Basic Settings - Fiscal Year and Fiscal Year Variants

Basic Settings - Fiscal Year

Fiscal Year:

Fiscal year is the company's calendar year for which it regularly creates the financial statements and checks inventories.

For example:

In India, fiscal year starts from April to March.

In USA, fiscal year starts from October to September.

In Germany, fiscal year starts from January to December.

So, fiscal year may be same as calendar year or may not be same as calendar year. In SAP, fiscal year is defined as Fiscal Year Variant and assigned to a Company Code.

Posting Periods:

A Fiscal Year is divided into 12 posting periods. In addition to posting periods, you can also define special periods for year end closing. The posting period is determined from the posting date.

Special Periods:

Special periods correspond to periods which subdivide the year-end closing period for adjustments.

For example: 

For Germany, the fiscal year starts from January to December. So, for any year end adjustments, the period 12 is divided into four special periods and any adjustments in the year can be posted across these special periods.

Note - 

In General Ledger accounting, you can define up to four special periods.

If you do not need 12 postings periods, then other posting periods can be defined as special periods.

Fiscal Year Variants:

In SAP, the fiscal year is defined as Fiscal Year Variant and assigned to a Company Code. The menu path in customizing for defining a Fiscal Year Variant is:

Financial Accounting (New) -> Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) -> Ledgers -> Fiscal Year and Posting Periods -> Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (Maintain Shortened Fisc. Year).

Transaction code - OB29.

Fiscal Year Variants are of two types:

1. Fiscal Year Independent

2. Fiscal Year Dependent

Fiscal Year Independent:

The fiscal year variant is called as fiscal year independent when the fiscal year variant uses the same number of periods for each financial year and the posting period always starts and ends on the same day of the year.

For example:

In Financial Year 2017, if you defined the the variant starting from April to March, then same thing followed in 2018 as well and later will be followed in 2019 and so on...

There are two types for Fiscal Year Independent Variant:- Calendar Year and Non-Calendar Year

Calendar Year - 
If the fiscal year starts with same as calendar year - that means - if fiscal year starts from January to December.

To define the fiscal year as Calendar year, just check the checkbox of the Calendar Year in customizing as shown below.

Month	Period
January	1
February	2
March	3
April	4
May	5
June	6
July	7
August	8
September	9
October	10
November	11
December	12

Non-Calendar Year - 
If the fiscal year starts other than calendar year. In this case, while maintaining the periods, you need to use year shift as shown below.

For example:

India - Fiscal year from April to March

USA - Fiscal year from October to September

Please note - Calendar year checkbox and Year Dependent checkbox are NOT checked.

Month	Period	Year Shift
January	1	-1
February	2	-1
March	3	-1
April	4	0
May	5	0
June	6	0
July	7	0
August	8	0
September	9	0
October	10	0
November	11	0
December	12	0

Fiscal Year dependent:

If periods vary from one financial year to another financial year - that means - start date and end date for financial year is different from start date and end date of next financial year, then it is called as Fiscal Year Dependent financial year.

Shortened Fiscal Year:
Shortened fiscal year is year dependent fiscal year. If financial year has less than 12 posting periods,then it is called as shortened fiscal year.

A shortened fiscal year could be necessary in the following cases, for example:

• Establishment of a company
• Changeover from a calendar year to a non-calendar fiscal year, or vice versa.

When you define a shortened fiscal year, you have to make the following specifications:

• A shortened fiscal year must always be defined as year-dependent, since it can only apply to a specific year and must be followed by a complete fiscal year.
• You define a shortened fiscal year and the following or previous complete fiscal year in one fiscal year variant.

Table T009 - Fiscal Year Variants
This table gets updated when you save the fiscal year variant.