A fiscal year is the accounting period, which normally spreads over 12 months. Financial statements are drawn for a fiscal year. The fiscal year, in SAP, is defined as a Fiscal Year Variant. All Calendar Year Fiscal Year Variants, in standard SAP, are denoted usually as K1, K2, etc.

The fiscal year may or may not correspond to the calendar year. In the standard SAP system, the Non-Calendar Fiscal Year Variants are denoted V1, V2, etc.  It is also possible that the fiscal year may be shorter than 12 months, and this is called a Shortened Fiscal Year. One Fiscal Year Variant can be assigned to one or more Company Codes using transaction code OB37.

Open a New Fiscal Year in SAP System

You do not need to open the new fiscal year as a separate activity. Once you make a posting into the new fiscal year, the new fiscal year is automatically opened. Or, the new fiscal year is automatically opened when you run the balance carry-forward program.

However, you need to have

1. the relevant posting period already open in the new fiscal year,
2. completed the document number range assignment if you are following a year-dependent number range assignment, and
3. defined a new fiscal year variant if you follow the year-dependent fiscal year variant.

Defining the Fiscal Year

Fiscal year variants can be used to define posting periods in relation to calendar months. The fiscal year is usually defined on the basis of 12 periods, which correspond to the calendar months. The year is closed when the period or month is changed from 12 to 01.

Fiscal year variants can also be used to define non-calendar fiscal years (calendar month <> posting period), shortened fiscal years (number of posting periods < number of calendar months) or fiscal years with special periods (number of posting periods > number of calendar months).

The period closing program interprets fiscal year variants assigned to the company code and is capable of recognizing whether a fiscal year change is necessary when a period is closed.

Change Fiscal Year in Asset Accounting

Run The fiscal year change program which would open new annual value fields for each asset. i.e next year

• The earliest you can start this program is in the last posting period of the current year.
• You have to run the fiscal year change program for your whole company code.
• You can only process a fiscal year change in a subsequent year if the previous year has already been closed for business.

Take care not to confuse the fiscal year change program with year-end closing for accounting purposes. This fiscal year change is needed only in Asset Accounting for various technical reasons.

Year End Preparation Checklist

The following checklist presents a timeline of milestones that SAP recommends you observe for Year-End payroll processing. This list includes both general milestones that pertain to standard payroll practices and specific milestones that relate to Year End processing in SAP Payroll. We recommend that you perform these milestones in chronological order.

Download  Year end Preparation Checklist .