What is sap fico Chart of Accounts

Q. What is chart of accounts?

Chart of accounts is a grouping of GL accounts that used to post transaction from cross modules and FI modules. These can be further used for reporting like Balance Sheet, P&L, and Trial Balance etc...Chart of accounts are usually very specific to an organization and you will not find the same chart of account across two different companies. SAP does give you standard set of accounts that can be used as template but it usually requires detail discussion with accounts so a list can be finalized.

Q. How many types of Chart of Account?

There can be only one primary chart of account per company code in SAP. You can have a different set of chart of account that can be used for Group Account and one for Alternative accounts.

Three types of Chart of Account .

1.Operative Chart of account
It is the COA you are opering for COA defines the Ledger account.

2.Country Chart of Account
You can use this COA for the legal requirement for the country specific.

3.Group of Chart of Account
Supposes for the same company , which uses different COA for their purposes, they can be grouped into Group of Chart of Accounts.

Q. What is alternative chart of accounts?

Alternative chart of accounts is secondary grouping of account that is generally used for statuary reporting. For example you might have a company chart of account but due to statutory nature (for countries like Russia and China to name a few), you have to report your account activity in an account range that has been provided by the company stature. In this case you have a primary chart of account as explained above and alternative chart of account. Postings should always be made in the primary chart of account and in the GL account setup these primary accounts should be associated to alternative chart of accounts. This way updates can be made to both primary and alternative chart simultaneously.

Q. What is group COA?

A group chart of account is way to group your primary accounts. For example from an operation perspective you can have several cash accounts but from a group reporting perspective you might want to group all cash activity under one account. These are usually used for Consolidation reporting. Tips by : Jayaraman

Q. Can we create our own COA from scratch (not copy from a std. version)?

Yes, the procedure is:
IMG side
1) Create Chart of acount (OB13)
2) Create account groups as per ur own list of GL's and give no range (OBD4)
3) Asign Chart of account to ur company code (OB62)
4) Define retained earning account (OB53)

After, for creation in Chart of account segment FSP0
- for Company code segment FSS0
- for central creation FS00