center).
- Segment Reporting
General Ledger Accounting supports the segment reports required by the accounting principles
IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and US GAAP (Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles). For this purpose, General Ledger Accounting contains the Segment
dimension.
- Cost of Sales Accounting
You can perform cost of sales accounting in General Ledger Accounting. For this purpose,
General Ledger Accounting contains the Functional Area dimension.
Features
General Ledger Accounting comprises the following functions for entering and evaluating
posting data:
- Choice between group level and company level
- Automatic and simultaneous posting of all sub ledger items in the appropriate general ledger
accounts (reconciliation accounts)
- Simultaneous updating of the parallel general ledgers and of the cost accounting areas
- Real-time evaluation of and reporting on current posting data, in the form of account displays,
financial statements with different balance sheet versions, and additional analyses.
In this way, General Ledger Accounting automatically serves as a complete record of all
business transactions. It is the central and up-to-date component for reporting. Individual

2. transactions can be checked at any time in real time by displaying the original documents, line
items, and monthly debits and credits at various levels such as:
- Account information
- Journals
- Totals/transaction figures
- Balance sheet/profit and loss evaluations
However, SAP still offers to choose between the New GL and the old Classic GL way of
accounting.
Objective of New GL Accounting
SAP has the following objectives behind the introduction of the New General Ledger:
Efficiently handle Financial Reporting, according to both local and international accounting
principles
Facilitate increased convergence between financial and management accounting
Considerably accelerate your period-end closings
Flexibly perform reporting tasks based on data reconciled in real time
An unified accounting structure that combines individual ledgers, cost-of-sales, profit-center-
accounting & Consolidation-staging ledgers.
Advantages of New GL
Introduction and portrayal of new business models within a single solution, thus avoiding
separate ledgers like Cost of Sales Ledger, Profit Center Ledger, special purpose ledger etc.
Data is stored in a single totals table eliminating data redundancy.
No need for additional reconciliation activities during closing
Easy to make adjustments to business specific requirements, such as the introduction of customer
fields as part of flexible reporting.
Why use the NEW GL?
The following table gives the business requirements at the backend which prompts the finance
department of the company to go for NEW GL implementation.
S.N Business Requirements New GL Functionality
Concept of multiple ledgers- leading and non
1 Reporting as per different GAAP
leading ledgers

3. 2 Unified Management & legal reporting Profit Centre integrated with the New ledger
Requirement of segmental reporting(in line Segment can be defined as an enterprise
3
with US GAAP) element
Financial statement below company code
4 Document spilt functionality
level
5 Reporting as per cost of sales accounting Functional area included
Each one of these functionality is unique and elaborate and has the features ingrained to meet the
different requirements emerging for the external reporting purpose.
Concept of Ledger
A leading ledger is defined and additional ledgers are defined for parallel accounting or
management reporting by assigning different characteristic values and fiscal-year definitions
Additional ledgers can be defined - Leading Ledger & Non-leading ledgers are created and
maintained, with only one accounting entry.
The new general ledger uses the special-purpose ledger techniques to save total values.
All Company Codes are assigned to a Leading ledger for each client, which contains the group-
valuation view. Additional ledgers can be defined for each company code.
Additional ledgers can be used for parallel accounting or management reporting by assigning
different characteristic values and fiscal-year definitions.
For general-ledger account postings that have a specified cost center, the system always
reconciles the profit center and general-ledger account simultaneously, since the data is stored in
the same table.
Two views of the new General Ledger:
Ø Regular entry view &
Ø General-Ledger view
Real time integration
Integration with Controlling
Transfer of cross-entity controlling postings to the new GL in real time.
Integration with Asset Accounting
Depreciation postings are done to all the ledgers, with the concept of delta depreciation.
Integration with Consolidation

4. Transfer of financial data to EC-CS, real time, as Business partners, Transaction types are
defined at the time of GL Posting itself.
Extract / Transfer of data from GL to BI / CS.
Fast period end closing
Elimination of following activities:
Maintenance & use of Reconciliation Ledger
Balance Sheet adjustment / P & L Adjustment
Maintenance & use of Special Purpose ledger
Segmental reporting is also available.
Different ledgers are available to freely define management reporting too
Segment Reporting
IAS/IFRS/US GAAP requires Segmental reporting.
Segment is provided in addition to Business area / Profit center.
It is one of the standard account assignment object available for running analyses of objects
below the company code level.
The objective is to give a detailed look at the various business activities (markets / products) at a
broad based enterprise.
Parallel Accounting
Parallel accounting can be done using the ledger approach instead as an alternative to the account
approach.
No additional account assignments are required as all account assignment components are
defined as Scenarios for each ledger.
Document Splitting
Document splitting means the document is split according to the proportions of the account
assignments in the expense or revenue lines of the original document. Examples: Cash discounts
and realized exchange rate differences are split according to the source document.
Document-splitting is built at 2 technical points:
Document creation - The controlling functions in the SAP are updated accordingly and
reconciled with the general-ledger accounting information
Accounting interface -
Account assignment projection - Account assignment are copied from base rows to target rows.

5. Inheritance - Subsequent process of business transaction such as clearing.
It is a tool for determining missing account assignments according to cause in common
accounting processes in SAP software (invoices, payments or clearing)
It applies account-assignment information to non-assigned accounts according to assignment
rules set in the customizing area. The functionality can help one to create balance sheets for
entities that exist beyond the scope of the company code.
Example: Creation of balance sheets at the segment or profit-center level or balance sheets based
on company-specific or industry-specific entities
New Tables
Three new tables in the new general ledger handle totals, store general-ledger and specific line
items, and calculate valuations for year-end closings in parallel ledgers
Two new tables (FAGLFLEXA & FAGLFLEXP) store the ledger-specific line items (Actual &
Planned) & contain additional information for use in the entry view. The tables help in updating
different characteristics and document splitting information, different period shifts, and different
currencies in specific ledgers for individual documents. Helps in preparing reports for specific
dimensions at item level.
The third table (BSEG_ADD) contains documents that are posted in connection with valuations
for year-end closing in selected parallel ledgers. However, these documents are inapplicable if
one do not use parallel accounting or use the accounting approach to portray parallel accounting.
In addition to the three tables, own table can be defined using FAGLFLEXT as template
The new totals table contains additional standard fields for storing totals. This standard table can
activate support for many scenarios by customizing the software. It supports Segment Reporting,
Profit-Center updating, Cost-of-Sales accounting, Cost-center updating, Preparation for
consolidation and Business-area updating