Introduction
Greg understands the clearing process as he had an assignment on the Accounts Receivables team. He would like to understand how one can execute automatic clearing for general ledger accounts.
Reconcile G/L Accounts Using Automatic Clearing
G/L Accounts that are set up as open item managed accounts should be cleared on a regular basis. A user can manually clear the open debit items with credit items, and if the balance is zero, they can be matched and cleared.
An alternative process is that the open items can be automatically cleared by executing the Clear Open Items Automatically app. The clearing program can then be run as often as required or scheduled as a job. The clearing program matches the values entered in the Assignment field of the posted line items with the open debit and credit items.
Thus, if the Assignment fields have the same value and the balance of the line items in document currency equals zero, the SAP system will match the items and post a Clearing Document, thus having a status of ‘Cleared’.
In order to clear the open items using the Assignment field, clearing criteria must be configured in SAP system. If the clearing criteria (e.g., Assignment Field) match and the balance is zero, the items are then matched and then cleared.
In the above example, open items have been posted to the G/L Clearing Account. The clearing program will clear open items that have the same Assignment and if the associated debits and credits balance to zero. The program found a match for Assignment XA9 and YA11 which are now cleared. No match was found for Assignment ‘XA18’ and will remain as open.
Thus, the clearing program summarizes open items from the selected accounts in groups and clears them if they have the same company code, account type, account number, reconciliation account number, currency code, and special G/L indicator.
The program also uses a maximum of five additional user criteria from the document header or line items to create groups.
