Ledgers are used in general accounting to record financial transactions by account. Transactions are posted to these ledgers through journal entry and financial statements of companies are prepared based on it.
SAP has two types of ledgers;
- Leading
- Non Leading
Leading ledger
It’s created based on the accounting principles of a company’s consolidated financial statement. In an organisation, company’s financial data are posted into the leading ledger.
All subsidiary ledgers are integrated with it by which, data once posted to it are automatically gets updated in non leading ledger.
Generally leading ledgers are denoted as 0L. All company codes created in sap are automatically gets assigned to it. In SAP you cannot deactivate it.
By default, company code currency is assigned as local currency but you can assign two more additional currencies to it as parallel currency.
Values from leading ledgers are transferred to Controlling module.
Non Leading ledger
These are defined in addition to the leading ledger i.e. it’s defined in parallel to the main ledgers. To get it work for your company, you need to activate it in sap. It can be assigned with different fiscal year variant and different posting period variant per company code. These are used for parallel accounting or management accounting.
If you want any specific posting to non leading ledgers then you have to specifically select it in sap. Any positing specifically done to it will not reflect in leading ledgers.
Values from non leading ledgers are not transferred to Controlling module as you do not post any extra transaction to it. Only the difference in treatment of a particular transaction is entered in to it.
These are used for the preparation of different financial statements.
Example:
Suppose a company has global presence. Because of the legal requirements in EU and USA they have to maintain separate financial statements in addition to the local financial statements. To prepare such financial statements they have to treat different financial transactions differently based on the accounting principles that are applicable to their country. For this reason, non leading ledgers (NLL) are prepared based on the number of such legal requirements you have.
If you want to prepare financial statements for USA and India then you need to have one leading ledger (LL) for Indian financial statement (assuming that the company is register in India) and a NLL to prepare financial statements for USA.
Any posting to LL are automatically gets updated to NLL. To give effect for the differential amount due to accounting principle or some other reason, you have to use NLL posting.
You can display financial statements through transaction code F.01 or F.08.