Loading opening balances into Financial Consolidation

The opening balance is the balance that is brought forward to the beginning of an accounting period from the end of a previous accounting period or when a company first starts up its accounts.

To bring opening balances into Financial Consolidation, you can use one of these options:

  • Load opening balances from the source system.
  • Transfer closing balances of all data entry levels to the next period's opening balance with the Carry Forward Schedules function. This function calculates opening balances based on the existing values in Financial Consolidation. We recommend that you run the Carry Forward process after you load the data.
Caution: 
Do not combine these options. This can cause a conflict.

The opening balance is loaded with the 0 period from the Data in Local Currency integration table.

In Financial Consolidation, schedules have the system-created opening balance and closing balance details, but only if you configure the use of opening balances for schedules.

Before you start loading opening balances to Financial Consolidation, consider these conditions:

  • The Data in Local Currency integration table must contain the 0 value in the Period field. This value is loaded to Financial Consolidation and then translated to an opening balance.
  • In Financial Consolidation, opening balances can be represented as schedule details of a schedule or as schedule details of subschedules of a schedule.
  • You can load opening balances as schedule details of a schedule only if the schedule has no subschedules.
  • If a schedule has one or more subschedules, you cannot load opening balances directly to a schedule. This applies to schedule A, for example. You can load opening balances only as schedule details of subschedules.
  • You must assign an account to a schedule in the Group Accounts business object. This is to enable the loading of opening balances to schedule details that represent an opening balance.
  • If one or more subschedules of a schedule are required, you must configure subschedules in Business Modeling or load the subschedule definition from the integration tables.

    If the latter applies, you must meet these conditions:

    • Specify appropriate information in the ID, Name, and SubscheduleOf fields.
    • Specify 1 in the HasOpeningBalance field.
    • Define one subschedule of a schedule as the default subschedule.

    Example:

    This table shows a structure to load:

    Schedule Schedule description Schedule detail ID Schedule detail description
    A Assets and Depreciation
    A1 (subschedule of schedule A) Assets A1_OB Default opening balance
    A2 (subschedule of schedule A) Depreciation A2_OB Opening balance
    E Equity E_OB Opening balance

    This table shows what to specify in the fields of the Schedule integration table in order to load the structure:

    ID Name SubscheduleOf DefaultSubschedule HasOpeningBalance
    A Assets and Depreciation A1 0
    A1 Assets A 1
    A2 Depreciation A 1
    E Equity 1
    Note: You cannot load schedule details for A1_OB, A2_OB, and E_OB to the Schedule Detail integration table. In Financial Consolidation, those schedule details are built-in elements of the Schedule Details dimension and are automatically created for the schedules in which an opening balance is enabled.