If you have spent any time running the depreciation recalculation program (transaction AFAR) in SAP, you have probably run into a specific flavor of frustration: the report does not care which period you are asking about. Change a depreciation term mid-year, run AFAR to see the effect, and SAP hands you exactly one number — a tidy fiscal-year total that flattens the whole years’ worth of periods into a single cumulated figure. Did the change land in period 3 or period 9? AFAR has no opinion. It only counts in years.
For anyone doing period-close analysis, forecasting cash impact, or explaining to Controlling why planned depreciation moved, that is a real gap. The changed depreciation schedule values were there, technically. You just could not see where in the year they actually hit. For a large result set… let’s say you changed the configuration for the primary depreciation key you use for straight line depreciation in the corporate book (i.e., area 01)… running a test run on AFAR is critical before making an update run and considering if the change worked or not. SAP’s presentation of the depreciation change at an annual level often doesn’t provide the detail required for a change of this importance. Also, hasn’t SAP been moving more and more towards a period-driven depreciation calculation? Why is AFAR left out of that?
Thankfully, SAP Note 3487874 – Period-specific display of depreciation schedule values in transaction AFAR (released January 7, 2025) closes that gap.
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What changes
Implementing this note enhances the AFAR selection screen with a new option for period-specific output. Turn it on, and instead of one cumulated fiscal-year number, AFAR breaks the changed planned depreciation values out by period, so you can see exactly where the impact falls across the year rather than guessing from a single annual total.
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The fine print (this one comes with homework)
Most notes are corrections that can be imported via transaction SNOTE. This one asks a little more of you first. The fix introduces a new field, XPERIOD, and SAP leaves the data dictionary work to you:
- In SE11, create data element FAA_XPERIOD manually, reference domain XFELD, with field labels running from “PerPeriod” (short) up to “Period-Specific Output of Depreciation Schedule Values” (heading).
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- Add that data element as component XPERIOD to structure RAREP.
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Only once that piece exists does the code correction have a field to attach the new selection-screen checkbox to. It is an infrequent case where the note assigns pre-work before the actual fix — but it is a five-minute SE11 detour, not a project.
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How does it look
Once the above steps are done, you’ll see the new parameter near the bottom of the selection screen.
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By the way, if you don’t do the manual steps, it’ll look like the below image. Double-check the work of your Basis folks!
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To test this out, below is the output from AFAR when run with this parameter inactive (i.e., as it historically has). It shows an annual change for this asset for both ordinary and special depreciation.
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If I execute it with the period-specific output parameter active, I can see how the new depreciation figure impacts the asset at a period level. It’s broken out the ordinary depreciation (in this case) per period.
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And if you want to geek-out on some of the details, below are the entries in FAAT_PLAN_VALUES for this asset both before…
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… and after. There is a new (second row where the SLALITTYPE = 7206) for the new special depreciation amount as well as the changed per-period amounts for ordinary (7205).
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Why this is important
A single new checkbox on a selection screen is easy to write off as ‘no big deal’. But depreciation changes do not arrive in neat annual packages — a revised useful life or a mid-year transfer lands in a specific period, and finance teams need to know which one. A fiscal-year total that cannot tell you if the change hit period 3 or period 11 is not wrong, it is just missing half the story. This note gives AFAR the same period-awareness the rest of the depreciation posting engine has had all along.
So, go build your one field, implement the note, and finally ask AFAR the question it has been dodging for years: which period.
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Sources
SAP Note: 3487874 – Period-specific display of depreciation schedule values in transaction AFAR | Component: FI-AA-AA-B | Released: January 7, 2025
