G/L Account Maintenance in SAP S/4HANA Cloud: What about Accounts Not Needed in the P System?

[Joergen]

As of SAP S/4HANA 1811, you can only maintain G/L accounts in the quality (Q) system and transport them to the production (P) system together with the related follow-on configuration.

Go to the SAP Help Portal to read more about the details on maintaining G/L accounts in the Q system and transporting them to the P-system. Use this link: https://help.sap.com/viewer/0fa84c9d9c634132b7c4abb9ffdd8f06/latest/en-US/78a553c2f3294a0382f6ab06c9....

This blog focuses on a special case. Sometimes, when you create new G/L accounts in the Q system, you may not want to transport them to the P system with the release of the next business change project (BCP). Or you might find some G/L accounts that came with the initial activation of the standard chart of accounts that you don’t want to have in the P system.

What can you do? There are some settings in the basic information for a G/L account that can help you (see the screenshot below from the Manage G/L Account Master Data app):

Now let’s go through these settings in more detail:

Field

Value

Effect

Blocked for Creation

Yes

You can’t manually make new company code assignments.

No

New company codes can be assigned.

Blocked for Posting

Yes

Use this field to block or unblock a G/L account for posting or check if an account is blocked for posting.

If an account is blocked for posting, you can't make any postings to it.

No

You can post to the G/L account unless it is blocked on company-code level – see screenshot below.

Blocked for Planning

Yes

You can’t use this G/L account to post secondary costs for planning purposes, for example, for universal allocation, distribution, or cost allocation.

No

You can use this G/L account to post secondary costs for planning purposes.

G/L Account Not Used

Yes

The G/L account will not be transported to the P system.

No

The G/L account will be transported to P system.

As mentioned, you can block an account for posting at the company code level as shown here:

Let us now go through some different use cases:

With the delivered standard chart of accounts, you may get G/L accounts that you don’t need.
You should set the value of the “G/L Account Not Used” field to Yes. Then these G/L accounts will not be transported to the P system. You can also set this value to Yes using the G/L account renumbering tool for mass maintenance.

You want to include an account that was delivered in the standard chart of accounts and which you originally thought you didn’t need and therefore had marked it as “G/L Account Not Used”.
Change the value of “G/L Account Not Used” to “No”. The account will now be included in the open BCP. Please also recheck the “Blocked for Posting” field as it is automatically also set to “Yes” when you set the “G/L Account Not Used” flag via the G/L account renumbering tool.

You need a new G/L account for manual postings.
You create the G/L account and set all the flags to “No”. The account will be included in the open BCP.

You need a new G/L account for manual postings but don’t want to activate it in P system yet.
You create the G/L account and set the “G/L Account Not Used” flag to “Yes” and the other flags to “No”. Once you want to transport the account to the P system, you change the flag and it will be included in the open BCP.

You need to create a new G/L account because you have a new process that requires additional follow-on configuration.
You create the new G/L account and set all the flags to “No”. The G/L account will be included in the open BCP. This assumes that you are working on the configuration at the same time and also include those changes in the open BCP. Once the configuration testing is done, then the G/L account and follow-on configuration will be transported to the P system together in the same transport.

You need to create a new G/L account for training purposes and don’t want to use it in the P system.
You create the G/L accounts and set the “G/L Account Not Used” flag to “Yes” and the other flags to “No”.