Company codes generally represent the various legal entities within an organization. The Company Code is the lowest level for which you can produce a complete set of financial reports (balance sheet and P&L) for the SEC and other external filing agencies.
Organizations that have subsidiaries and multiple legal entities usually represent those with company codes.
The Basics for Creating a New Company Code
- Create a “Company”. This is not the same as Company Code. It would be the umbrella company to which company codes are assigned. It may already exist, if so you can skip. Path: SPRO -> Enterprise Structure -> Financial Accounting -> Define Company
- Create (T-code: OX02) or Copy (T-code: EC01) company code. It is generally recommended that you copy the Company Code if you have one that is similar (same chart of accounts [not the same books, but same account structure], same currency, etc). Copying brings over the settings of the original to the new one.
- Set City, Country, Currency, and Language for Company Code. Path: SPRO -> Enterprise Structure -> Financial Accounting -> Define, copy, delete, check company code…select Edit company code data…double-click on the company code in the table to take you to the details screen
- Assign company code to a chart of accounts (T-code: OB62). You can assign multiple company codes to the same chart of accounts. This does not interfere with each company code being able to produce its own complete set of financial statements. Mutliple charts of accounts may be necessary if dealing with foreign countries like France and Italy that have specific laws around the chart. Here is a related article discussing Company Codes and the Chart of Accounts.
- Once ready for production, Set Company Code to Productive. This prevents the deletion of certain transactions and data that can be deleted while in development. Path: SPRO -> Financial Accounting -> Financial Accounting Global Settings -> Set Company Code to Productive
Here is a view of SPRO and a couple of the paths to company code config.
its really great helpful who are working in real time.
Srinivas_angajala
Srinivas,
It is sometimes hard to find info on certain things in SAP. I hope the info I put out here helps. Please let me know if you find something in it that doesn’t seem right, or if you have any helpful advice to share on the topics.
Regards,
Byron
I am not able to create company code. It shows error while entering country key – India. Please clarify.
Hi Praveen,
What is the error message you are getting? If I can’t help, maybe somebody else might be able to.
Byron
Hi Byron,
Are there any merits / demerits or limitations of having single v/s multiple company code.
Can you help me with some input.
Hi Patrick,
A good rule of thumb, and probably the right rule of thumb, is that if you have separate legal entities, you should use separate company codes.
We have subsidiaries which are separate legal entities that are owned by our parent corporation. We have created different company codes for all of these. They use the same chart of accounts because none of them are actually on SAP. Even our Canadian sub has the US chart in SAP. They do their accounting in their system and send the books to us in a spreadsheet, which we use to load into our system.
I highly recommend going with separate company codes if you have separate legal entities. There may be some exceptions to that rule, but I am unaware of them. But if anyone is, please speak up.
If you don’t have separate legal entities, I don’t know of a reason that you would want to use separate company codes. You could very likely accomplish anything you want in either PCA or using one of the other structures.
Cheers!
Byron
Hello.
I am an accountant, and the company which I work for are proposing to integrate four separate legal entities in to one company code on SAP, rather than setting up multiple company codes in an effort to save cost and time. They are suggesting setting up separate cost centres and sales orgs for the new companies, and to amend all current reports to run by cost centre. My gut feeling is that it is a bad idea, and that it would create big problems when it comes to creating separate Financial Statements for the entities. However I do not have enough SAP experience and knowledge to back up my view point.
What is your opinion on this?
I agree with you, you will face problems if u want to generate seprate financial statements for seprate compnay. In my suggestion you must go for four different company codes under the unbrella of one. you can generate four seprate financial statements as well the consolidate balance sheetof one also.
ROG,
As Deepak suggests, the SAP standard for this situation would be to use 4 separate Company Codes. By definition, Company Codes are to be used for individual Legal Entities. This greatly facilitates producing the required financials and the consolidation of them.
Consolidations can be accomplished in a number of ways, including the built-in ECCS module.
Your company may have some very compelling reasons to not use separate company codes, but it should look for ways that it can make the standard work in this case, instead of ways it can make the single CoCode scenario work. This could save lots of headaches down the road.
Byron
i want to understand two company assign one company
and two personnel area assign then
and four personnel area assign then
and two employees group assign then
and four employees subgroup assign then?
Hi, About the company code creation, i had a doubt. Generally it is recommended that we should copy the company code from an existing company code. I find that while copying from source to target co code, there are default values for tax code – input and output tax code appearing in the target co. code. These values are visisble in Table T001. But am not able to find out how can i edit them. If i wish to have no values for input and output tax codes for the target co code, then how can i carry this out. Please advise.
hello
how to copy company code to another code ? how to copy g.l a/c’s into another company code pease explain with the screens
Regards
Sujji
Hi sir here is the details
Company code – 1000
Comapny name -ABC
citi Bangalore
Country – india
Currency – INR
Language -EN
I have created the new company but code is same , that is the reason I wanted to delete the company code
When I am trying to put INT it showing error
you may not change the currency since documents exist wtih this currency
Message no FC064
Diagnosis
The Currency of the Company code may not changed because there are still documents in this company code
procedure
if you want to change the currency of thiscompany code , you must first delete all cocuments in the company code (This is only possible if the company code is not productive)
Thnx
San