Issue with AFAR trying to post in a closed and already consolidated year

[Former Member]

Hello Experts!

We have an issue regarding transaction AFAR - recalculate values. I just recently entered as support for Financials and realized our users didn't run transaction AFAR at all during 2010. They didn't run it during 2011 until now. We are running it in test mode and in PRD it produced an error log stating that periods for 2010 were closed (as they should be). Since our PRD environment has been recently copied to a client in Quality environment we opened the periods and then test-run AFAR. Unfortunately, it is trying to post a difference for Ordinary depreciation in 2010 and then in 2011 the system is cancelling it with a post for the same amount but in negative.

The biggest issue is that as you are probably guessing 2010 has already been closed and of course a figure for net income was reported and Balance Sheet was presented that should NOT be changed now.

Since AFAR is posting amounts in 2010 and then cancelling them the following year we were pondering the possibility to make the system post both movements in the same year (preferably in 2011) but we are not even sure if we can make AFAR do this.

As you can see our biggest problem is AFAR trying to move figures in 2010 so any advice to help us achieve AFAR not posting in 2010 would be really appreciated (or if 2010 MUST be posted then a way to achieve a net of zero)

Thanks in advance!

[former_member205661 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Ok, I understand from your further description, that indeed for some company codes there is outstanding values to be

posted in 2010. Well, if that is the case, then it should be posted in the fiscal year where it belongs to. Hence, if you changed

e.g. depreciation terms in 2010 and the values have changed, then this adjustments would have to be posted in the fiscal year

where the values belong to. That would be the correct way.

However, I don't know what is the situation in your productive system and is FI already certified in 2010? If so, then you would

not be allowed to post anything further in FI-AA that also posts to GL (e.g. anything with posting indicator 1, and others - see OADB). In this case you are definitely not to trigger a recalculation for posting areas. Though, what should be the best approach to correct the outstanding values? What kind of values do you say are out of synch? Why are they out of synch? Was value posted to FI-AA after FI was closed already? However, that should not be possible if FI is not open...

However, if one changes depreciation terms, yes of course that will have an effect on the depreciation calculation and ultimately adjust the depreciation values...and the system then would ask for a depreciation run to post these adjustments.

What is important to acknowledge is that in any ANLC_NAFAP (planned values) and NAFAG (posted values) must be equal in any posting dep. area before you can close FI-AA. However, like I mentioned in my last reply, if you can't post in 2010 again due to FI being closed and certified, then maybe you need to run RACORR20_A and proceed as described in the note

attached above.

And to answer your question whether any outstanding depreciation year in any give year is pushed forward to the next

period or fiscal year if not posted, the answer is "No". The system will ask and throw an error to inform you that not all

depreciation has been posted for example.

I hope that this helps further for you to evaluate what is the best approach to get this straight. You are definitely correct to test and proceed with any further steps in your development system first and if all works satisfactory in that system only then apply same approach in your productive system.

Regards,

Brigitte

[former_member205661]

Hi,

I understand that fiscal year 2010 is audited and certified, hence, as you rightly say, values cannot be changed.

It is not clear to me how the fiscal year could be closed if not all depreciation has been posted or all values have been updated.

However, I understand that not running a recalculation at any stage that no changed of values has been captured. It is important to note going forward, that at least at the end of the year, and specifically before closing the subledger FI-AA, a recalculation is performed for the entire company code. Even better a practice, if it is run at the end of each period before running depreciation for the period for example.

Though, if FY 2010 is certified, then FI should not be re-opened as otherwise this will lead to inconsistencies in the subleger and ledger.

If however, a depreciation area does not post to FI, then maybe you could open it again. You should then carefully follow the instructions in SAP note 646691 - Recalculate depreciation for selected areas

For any case and for future reference, where FI is not yet certified, you should follow the instructions in SAP note 619969 - Closing FI-GL before FI-AA.

As you know already, you are only allowed to re-open FI however if it is not yet certified.

And most important to remember going forward, never close FI before the subledger FI-AA is fully reconciled and the balances are correct in FI-AA and FI.

So, if it is not possible to open the fiscal year because audit has already been completed then you maybe want to consider the followig workaround: I must point out though that it is not quite correct from a legal point of view but it may be the only solution for you. In this case you may use report RACORR20_A from SAP note 29694 - Deprec.recalc.for prv.yr despite yr-end close in FI.

I strongly recommend you may discuss this option first with your local SAP consultant if that is possible and before considering using the correction report.

It is not possible to post outstanding depreciation from a previous fiscal year as accumulated depreciation in a new fiscal year.

But with report RACORR20_A you can make fields NAFAP (planned) NAFAG (posted) equal in ANLC and then make up the missing depreciation in the new fiscal year with a write-up. However, as from a legal point of view this may not be the cleanest solution but is a workaround, you may want to discuss this with your accountant and with your local SAP consultant

further if you can.

I hope you find this information helpful in finding a good solution in this case.

Kind regards,

Brigitte

[Former Member]

Dear Brigitte,

Thanks for your reply, we read the notes over the weekend and came up with some ideas. After investigating a bit further what happened in our organization we realized that the year-end closing procedures have not been carried out correctly since 2009 (namely we checked with transaction OAAQ the last closed year and it wasn't 2010). After realizing that fact we ran transaction AJRW - Fiscal Year Change asking it to gives us a New fiscal year of 2011 and it ran without errors or warnings.

After running AJRW - Fiscal Year Change in real mode and verifying it ended correctly, we proceeded and ran transaction AJAB - Execute (year-end closing) asking it to close the Fiscal year 2010 and it also ran without errors or warnings.

Now, after runnning AJAB - Execute (year-end closing) in real mode and verifying it ended correctly, we proceeded and ran transaction AFAR and interestingly AFAR in test mode is stating that it doesn't need to post any corrections (not in 2010 and not even 2011 for some Company Codes). For other of our Company Codes after completing the procedure stated above we ran transaction AFAR and it did show it needed to recalculate values for some assets but the difference was that no postings were needed to be posted in 2010 all of the correction postings were to be posted in 2011 and that is ok with our accountants.

The doubt we are having now is about the values AFAR was trying to post in 2010. What will happen with them? Will AFAR try to post them in any future period? Are they not needed anymore? Is it ok if these postings never take place?

It is important to point out that we have done all of this in our quality environment (which is a copy of PRD as of october) and we haven't done anything in PRD yet. Therefore if anything of what we have done is not correct we still have a chance to do the right thing!

Hopefully you have better insight and can help us!

[Former Member]

Hi

You can create a journal entry to nullify the AFAR effect in 2010.Close the year and then reverse the journal entry in 2011 and of course AFAR entry is also posted in both 2010 and 2011.

Hope that solves the issue.

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply, we actually don't want to post manually. Are there any other options? Any ideas?