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SAP General Ledger: An Overview and Key Considerations
What Is SAP General Ledger?
SAP General Ledger (G/L) accounts support the recording of all business transactions, updating balances in real time to provide an extensive view of an organization’s business activities. The former version of SAP General Ledger is referred to as Classic General Ledger (Classic G/L). New G/L leverages an extended data structure that helps finance managers reduce the need for periodic closing activities to synchronize Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO) modules. This ensures accurate accounting for financial statements.
New SAP General Ledgers support “parallel accounting” functionality, allowing organizations to maintain multiple ledgers for various statutory accounting standards or introduce a special purpose ledger. SAP customers can integrate SAP General Ledger with all operational areas of the company via SAP ERP components to track external and internal transaction postings and settlements. The transactions include business activities originating from profit centers and subsidiary companies, ensuring complete accounting information for generating accurate internal and external financial reporting across the organization.
Key SAP General Ledger functions for entering and evaluating posting data:
- Group-level or company-level accounting capacity
- Subledger items automatically posted to the appropriate general ledger accounts (reconciliation)
- Tight integration of parallel general ledgers and cost accounting areas, allowing for real-time synchronization
- Multiple balance sheet views and account displays of financial information to provide real-time evaluation of and reporting on current posting data.
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders
SAP General Ledger: An Overview and Key Considerations
What Is SAP General Ledger?
SAP General Ledger (G/L) accounts support the recording of all business transactions, updating balances in real time to provide an extensive view of an organization’s business activities. The former version of SAP General Ledger is referred to as Classic General Ledger (Classic G/L). New G/L leverages an extended data structure that helps finance managers reduce the need for periodic closing activities to synchronize Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO) modules. This ensures accurate accounting for financial statements.
New SAP General Ledgers support “parallel accounting” functionality, allowing organizations to maintain multiple ledgers for various statutory accounting standards or introduce a special purpose ledger. SAP customers can integrate SAP General Ledger with all operational areas of the company via SAP ERP components to track external and internal transaction postings and settlements. The transactions include business activities originating from profit centers and subsidiary companies, ensuring complete accounting information for generating accurate internal and external financial reporting across the organization.
Key SAP General Ledger functions for entering and evaluating posting data:
- Group-level or company-level accounting capacity
- Subledger items automatically posted to the appropriate general ledger accounts (reconciliation)
- Tight integration of parallel general ledgers and cost accounting areas, allowing for real-time synchronization
- Multiple balance sheet views and account displays of financial information to provide real-time evaluation of and reporting on current posting data.
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders
Leverage New G/L functionality for enhanced transaction drilldown capability and auditability. Online document splitting is standard functionality in New G/L, allowing finance managers to review all business transactions across various levels. Those levels include account information, journals, transactions figures and totals, and balance sheet profit/loss evaluations, to audit individual transactions in real time, supported by streamlined access to original documents, line items, and monthly debits/credits.
Evaluate core reporting requirements before establishing new G/L accounts. Information provided for statutory and management accounting tasks is ultimately governed by G/L master data. Business stakeholders or subject matter experts should confirm business processes and master data dependencies properly align with how GL accounts and sub-accounts are defined, to support automation opportunities and integration initiatives.
Consider migration to SAP S/4HANA as an opportunity to optimize G/L accounts. SAP provides pre-built functionality for standard chart of accounts (YCOA) as best practices for organizations, using existing chart of accounts. Organizations can leverage additional granularity from 350+ fields and dimensions, to achieve business process efficiencies in the areas of account maintenance and financial closing activities. Furthermore, finance managers can benefit from new G/L and Universal Journal functionality to update existing chart of accounts to better align with legal entities and business process needs across industry, operating regions, company size, corporate structure, etc.
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Zuora Becomes Build Partner in SAP’s PartnerEdge ProgramMay 1, 2025 — Zuora has joined the SAP PartnerEdge program as a Build Partner, offering a certified Zuora Connector for SAP solutions that streamlines financial accounting integration with SAP systems, enhancing operational efficiency and supporting companies in their cloud adoption and order-to-cash processes.
3 minute read
SAP ECC Classic GL to SAP S/4HANA – Direct Conversion Without Requiring a New GL Migration FirstFeb 19, 2025 — The new General Ledger on SAP S/4HANA or SAP ECC has certain advantages over Class GL. Examples: usage of parallel ledgers, Document splitting, Profit Center Financial statements, Segment’ reporting that is required for segment reporting according to IAS and U.S. GAAP, etc. In addition, customers can enhance the new General Ledger flexibly, that is, they can enter user-defined fields and update the relevant totals.
7 minute read
How SAP New GL Streamlines Financial Processes and ReportingJun 19, 2024 — eCommerce has been evolving quite rapidly since COVID-19 happened. Since then the customer viewpoint has shifted massively and it’s become a lot more important for businesses to be able to optimize their reporting processes.
8 minute read
Key Considerations for Moving General Ledger to SAP S/4HANA with ERPfixersNov 1, 2023 — General Ledger is one of the most significant aspects of finance in SAP S/4HANA. Throughout the process of moving classic GL to SAP S/4HANA, companies should remember that this is more than a technical migration – it is a system conversion.
It is important to note that no conversion to SAP S/4HANA is a one-size-fits-all proposition. Each business will have its own unique challenges and requirements that must be addressed throughout the conversion process.
In this article, we will examine a blog post from Dr. Ravi Surya at ERPfixers on how ECC customers can move the classic version of General Ledger, what considerations they must make, and how vital it is to have a partner in this process.
2 minute read
Working With SAP Material Ledger and SAP Group Reporting in HANA 2022Sep 8, 2023 — Intercompany transactions require significant attention and have always been a critical part of the financial analysis world in SAP. Certainly, this process is very complex, and it will require significant resources with different levels of expertise as operational reporting and business requirements become more detailed.
In this article, SAPinsider expert Dr. March Sisfontes-Monge will highlight some of the key updates to SAP Material Ledger and SAP group reporting. You will gain key insights as to how these updates affect crucial considerations, such as Profit in Inventory (PII), Intercompany Profit Elimination (IPE), Transfer Pricing and many more. It will also walk through helpful examples to demonstrate the capacity of SAP to help business leaders handle difficult supply chain situations.
15 minute read
Core Accounting is a Growing Priority for SAPinsidersMay 2, 2022 — In our SAP S/4HANA Finance and Central Finance: State of the Market 2022 benchmark report, we saw the share of SAPinsider organizations planning to invest resources into core accounting processes increase to 28% (from 18% in 2021). These organizations view this finance and accounting strategy as an opportunity to address growing organizational complexity, the top […]
3 minute read
Building Consistent Global GL ProcessesJul 30, 2021 — When SAP first launched SAP S/4HANA, the latest iteration of its core ERP, the mantra was “Run Simple.” That marketing jargon was born out of a motivating factor for many finance professionals — to create a simplified general ledger (GL) concept, moving from many ledgers down to one for the entire business.
Regardless of whether an organization chooses to implement SAP S/4HANA via a greenfield or brownfield strategy, there are baseline preparation steps that need to be completed. Specifically, we recommend a strong focus on process consistency and data cleanup for all finance departments moving to SAP S/4HANA.
As you establish consistent GL processes, focus on infrastructure by building the foundation of your SAP S/4HANA implementation first. This will create a more structured world on the other side of the project when the system is live.
It’s normal for companies to worry about how long an implementation of SAP S/4HANA will take — stakeholders will be eager to see a return on investment. It often “takes longer than you think,” but the reality of the timeline is usually predicated on the amount of data cleanup that is required before the implementation.
Read this article and learn the baseline preparation steps for building global GL processes that bring the most value in the world of SAP S/4HANA.
3 minute read
Best practices for managing the standardization of chart of accounts in a live SAP systemMay 12, 2021 — Learn about your options to tame a chart of accounts that has grown to be unmanageable and unwieldy, and dive into key considerations for a successful and seamless chart of accounts standardization initiative using SLO-type conversion methodology. By attending, you learn:
- Learn about the structural transformations you should do in your system, prior to SAP S/4HANA conversion
- How to prepare for a chart of accounts standardization process by defining the scope, cleaning up data ahead of the process changes, and anticipating the impact on business processes
- Technical aspects of a chart of accounts conversion, and information about the G/L account conversion with different scenarios for source and target accounts
- Step-by-step instructions to manage the conversion to ensure consistency before and after the process
1 minute read
How SAP S/4HANA Drives General Ledger Account OptimizationMar 30, 2021 — The universal journal is a single table incorporating all financial information and select logistics and operational information. While many finance controllers, system implementors, and accountants acknowledge the reporting benefits of having information stored in a single table, the recent combination of the Finance and Controlling tables into the universal journal in the latest version of SAP S/4HANA significantly impacts the chart of accounts. This article explains how finance professionals can navigate this impact and utilize SAP S/4HANA functionality to reduce the number of general ledger (G/L) accounts in their existing chart of accounts.
Read this article and learn:
• How to achieve G/L account optimization using SAP S/4HANA functionality;
• An overview of the universal journal and its impact on the G/L; and
• Usage of dimensions in the universal journal and reporting capabilities.
2 minute read
Technical Guide: Migrating SAP General Ledger Data for SAP S/4HANAJul 31, 2020 — SAP has simplified its accounting design by introducing the Universal Journal, resulting in significant change to the pillar of GL accounting—GL account master data. Whether a customer is pursuing a greenfield implementation or a technical migration to SAP S/4HANA, maintenance or migration to GL accounts using the new technical framework is a basic yet important step. GL account master data is managed using many fields across its Fiori views. These fields hold key information that drives postings in the new universal journal accounting entries. This article will explain how to adopt, maintain, or migrate to these fields in a meaningful way when undergoing a new SAP S/4HANA project, or performing a technical upgrade to SAP S/4HANA.
After reading this article you will be able to:
- Explain what GL master data is and why it should matter to SAP customers
- Understand key fields within the Fiori Apps for GL configuration and maintenance
-Learn how Universal Journal line items post into table ACDOCA and how this has changed from SAP’s historical approach for finance and controlling postings
11 minute read