Using Posting Period Variants to Control the Opening and Closing of Posting Periods

Greg has heard about the posting period app that finance uses to open and close the posting periods. However, he needs more insight into how and when the posting periods are opened and closed at period end. 

Within the Fiscal Year:

Within the fiscal year, the current posting period is usually open for postings from all areas. With the month-end closing the posting period is closed for the subledgers, and for the monthly closing operations the posting period is still open for (specific) accounts in General Ledger Accounting.

The business will continue with posting transactions in the new posting period for all areas. After finalizing the closing-end activities, the previous period is closed for all postings and thus ensures that the internal and external reporting is accurate and complete.

Fiscal Year End:

During the year the normal posting periods (1-12) are used for posting in finance. In addition, it is possible to use up to a maximum of 4 special periods for your fiscal year. The special periods are optional and can be used at the fiscal year end to record adjustment type postings. For example, an audit adjustment could be posted to one of the special periods (e.g., 13) and is thus kept separate from the normal posting periods.

The SAP system uses posting period variants to manage the opening and closing of posting periods.

The posting period variant enables you to control the open/closed posting periods differently for each account interval in relation with the following account types: 

• + (Valid for all account types)
• A (Assets)
• D (Customer)
• K (Suppliers)
• M (Materials)
• V (Contract accounts)
• S (G/L accounts)

For a better classification of the available account types, you will first have a look at how the posting period check is performed when a journal entry is entered in the SAP system. Click on each icon to learn more how this check is done in the system:

After familiarizing himself with the period check at document level, Greg learns about opening and closing normal posting periods and special periods using the Manage Posting Periods app.

You have two period intervals to manage the open/close periods for Finance postings:

• Normal:

  The Normal interval period usually covers the accounting periods 1 to 12. Usually, we only have one posting period open, or two when we perform the month end close for the previous period.

   
• Adjustment:

  The Adjustment interval period comprises of additional posting periods (from 13 to 16) which are optional and are exclusively used at the year end to record postings that are usually adjustment postings or audit adjustments that you can easily identify by posting to these periods.

The main difference between these two intervals is that the Adjustment period interval can be used to restrict access to specific users. This means that at month-end or year-end closing for example, you can open some posting periods for specific users only (especially the special periods). All the other users would only be able to post according to the settings in interval Normal.

It is recommended to use period interval Adjustment for postings in special periods and interval Normal for posting processes in regular periods.

When posting to special periods (13 – 16), you must take the following into consideration:

• The posting date must fall within the last regular posting period. (e.g., period 12).
• You must enter the special periods in the document header in the period field since the special periods cannot be determined automatically by the system.

In general, posting periods are open in the SAP system for the periods specified in the posting period variant and closed for periods that are not specified.

Note: The available posting periods are defined in the fiscal year variant.

With the Manage Posting Periods SAP Fiori app, you can open and close posting periods to make sure that postings to the accounts occur in the correct posting periods. You can also choose to schedule the opening of the periods to run once or multiple times according to your business requirements.

This app allows you to navigate to the Manage Posting Period Variants SAP Fiori app and to manage the account intervals and the account types.

To control postings from Controlling (CO) to Financial Accounting (FI), you can use the separate period interval CO-Related.

You can use this period interval to make CO-FI postings to Financial Accounting during period closing, for example.

This period is not valid for any other postings. Such postings are checked using the other period intervals.

If this third interval is not filled, the entries in intervals Normal and Adjustments are also valid for these postings.