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
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 am
HI,
I wanted to know the difference between SEM-BCS and EC-CS. Can we have EC-CS in SAP ERP 5. Does SAP supports, does it work the same way as SAPR/3 4.7. is there any difference.
Client does not want to go for BW.
Thanks in advance.
sesh.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hi sesh,
I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t see any reason that EC-CS wouldn’t operate the same in ERP 5 as it does in R/3 4.7.
We are upgrading from 4.6c to ECC6 with EC-CS, and we aren’t having to do anything special to keep it running. I SAP has done a great job of keeping most things pretty stable across the different versions.
Maybe someone else out there knows of critical differences with EC-CS in 4.7 versus ERP 5???
Cheers!
Byron
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:03 am
Hi Byron,
Great article!
We are in the process of creating report painter reports for EC-CS using table FIMC. Everything seems fine, except when viewing the figures in the report it looks like the consolidated financial statement only shows figures that were posted in the period selected. The problem here is that if you compare it with the normal Financial Statement for one company code (transaction F.01) the balance sheet items are not cumulative for the period. This means if I run a consolidated report for 2008, the balance sheet does not include the 2007, 2006, etc figures.
By the way, in response to Sesh’s question, we use ERP 5 for ECCS and it works exactly 4.7.
Thanks
Peter
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hi Peter,
Thanks for dropping by!
It’s been a year and a half since I left Accounting for IT and now I can’t back into production to see what I did in my FIMC reports in Report Painter, so I’m going to be guessing here (that’s a long way to apologize for not having a black and white answer)….
1) Are you showing any beginning balances? If your beginning balances are missing, make sure your prior year has data, then make sure the roll forward is correct (I think there’s a roll forward t-code for EC-CS, but I can’t be sure).
2) In GR52, I think I recall having to create add all the balances together for all periods + period 0 (beginning balances) to get good balance sheet figures.
Sounds like your issue could be either of those items unless I’m misunderstanding your question.
Let me know if that doesn’t help and I’ll think on it some more.
Cheers and Merry Christmas!
Byron
December 24th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Hi Byron,
Nice memory for a year-and-a-half hiatus
It was the period 0 option that made it work.
Thanks and Merry Christmas!
Peter
December 28th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Peter,
Excellent! Glad I was able to help.
Byron