Configuring the Header and Line Items of Financial Accounting (FI) Documents

SAP S/4HANA is based on the document principle, which implies the following course of action:

1. A document is saved for every business transaction posting.
2. The document remains as a complete unit in the system until it is archived.
3. Every document is uniquely identified by the following fields:
   • Document Number
   • Company code
   • Fiscal Year

Documents in SAP S/4HANA contain the following details:

A document header

This component contains information that applies to the entire document.

Line items

Each posted accounting document has at least two lines (for example, debit and credit) and a maximum of 999 line items. The information in each separate lite item is specific to this particular line item. When you post documents using an AC interface, such as Sales Order Management, or Purchasing Management, the AC interface creates items in the accounting document that are identical in almost all of the fields.

You can display detailed data for the document header and line items.

There are two important control keys in the document:

• Document type in the document header.
• Posting key in the line items.

SAP S/4HANA generates at least one document for every business transaction. Each document is assigned a unique document number. During internal number assignment, the document number is assigned by the system. During external number assignment, the user assigns the document number in the Document Number field.

A business transaction can create one or more documents. For example, when goods arrive from a vendor, SAP S/4HANA creates a material document to record data that is important for inventory management. An accounting document is created to record financially-relevant information, such as accounts data and amounts related to the general ledger.

In SAP S/4HANA, documents are generated for various business transactions without an accounting document being generated at the same time because accounting is not affected by document generation. An example of this is the generation of a purchase order in Materials Management, which does not result in the generation of an accounting document.    

Related documents are linked in SAP S/4HANA, which gives you an overview of every business transaction in SAP.

The RFBELJ00 report allows you to create a compact document journal. The document journal contains a table of the most important data from the document headers and line items of the selected documents.

You can use the RFBUEB00 and RFBUEB01 reports to locate documents.

On the SAP Fiori Launchpad, you can use the Manage Journal Entries tile (General Ledger group) to locate documents.

Document type controls the document header and helps differentiate the business transactions that need to be posted.

Since document types are defined at the client level, they are valid for all company codes. SAP S/4HANA is delivered with document types that can be changed or copied.

Document types define the following elements:

• Number range for the Document Type:

  Each document type must have a number range assigned to it.

• Reverse Document Type:

  The document type specified in the field Reverse Document Type is used when a reversal transaction is performed. If you do not specify a reversal document type, the system uses the posted document type for reversal.

• Account types allowed for postings:

  In the Account types allowed section, specify the Account type – Assets, Customer, Vendor, Material, G/L account that you want to post to.

• Control data:

  In this section, you select the Net Document Type field, which is only valid for document types used for vendor invoices. Selecting this indicator reduces the total amount due by the cash discount amount specified by the payment terms on the invoice.

  This section also includes the following fields:

  • Customer/Vendor check
  • Negative Postings permitted
  • Inter-company postings
  • Enter trading partner
• Required during document entry

By selecting Reference Number and Document Header Text, you make each of these fields a required entry in the document header.

Document type AB allows postings to all account types.

For all other document types, limit the types of accounts you can post to. For example, document type DG allows you to post to customer (D) and general ledger accounts (S) only.

To transfer billing documents from the SAP S/4HANA billing application, you need one of the following document types:

• RV: The default document type for Sales Order Management billing documents (customer invoices).
• RE: The default document type for Materials Management billing documents (vendor invoices).

With internal number assignment, SAP S/4HANA assigns a new number to each document in the Financial Accounting component. With external number assignment, the application transfers the billing document number to the accounting document, provided that this number has not already been used.

The payment program uses the document type ZP for most of its automatic postings.

The following options are available for defining the document range:

• Continuous:

  At the beginning of a new fiscal year, SAP S/4HANA continues to use the number after the current number as the next number. The application does not restart at the first number of the number range.

• For every fiscal year:

  At the beginning of a new fiscal year, SAP S/4HANA starts with the first number of the number range. This ensures that the number range is sufficient.

One number range can be assigned to several document types. You can copy the intervals of document number ranges from one company code to another or copy intervals from one fiscal year to another.

You can use the RFBNUM00 report to find gaps in document number assignment.

When you enter documents, SAP S/4HANA displays several fields. The fields displayed depend on the transaction and the accounts that you are using. For example, when you post expenses, you have to specify the cost center and tax data. In contrast, you do not need to specify this information when you post cash. The field status controls the information to be entered and displayed when a document is processed. 

As with the field statuses defined for fields in G/L accounts, the field status with the higher priority is used.

These are the priorities:

• SUPPRESS/HIDE (highest priority)

• REQUIRED ENTRY

• OPTIONAL ENTRY (lowest priority)

Entries in tax fields are only possible if the general ledger account is relevant for tax.

The Suppress/Hide field status cannot be combined with the Required Entry field status. This combination causes an error.

For each group of general ledger accounts (such as cash accounts or expense accounts) you need to define the status of every document entry field. When you enter the documents for these general ledger accounts, you must decide if the text field is required, optional, or suppressed/hidden. Similarly, when you enter the documents for general ledger accounts, you need to decide if the cost center field is required, optional, or suppressed/hidden.

SAP S/4HANA divides this information into field status groups for each group of general ledger accounts. You assign field status groups to the respective general ledger accounts in the general ledger accounts master records. The field status groups are summarized in one field status variant.

The field status variant is assigned to your company code(s). You cannot make a posting until the field status variant is complete. Typically, you assign the same field status variant to all your company codes so that the same field status information applies across the company codes.

Various field status groups are available in the standard SAP S/4HANA. It is recommended that you copy the standard field status groups and modify the copies as necessary.

If a document is posted to a subledger account, the field status group of the reconciliation account is used.

SAP recommends that you use the standard posting keys delivered. If you change them or define new posting keys, any tables containing a reference to these keys must also be updated.

Posting keys for assets and materials may only be used if the corresponding SAP components are configured.

You can change the field status definitions of posting keys and the field status group to make the field status transaction-dependent or account-dependent. Since subledger accounts do not have a field status group, postings are differentiated by means of different posting keys. For this reason, there are numerous posting keys for subledger accounts.

Postings to general ledger accounts are differentiated by means of different field status groups. As a result, only two posting keys, 40 and 50, are required for general ledger account postings.