Document Splitting in SAP New GL General Ledger

SAP ECC 6.0 New GL has a new functionality to create segment financial statements. With the help of document splitting one can allocate an expense line item between two segments. FI Document split and segment is covered via a ‘segment field’ which is a standard field in the
totals table in the New General Ledger FAGLFLEXT. So how does one go about document splitting.

Document splitting needs to be enabled first at the client level customizing. Once this is enabled, then document splitting can be activated / deactivated in each company code. Similarly, ‘Inheritance’ can be activated which provides the level of detail for a document split. To take an example, by activating inheritance one can create a customer invoice from a revenue line item. The business areas or segements are automatically populated in the general ledger view showing the customer and tax line items. Activation of ‘Inheritance’ is recommended with document splitting as this does not require the business to then create ‘rules’ for business processes to ensure that account assignments are projected.

Document splitting in New GL can be divided into passive split, active(rule based) split or clearing lines by document. With passive document splitting, during clearing of a document, the account assignments of the items to clear are inherited to the clearing line items. Active splitting works on the principle of defining splitting rules. Splitting rules are configured which are used by SAP to make a document split. Finally, in case of clearing lines, New GL creates clearing lines automatically to achieve a split. Document splitting is
one of the key functionalities enabled by SAP New GL to help deliver segmented financial statements.