First of all what is the role of general ledger in SAP system? Basically, it serves as a complete record of all business transactions of a company. It is the centralized, up-to-date reference for the rendition of accounts. All actual individual transactions can be checked at any time in realtime processing through display of the original documents, of the line items, and of the transaction figures at various levels:
a. Account information
b. Journals
c. Totals/transaction figures
d. Balance sheet/profit and loss (Financial statements evaluation)
Then, what is a general ledger master record? General master record contains the data that is always needed by the General Ledger to determine the account’s function. It controls the posting of accounting transactions to G/L accounts and the processing of the posting data. It is a requirement that a G/L master record should be created before posting to the G/L accounts can be made.
A general ledger master data is divided into two areas, namely; chart of accounts area and company code-specific area. The information contain in chart of accounts area are valid to all company codes who are using the referred chart of accounts e.g. G/L account number, description, account group, etc. A change of data in the chart of accounts area will definitely affect all company codes assigned to the referred chart of accounts. Whereas, company code-specific area contains data that may vary from one company code to another (to all company codes assigned to the referred chart of accounts) e.g. field status group, currency in which the account may be posted, the tax category, etc. A change of data in the company code-specific area will not necessarily affect the data of other company code who are using the same chart of accounts.
Chart of accounts area: all data contain in TYPE/DESCRIPTION tab.
Company code-specific area: all information contain in the tabs highlighted.
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