How to Reconcile Fixed Assets to the G/L (Part 2)

After the previous blog that opened up the issue around AA-to-GL reconciliation, let me proceed with another set of key questions on this topic.

Blog Series
How to Reconcile Fixed Assets to the G/L (Part 1)
How to Reconcile Fixed Assets to the G/L (Part 2)
How to Reconcile Fixed Assets to the G/L (Part 3)
How to Reconcile Fixed Assets to the G/L (Part 4)

How can you identify the reconciliation issue?

There are several ways to both identify and treat an AA-to-GL reconciliation situation.  The first and most obvious way is to do it manually.  You can run an Asset Balance report at transaction [AR01], summarize it appropriately, and then compare the figures to the GL Account Balance Display at transaction [FAGLB03]. 

But nobody does it this way because SAP provides a transaction code in ECC called [ABST2] that essentially does the same thing.  The program behind it will summarize the asset balances out of the subledger and then compare them against the appropriate GL account balance.  Specifically, it will look at the following value types:

• APC
• Down Payments
• Revaluation
• Special Items
• Ordinary Depreciation
• Special Depreciation
• Unplanned Depreciation
• Transfer of Reserves
• Revaluation of Ordinary Depreciation

Once those figures have been summarized by GL account (and Business Area but who is still using that?) the values are stored in table EWUFIAASUM for analysis later on if necessary.  The next thing the program does is compare the contents of that table with the appropriate GL account balance. 

As I mentioned in the earlier blog, there can be differences between currencies.  For instance, the values in area 01 and Local Currency 1 (LC1) may tie out but the parallel area(s) and LC2 (LC3) might have different figures.  The good news is that the report will validate all three currencies if configured appropriately.

What does it look like?

Below is [ABST2].  It’s a simple selection screen and there are no required fields.  Therefore, it’s possible to run this for multiple company codes but unless I knew that each company code had been rolled forward to the current year and had a feel for the amount of data in each, I’d run it for small groups or single company codes at a time.

SAP recommends that it be run in the background… and if you run it for all companies, that’s probably a good idea.  But I run it in the foreground all the time and rarely have it scheduled.

You’ll get a pop-up window with some messages.  There are a few errors that can come up (usually a not-so-current balance carry forward) but most of the time it will just list some information messages as shown below.  The first message will indicate the total number of records pulled from the main asset value table (ANLC) per the selection criteria that was entered earlier.  In this case, I have a small company code with only a total of 38 lines in ANLC.  The second message shows the number of records written to the EWUFIAASUM table.  If you see these two messages (and only these two), then the first phase of the program is complete.

The next screen will output the list of differences.  First, if there is no data displayed then everything ties out.  There is no reconciliation difference!  The program will only output the differences for the combination of Company Code, Fiscal Year, and GL Account.

In addition to those three characteristics, the program will also output a Ledger but it doesn’t, in ECC, reconcile for anything other than 0L.  It also lists a [Source] field but this will always be ‘AS’.  Why?  The guts of this program came from a Euro Conversion effort (remember that?) which used this program for multiple types of reconciliations including AP, AR and the GL.  But ABST2 will only work with package ‘AS’ so I usually hide the field as well as some others (Business Area, Package, and Document).

Below is an image showing some differences only in LC1 but where LC2 and LC3 are fine.  I’d strongly recommend that you create a default ALV layout that outputs all three currency amounts.  The program will only output LC1 by default and some customers will solve that problem and then assume everything is fine.  But there might be other differences in LC2 and LC3 so be sure to output all three sets of amounts for each of the three currencies.

As you can see in the image above, the differences are only in a small number of accounts and only in LC1.  The amounts aren’t too large either.  All things considered, that’s not too bad and should be easy to track down.  But below is a screenshot from a system that was much worse off.  The bigger the output, the worse the problem!  Ideally, you want to see either a blank list or something as small as possible.

What’s Next?

The good news is that there is more to this topic than just [ABST2].  SAP provides another useful program as well as several alternative programs via OSS that can be of assistance.  I’ll cover those items and make some recommendations in the next blog.