You can carry forward your general ledger account balances from one fiscal year to another by using transaction code F.16 or by using the following path;
SAP User Menu > Accounting > Financial Accounting > General Ledger > Periodic Processing > Closing > Carrying Forward > F.16 – Balance Carry Forward
Through this transaction all your balance sheet general ledger account balances are carried forward to there respective account next year with the additional account assignments and the balanced in profit and loss account is carried forward to the retrained earning account.
If you find any discrepancies between the closing and opening balance then this transaction can be rerun to have both the balance tally.
In the initial screen you enter following details to execute it;
- Ledger
- Company code
- Carry forward to fiscal year
You can select multiple company codes from this screen to process the transaction. We always suggest running this transaction on test run and after having satisfying result you process it with out selecting test run.
From the test run screen you can see the balances of balance sheet general ledger account and the balances to be transferred to retained earning account. By clickin on retained earning account you can display the balances that you have in a profit and loss account. You can analyze both and take further action to rectify the mistake. You can export the transactions to excel and can analyse outside SAP.
To carry forward balances of account payable and receivable we use different transaction code so you should not be confused with both the transaction code.
You can run transaction F.16 (carry forward general ledger account balances) multiple times in SAP as the system will not automatically updates opening balance in SAP for any changes to closing balances.
If you entered any transaction and because of that there are changes to the closing balance then this transaction needs to be run to get reflected closing balance as opening balance in next year.