Questionnaire with Answers for SAP FI

What is the difference between company and company code?
A company is the organizational unit used in the legal consolidation module to roll up financial statements of several company codes.
The Company Code is the smallest organizational ! unit for which a complete self-contained set of accounts can be drawn up for purposes of external reporting.

How many chart of accounts can be attached to a company code?
One or more Operative Chart of Accounts can be assigned to a company code.

A COA must be aasigned to a company code. This COA is the operative COA and is used in both FI and CO. One Chart of Account can be assigned to many Company codes i.e., Multiple company codes can either share the same or have separate COA. But a company code (Country specific Company code or International Company code) can have a country specific COA also along with Operative COA. The link between the regular COA and the country COA appears in the alternate number field of the G/L master record.

Eg: If a company's subdidiaries are located in both US & Mexico. We need to configure 2 Company codes - one for US and another for Mexico,for eg U100 and M100. The same way we create 2 COA's one for US & one for Mexico, USCA and MXCA. Mexico has different govt reporting requirements than the US so we will need to define a company code specific to Country Mexico and also create a country specific COA to be used, in addition to normal COA. In tcode OBY6(Comp Code Global Parameters) of CC M100 we define normal COA i.e.,USCA in Chart of Accounts field and MXCA in Country Chart/Accts field.

What are substitutions and validations? What is the precedent?
Validations are used to check settings and return a message if the prerequisite check condition is met.
Substitutions are similar to validations; they actually replace and fill in field values behind the scenes without the user’s knowledge unlike validations that create on-screen msgs to the user.

What is a controlling area?
The Controlling Area is the central organizational unit within CO module. It is representative of a contained Cost Accounting envt where costs and revenues can be managed.

Define relationship between controlling area and company code?
A controlling area may include one or more company codes which must use the same operative chart of accounts as the controlling area. A Controlling Area can contain multiple company code assignments but a single company code can be assigned to only one controlling area.

What is a fiscal year variant?
Fiscal Year is a period of 12 months and SAP provides 4 special periods to posting adjustment Entries. Fiscal year determines posting periods. Posting periods are used to assign business transactions. Fiscal year may be year dependent or year independent.

What are special periods used for?
The Special periods in a fiscal year variant can be used for things like posting audit or tax adjustments to a closed fiscal year.

What do you mean by year dependent in fiscal year variants?
Year Dependent: the financial year is same as calendar year. Starting from 1st Jan to 31st Dec (where posting periods and the calendar months are equal)
Year Independent: the financial year is different from calendar year Starting from 1st April to 31st March (where the posting period months are not equal to calendar year months)

What are shortened fiscal year? When are they used?
Shortened Fiscal Year: a financial year, which has less than 12 periods.

What are posting periods?
The Posting period variant controls which posting periods, both normal and special, are open for each company code. It is possible to have a different posting period variant for each company code in the organization. The posting period is independent of the fiscal year variant.

What are document types and what are they used for?
Document type is the identifier of differentt account transactions like SA for G/L,AA for Asset Accounting etc.The doc. Types controls things like type of the account that can be posted to, the number range assigned to it, and required doc header fields.

How are tolerance group for employees used?
Tolerance group stores Posting amount defaults. Tolerance groups are assigned to User ID’s that ensures only authorized persons can make postings.

What are posting keys? State the purpose of defining posting keys?
Posting keys determine whether a line item entry is a debit or a credit as well as the possible field status for the transaction. Posting keys are SAP delivered. If u want changes like making additional fields optional on payment type posting keys then the best possible action is to copy the posting key that needs to be modified and then modify it.

What are field status groups?
Field status groups control the additional account assignments and other fields that can be posted at the line item level for a G/L account.