Financial Accounting (FI)

Overview
The Financial Accounting functions are divided into the following areas:
* General Ledger Accounting (FI-GL)
* Accounts Receivable Accounting (FI-AR)
* Accounts Payable Accounting (FI-AP)
* Asset Accounting (FI-AA)
* Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL)
* Consolidation (FI-LC)

Accounts Receivable Accounting
Accounts Receivable Accounting is part of the Financial Accounting component and is used to efficiently regulate and monitor business transactions with customers. The IDES system contains approximately 70 customers in company code 1000 (Germany).

Most of the customers in company code 1000 (Germany) are maintained centrally, and belong to an IDES sales organization, 1000 (Frankfurt), or 1020 (Berlin). You will find a list of all IDES customers (customer master data) in Appendix B.

Accounts Payable Accounting
Accounts Payable Accounting is used to manage accounting data for all vendors. This data is transferred to Accounts Payable Accounting by means of the integrated business processes for invoice verification. Payments can be generated automatically for invoices that have been released. These payments are made by the due date.

Most of the vendors in company code 1000 (Germany) are maintained centrally, and belong to an IDES purchasing organization, 1 (Europe), or 1000 (Germany). You will find a list of all IDES vendors (vendor master data) in Appendix B.

Asset Accounting
The planning and monitoring of fixed assets for external and internal accounting is becoming increasingly more important as a result of progress in technology. In addition to the pure accounting and financial statement aspect of Asset Accounting, many of the requirements for Controlling and monitoring in Plant Maintenance are affected. You also want to reflect the increasingly complex requirements for group accounting at national and international level precisely but as flexibly as possible.

Special Purpose Ledger
The functions in the Special Purpose Ledger enable you to work with customer specific
ledgers. These ledgers contain factors from additional account assignments, and are used for company-specific reporting purposes. Validation and derivation functions are available for all customer-specific ledgers. Ledgers are fully integrated with the other functions in Financial Accounting.

The IDES system contains the following ledgers:


Consolidation

This involves consolidating the individual financial statements of all internal trading partners to produce consolidated financial statements. These consolidated financial statements should portray finances, investments, and revenue as if all the companies involved were a single company.

The consolidated entity in the IDES system is the IDES corporate group, which comprises the following three IDES subgroups: IDES Europe, IDES America, and IDES Asia.

A ”stand alone” example has also been created in the IDES system. This example shows how individual financial statements that come from an external database are consolidated in the SAP System. The model that is created for this is separate from the IDES model. Data is imported from external databases into the IDES clients, where it is consolidated to form a separate corporate group.

The required definitions and master records of the companies and subgroups are defined in the Consolidation system (FI-LC).

Before you can consolidate this data, you must transfer financial statement data to the Consolidation system and make the standardizing entries and conversions required. Consolidation involves the following steps:
* Making standardizing entries
* Currency translation
* Eliminating corporate group payables and receivables
* Eliminating intercompany profit/loss in inventory
* Eliminating intercompany profit/loss in transferred assets
* Consolidating investments