In case of cross company code reporting, financial statement contain items of several company codes. Reporting to the management could be a problem if all such company codes are not using same operating COA. If all of your company codes are assigned to same operating chart of account then internal reporting can be done through controlling area. However controlling area has a limitation of assigning same operating COA to all the company codes under a controlling area.
To fulfill legal requirements, company codes can use special COA i.e. operating COA specific to your requirements. In these kind of situations the objective of getting internal report through controlling area is not possible. To have internal reporting for your group you need to create group chart of account.
Group COAs can be used by creating all the group a/cs in it. After its creation, you assign it to an operating COA which in turn assigned to your company code. After this, a field “group account number” in the COA segment of your gl master in operating COA becomes a required entry.
In this field you can assign your group COA that you want to have a link from operating COAs. Different a/cs of one operational COA can be referred to the same group of a/c.
To get your consolidated financial statement for internal reporting you need to create one financial statement version for your group COAs. Group COAs are created with transaction code OB13. Again when you create operating COAs through same transaction code OB13, you assign the group chart of accounts to operating COA. A/cs in group COAs are assigned to a/cs in operating COA while creating COA segment through transaction code FS00.