General Ledger Accounting is essentially functions as a complete record for all financial business transactions. All business transactions that have financial impact are posted to the appropriate general ledger account. On my opinion, SAP is the best ERP business software in the world. All components are fully integrated. The general ledger accounting of the system receives automatically all financial transactions from other component i.e. SD, MM, PS through account determination. 

General ledger master record contains two main segments namely; chart of accounts segment and company code segment. The chart of accounts contains basic information for each of the g/l accounts. The chart of account segment contains g/l account information such as: account number, account name (short text & long text), control fields (whether BS or P&L account), and consolidation fields. On the other hand, the company code segment information is specific to each company code. Any changes on any of the information on this segment won’t affect the g/l account information on other company codes who are using the same chart of accounts. Information on this segment is unique for each company code.

Assignment rule: multiple company codes can use one chart of accounts. Before a company code can use the g/l account the Company Code Segment has to be created.

An informative question is, “Can you create the g/l account master record at chart of account level only?” The answer is YES, g/l account can be created at chart of accounts level without assigning the company code(s) to use the said g/l.  You can create it through transaction code FSP0.

On the reverse, “can you create the g/l account at company code level only without creating first at the chart of accounts level?” The answer is NO, the chart of account segment should exist. Try to create g/l account through transaction FSS0 (In company code), an error message prompt saying “Account 123456 does not exist in chart of accts BP01 of the co. code BP01 specified”.

You can create g/l account centrally through transaction FS00. This transaction allows you to create the g/l account at chart of accounts and company code segments simultaneously.