Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Account

March 8, 2009 by mySAP
Filed under: General Ledger Module

There are two types of accounts in the GL master record in SAP that are Balance Sheet accounts and P & L Statement accounts.

• For balance sheet accounts, the balance is carried forward to the same account. Balance Sheet represents the organisation financial data at any given time
• For P & L statement accounts, the balance is carried forward to a retained earnings account and the P & L statement is set to zero. Profit & Loss represents financial data for a certain period.

Retained Earning Account

Retained earnings account in SAP is assigned to each P&L account by specifying a P&L statement account type
in the chart of accounts area of each P&L account

At the end of a fiscal year, the system carries forward the balance of the P&L account to the retained
earnings account. You can define one or more P&L statement account types per chart of accounts and
assign them to retained earnings accounts.