SAP-FICO: Overview of EC-CS Consolidations
Consolidating multiple companies into a unified, consolidated set of financial statements is an art form. In SAP, two common ways of producing consolidated financials are EC-CS (Enterprise Controlling - Consolidation System) and through reporting in BW (Business Warehouse). This post deals primarily with EC-CS.
EC-CS gives you a means of rolling up multiple company codes into a unified set of books. If you use multiple charts of accounts, the best option is to create Group Chart of Accounts and map your other charts to it. Your Group Chart of Accounts can then feed into your Consolidation Chart of Accounts.
Features of EC-CS
- Consolidate multiple company codes
- Import data from the General Ledger to cons units
- Manual and automatic eliminations between Consolidation Units (cons units are tied to a Company, which is tied to a Company Code(s))
- Eliminations within a cons unit
- Reclassifications
- Database viewer to view imported records, elimination/reclass records, and manual journal entry records
- Upload data from Non-SAP systems (set up this feature in: CXCC). I’m not familiar with the capabilities of this function
- Report Painter reporting (GR55)
You can report your consolidated financials either through BW or through Report Painter reports (T-code: GR55). For Report Painter, you will need to create a reporting Library (T-code: GR21), utilizing table FIMC. You’ll also need to specify your consolidations ledger while building your reports in GRR1 (or GR52).
Basic T-codes for EC-CS
- CX16 - Consolidation Chart of Accounts - Hierarchy Change
CX16 allows you to build your Consolidation Chart of Accounts within a hierarchy. Unfortunately, you can’t just copy one of your regular charts of accounts. You have to build the cons chart of accounts from scratch in CX16 (they can also be upload from PC file through T-code: CX1I0 & CX1I2…path: SPRO -> Enterprise Controlling -> Consolidation -> Master Data -> Financail Statement Items -> Copy FS Items from PC File by means of Flexible Upload). You can create multple hierarchies of your FS Items within this t-code. Right-click on the top node and select Create in order to start a new hierarchy. - CXCD - Data Montior
The data monitor allows you transfer financial data from the SAP General Ledger into the consolidations ledger. The balances come in by cons unit, which is mapped to a company. A company can be made up of one or more company codes and will carry in the balances of its constituent company codes.The Data Monitor does the following thing:- You can run the various actions at the total level or individual cons units
- Shows overall status
- Carryforward status
- Data entry
- Retained earning/Item substitutions
- Validate reported data
- Manual standardizing
- Curency translation
- Validate standardized data
- Database Listing of Records
In CXCD, click Goto/Database Listing of Records. This allows you to view the items imported from the General Ledger as well as manually posted items. You can limit by Posting Level which indicates the type of record being viewed.
- CX20 - Consolidation Monitor
The Consolidation Monitor allows you to:- Eliminate inter-unit payables and receivables
- Eliminate inter-unit sales
- Eliminate investment income
- Perform manual eliminations
- Consolidate investment income
- Perform manual reclassifications
- Validate consolidated data
Automatic eliminations must be set up in Implementation Guide (SAP IMG). You can configure tasks and task groups and assign these to consolidation groups.

August 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hi Byron,
Greetings
We are doing a prototype for a Client with Consolidation functionality. There are 6 Company Codes to consolidate.
We had tested some data in the prototype, and at a later stage we configured the Consolidation setup.
My problem is how we can bring the old data into the consolidation setup..??
Thanks in advance for your help in this regard.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:47 am
Hi Chaps,
Sorry for the delay in answering your question…my email notification didn’t come through for some reason.
Unlike GL or PCA, it is a bit easier to go back in time and reload prior period consolidations data. You should be able to unlock those prior periods and run through the Data Monitor and Consolidations Monitor tasks for each period. We had to do this a year or so ago. Ended up going back 12 months and running through it again.
Byron