Contract accounting is a subledger that originates from various upstream applications such as convergent invoicing. Instead of individually posting of each subledger document, totals records are transferred to the general ledger. This summarization technique greatly reduces the volume of postings in the general ledger and results in a tremendous performance advantage.
The totals records is the transfer unit for summarized subledger documents. The grouping criteria are company code, posting date, general ledger account, tax and currency.
The reconciliation key lists the totals records to be transferred to the general ledger.
The reconciliation key is automatically determined in the case of mass postings:
- In lot processing (payment lot, returns lot), the reconciliation key is the key of the lot.
- In mass runs (payment, dunning, interest), the reconciliation key is YYDDD<Run ID>.
The reconciliation key is manually entered in the case of single postings.
Reconciliation keys are closed and transferred to the general ledger at the end of the day. It's also possible to execute the transfer several times during the day. This is scheduled in the background, so no manual execution is required.
The mass run Transfer Total Records to G/L is also executed automatically and periodically. The mass run posts the total records in the general ledger.
The posting totals of the corresponding documents are recorded per reconciliation key. Once a reconciliation key is closed, no more postings can be completed with it. Accordingly, the posting totals can no longer be changed. A transfer document for general ledger is created from the posting total of each reconciliation key. An item with an amount equal to that of the totals record is generated in the transfer document.
The transfer run posts the total records in the general ledger. Totals records with a different posting date create different general ledger documents.