Fiscal year variant (FYV) contains the definition of posting periods and special posting periods. When a business transaction is entered, it needs to be posted to a particular period. Determination of such period of posting is defined in FYV. In the process you have to first define a FYV based on your requirements and then assign that FYV to your company code.
A fiscal year variant is very flexible to use. One can use this to match any business requirement. You can define FYV by using transaction code OB29 and assign it your company code with transaction code OB37 or you can use following paths;
Path to create a FYV: SPRO > Financial Accounting > Financial Accounting Global Setting > Fiscal Year > Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (maintain short end fiscal year)
Path to Assign a FYV to company code: SPRO > Financial Accounting > Financial Accounting Global Setting > Fiscal Year > Assign Company Code to Fiscal Year Variant
Posting periods are the general posting period which are assigned to a transaction when a transaction is entered into the SAP system. If you have 12 accounting periods then you define twelve posting periods for use. At the end of the Fiscal Year you need posting periods for closing which are defined as special posting periods in sap.
The system derives these posting periods from the date of posting. For example if you are posting a transaction in the month of November then the posting period would be “8” assuming your Fiscal Year starts from April to march. If you are posting a transaction within the last normal posting period then you can select any of the special posting period to post the transaction.
SAP has delivered some standard FYV which can be used as a template. The FYV is only defines the number of periods with there start and end date.
FYV in SAP are of two types;
- Independent FYV (Fiscal Year Independent)
- Dependent FYV (Fiscal Year Dependent)
What is a Fiscal Year Independent FYV?
A fiscal year variant which uses same number of period for each FY and the posting period always starts and end on the same day of the year is a FY Independent FYV. For example in the FY 2008 you have defined your FY starting from April to March and then the same things followed in 2009, 2010 and so on then the FY is FY Independent FYV.
A FY Independent FYV can be defined as;
- Calendar Year (January to December)
- Non-calendar year (if it is not from January to December)
Calendar year (CY Independent FYV)
If the posting periods are equal to the months of the FY (i.e. the general FY we followed in our day to day life) then the fiscal year variant is defined as CY by which the CY has 12 posting period. Here the FY starts from 1st January to 31st December. Out of the SAP delivered standard FYV, K4 is a best example for CY fiscal year variant.
Example of CY fiscal year variant
Month | Period |
January | 1 |
February | 2 |
March | 3 |
April | 4 |
May | 5 |
June | 6 |
July | 7 |
August | 8 |
September | 9 |
October | 10 |
November | 11 |
December | 12 |
Non calendar year (NCY Independent FYV)
If you define start and end date to the posting period then the FY is defined as a NCY fiscal year variant. It can have up to 16 posting periods (i.e. 12 normal posting period and 4 special posting period).
If you define a NCY fiscal year variant which does not starts from the 1st of January then the periods of the FY that belong to the former or the coming FY must have an indicator -1 or +1. Here is an example of a non FYV which starts from April to March
Out of the SAP delivered standard FYV V3 is a best example for NCY fiscal year variant
Example of NCY fiscal year variant
Month | Period | Sift Used |
April | 1 | |
May | 2 | |
June | 3 | |
July | 4 | |
August | 5 | |
September | 6 | |
October | 7 | |
November | 8 | |
December | 9 | |
January | 10 | -1 |
February | 11 | -1 |
March | 12 | -1 |
What is a year sift (used in NCY fiscal year variant)
In a calender year (CY) the normal month starts from January and ends in December. When we use a FY different from the CY, it generally ends at a different year instead of ending at December month. SAP wants to bring the non calendar year to CY functionality by sifting the year to the CY.
For example: You started your business from April and decided to have your FY as April to March or you want to go by your companies legal requirements and decided to have the FY as April to March. In both the cases the last 3 posting period i.e. January, February and March falls in a different FY which is not in the calendar year. So to bring uniformity if we use the year sift functionality as -1 by which the FY will sift to the current calendar year.
Year dependent FYV
It’s a FYV in which the periods vary from FY to FY i.e. the start and end date of the FYV is different from the dates of other FY. Year dependent FYV is also called year specific FYV as the variant created for each year is specific to that FY and in the next FY the variant’s start and end date changes.
If some FY used different number of posting periods then the FY is also called year dependent FY.
Shortened FY (Year dependent FSV)
Shortened FY is a year dependent fiscal year variant. If one year of a FYV has less than 12 posting periods then it is called shortened FY. This can happen if you have newly started up an organization which has only 6 posting period left and you want to close the FY with the 6 posting periods. You have to maintain shortened FY if you want to close the accounting year before the FY ends. Out of the standard SAP delivered fiscal year variant R1 is a Shortened FYV.
While creating a FYV it’s always suggested to copy the existing SAP delivered standard FYV according to your choice and make changes to it as per your requirement.