General Ledger company
The company is the highest organizational element in the General Ledger application. It can represent any business or legal entity of an organization, such as a corporation, holding company, division, or region. You can assign a chart of accounts, base operating currency, status, fiscal calendar, operating rules, levels, and more to a company.
You structure your company to match your business needs. Your first decision is whether you will need multiple companies or just a single company. You can include multiple legal entities in one General Ledger company. You also have the option to define up to 9,999 separate companies in General Ledger that can be consolidated for reporting and inquiry. See Determining the need to define multiple companies and Alternatives to multiple companies.
Accounting units and levels
A company can include up to five levels of accounting units. An accounting unit represents a location or business center in a General Ledger company, such as a division, department, region, or store. A level represents a layer in a company structure's hierarchy. For example, a company structure might include three levels: region, division, and department. Each level is part of, or reports up into, the level above it. Accounting units are covered in detail in following chapter. See Accounting unit.
Single company example
LGE Corporation defined a single general ledger company for the entire organization that included four divisions. This example shows this company structure, with LGE Corporation as the general ledger company and each division as an accounting unit at the highest level in the company structure.
