You most probably know that fiscal year variants (FYV) define the relationship between the calendar year and the fiscal year in SAP S/4 HANA Cloud. They specify the start and end date and the number of periods and special periods of a fiscal year.

As your business requirements might change when your system is already up and running, you might run into a situation where you have to use additional fiscal years, because you need local reporting for a country that differs from your main fiscal year. This means that you have to add a fiscal year variant to your system that has not been part of your initial implementation project.

While it has been possible to add alternative fiscal year variants for a long time, there’s good news: The procedure has been substantially simplified and enhanced as of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2208.

In a nutshell, you can now use the Assign Fiscal Year Variants to Ledgers and Company Codes configuration activity to assign the alternative fiscal year variant to your non-leading ledger.

Now let’s have a closer look at an example of how you can add an alternative fiscal year variant:

General prerequisites

An alternative FYV can only be set for company codes assigned to a non-leading ledger.
This means that your existing ledgers and accounting principles must be assigned as in the example below, or, if you are implementing a new system, you must make the assignment accordingly in the Assign Accounting Principles to Ledger configuration activity:

What’s more, the alternative FYV can only be assigned to a company code in which no journal entries have been entered yet. That is, if you are working in a 2-system landscape, no journal entries must exist in the quality and in the productive systems, or, if you are working in a 3-system landscape, no journal entries must exist in the development and productive systems.

For more information on what you need to take into consideration, see Restrictions and Dependencies.

Business roles and apps required

• Business role template for user role: Configuration Expert – Business Process Configuration (SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT)
• Configuration Activity: Assign Fiscal Year Variants to Ledgers and Company Codes (ID 105409)

Further apps that are needed for posting period settings:

• • Manage Posting Period Variants
  • Manage Posting Periods

Configuration activity Assign Fiscal Year Variants to Ledgers and Company Codes

Depending on your configuration landscape, you can either find the Assign Fiscal Year Variants to Ledgers and Company Codes configuration activity using SAP Central Business Configuration or the Manage Your Solution app.

In this example, ledger 0L – as the leading ledger – is assigned to the group accounting principle and K4 is selected as the common fiscal year variant.

You need to enter the alternative fiscal year variant, which is V3 in this example, for the related company code(s) with ledger 2L as the non-leading ledger. In addition, you need to assign a posting period variant. If you need a new posting period variant, please contact SAP using the Worldwide Customer Requests Repository (WCR). For more information, see SAP Knowledge Base Article 3012991.

Alternative Fiscal Year Variant and Asset Accounting

If you are interested in the alternative fiscal year variant regarding asset accounting, you can find information including examples here.

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And last but not least, we’ve put together the following materials to help guide you through the process:

• Central access point for the alternative fiscal year variants including information on application components: Alternative Fiscal Year Variant
• Go to the SAP Activate Roadmap Viewer for the following materials:
  • Supported Fiscal Year Variants
  • Finance – Conduct Workshop
  • Fiscal Year Variant Implementation Guide
• 3169537 – SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Release Restriction Note for the Alternative Fiscal Year Variant