Customizing Attributes of General Ledger Accounts

Reconciliation accounts are G/L accounts that receive postings from subsidiary ledgers.

All postings to the subledger accounts are automatically posted to the assigned reconciliation accounts. This ensures that the general ledger is always updated. You need to enter the account type in the field Reconciliation Account for Account Type in the company code segment section of the G/L account master data. The reconciliation account is only valid for the account type specified.

The following are typical reconciliation account types:

• Receivables

• Payables

If the indicator Open Item Managementis set in the master record for a G/L account, the items belonging to this account are either open items or cleared items. The balance of an account with open item management is always the balance of the open items. Manage G/L accounts with open item management to check whether an offsetting posting has already taken place for a business transaction.

When the Open Item Management indicator is set in the master record for a general ledger account, the items posted to this account can be in one of the following states:

• Open

• Cleared

Open item management is a prerequisite for checking whether a given business transaction has an offsetting posting. Open items and cleared items can be displayed separately, so it is easy to identify the business transactions that still need to be cleared.

Use open item management for the following accounts:

• Bank clearing accounts

• Clearing accounts for a goods receipt or an invoice receipt

• Salary clearing accounts

In the chart of accounts segment, you specify whether an account is a balance sheet or not (G/L Account Type)

The accounts are treated differently in the closing procedure as follows:

Users can define the retained earnings account in Customizing. You can then assign this account to expense accounts during the creation of the master record of the general ledger account.

Depending on the number of retained earnings accounts, the following cases apply: