Many organizations now make business plans and forecasts by organizational units, such as profit centers. To align with this, SAP integrated Profit Center Accounting (PCA) into the new General Ledger (new G/L) for releases SAP ERP 5.0 and higher. The new G/L allows for planning on a profit center, segment, or functional area, and for transferring planned data from other areas, such as Cost Center Accounting (CCA) and Profitability Analysis (CO-PA). Planning integration functionality allows businesses to plan in specific areas (e.g., CCA) and subsequently transfer the plan data to PCA, maintaining data integrity and consistency.

I will focus on the planning functionality for profit centers in the new G/L and the integration with CCA and CO-PA planning, as well as how to set up this functionality. I have learned this through my own implementation experience and it is not documented elsewhere.

Planning on Summary Table FAGLFLEXT

A major difference between new G/L planning and traditional PCA or CCA planning is that you have to specify a summary table in which you can use plan tasks. Table FAGLFLEXT is the summary table used for new G/L planning. According to SAP Note 882541, you must install the summary table before using the planning functionality by entering the table name FAGLFLEXT in the screen shown in Figure 1. To install the summary table, you can either execute transaction GLPLINST or follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Technical Help > Install Summary Table. You need to run this transaction before configuring planning profiles in the new G/L.

Figure 1

Install summary table for new G/L planning

Planning Profiles

The planning profile controls the planning process. In a planning profile, you define for each table the plan tasks (e.g., profit center and segment) that you can use. You can set up as many plan tasks as you need for each table. Planning profiles in the new G/L connect a planning layout to a plan task. Planning layouts represent options that appear on screen for users when they’re entering data. Choices might include whether they can enter information on the account, profit center, segment, functional area, or some combination of all four. Additionally, layouts might limit the version or period that a user can plan. Layouts provide you with a tool for tailoring the planning environment to meet your precise business requirements.

You can cover the majority of new G/L planning requirements with the SAP-delivered planning profile SAPFAGL (Figure 2). The summary table defined for planning profile SAPFAGL is FAGLFLEXT. To find the settings in the SAP-delivered planning profile, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Define Planner Profile. By navigating through the dialog structure on the left of the screen shown in Figure 2, you can find the summary table and the plan layout and task available.

Figure 2

Planning profile SAPFAGL for planning in the new G/L

The standard profile has seven planning layout/plan task combinations:

• 0FAGL-01 Profit center, Account
• 0FAGL-02 Profit center group, Account
• 0FAGL-03 Segment, Account
• 0FAGL-04 Profit center, Functional area, Account
• 0FAGL-05 Partner profit center, Profit center, Account
• 0FAGL-06 Cost center, Account
• 0FAGL-07 Account

If your solution requires a unique new layout, SAP provides tools to build planning layouts. The development step on how to create a planning layout is outside the scope of this article.

Plan Periods/Version Control

You have to specify the posting periods allowed for entering planning data. To create the posting period variant, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New)  > Planning > Define Plan Periods (Figure 3). Create permitted posting periods in the form of variants by entering the first and last valid periods and the first and last valid years.

Figure 3

Plan period variants

You must assign the posting variants to company codes. Each company code can either share posting periods with other company codes or have its own posting period based on business requirements. To assign the variants to company codes, follow menu path Financial Accounting (New) > Financial Accounting Basic Settings (New) > Global Parameters for Company Code > Enter Global Parameters (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Assign the plan posting period variant to the company code

I recommend maintaining plan versions for each ledger. Use of version control can enhance a company’s ability to build complex planning scenarios and you should have more than one plan version. Plan versions also determine what level of planning integration occurs within the new G/L. If you have switched the Integ.plan indicator on and properly set up integrated planning in CCA and CO-PA, the system copies planning data from CCA and CO-PA to the new G/L automatically (Figure 5). If you have not activated integration planning, you can manually transfer planning data to the new G/L at a later date. For the SAP-delivered version 0, the default is set to off. In my example, however, I’m using 13 versions of planning and forecasting. The integration planning is set to on for all versions as shown in Figure 5. To define a plan version, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Plan Versions > Define Plan Versions.

Figure 5

The system copies planning data to the new G/L

If the fiscal year variant is year dependent, you need to assign each combination of the desired fiscal year and company code to the plan version of your ledger and activate it (Figure 6). To activate the year- dependent plan versions, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Plan Versions > Fiscal-Year Dependent Version Parameters > Activate Line Items for Planning. To view what plan versions are activated in your system, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Plan Versions > Fiscal-Year Dependent Version Parameters > Assign Plan Version to Fiscal Year and Activate.

Figure 6

Assign the fiscal year and company code to the plan version of the ledger

Planning Document Type and Number Range

Before you can post planning entries in the system, you need to perform a final step: Set up the document type and assign it to a number range (Figure 7). The number range is what determines the planning document number; I recommend that you use a unique number range from the actual data.

Figure 7

Assign the planning document type to a number range

To define a number range for plan documents, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Define Number Range for Plan Documents. To assign a document type to planning, follow menu path IMG > Financial Accounting (New) > General Ledger Accounting (New) > Planning > Define Document Types for Planning.

You have now completed all the configuration steps needed for profit center planning in the new G/L. Now I’ll discuss how to transfer plan data from CCA and CO-PA to the new G/L.

Integrated Planning

You need to activate integrated planning in CCA to enable copying of CCA planning data to the new G/L. Figure 8 shows that a user has activated integrated planning for CCA in the Controlling Area Settings because the Integrated Planning check box is checked. The user must maintain the settings for each fiscal year and version. To activate integrated planning in CCA, follow menu path IMG > Controlling > Cost Center Accounting > Planning > Basic Settings for Planning > Define Versions > Maintain Settings of Versions in Controlling Area.

Figure 8

Activate CCA integrated planning in the Controlling Area settings

To transfer planning data from CO-PA to the new G/L, you need to set up account determination where you assign CO-PA value and quantity fields to the accounts in the new G/L (Figure 9). The controlling area, value, and new G/L account number are required fields. Profit center is a characteristic in CO-PA and no mapping is needed for profit center.

Therefore, when you plan on profitability segments (which includes profit center) and value fields, the system maps the plan data to the accounts and profit centers in the new G/L based on the account determination. To maintain account determination in CO-PA, follow menu path IMG > Controlling > Profitability Analysis > Planning > Integrated Planning > Set Up Transfer of Planning Data to EC-PCA/FI-GL/FI-SL.

The system then assigns a unique business transaction to plan postings from various sources. For example, the business transaction for a CCA planning data transfer is RKP1. To get the complete list of business transactions in FI, refer to the ACTIV field in table FAGLFLEXP.

Now that you’ve activated integrated planning, you’ve completed configuration for new G/L planning. Figure 10 shows a sample plan posting.

Figure 10

A sample plan posting