Fiscal Year Variant in SAP S/4 HANA

Govind
Apr 17
2 min read

Updated: Apr 19

A Fiscal year is the accounting year used by a company to record and report financial transactions. It's the period for which financial statements like the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss ( P&L ) are prepared.

In SAP, the Fiscal year Variant defines:

The start and end dates of the financial year.
How the year is divided into periods for accounting (usually months).
The rules for posting financial documents in those periods.

SAP provides both standard and customizable fiscal year variants. Below are the two commonly used standard fiscal year variants:

K4 Calendar year
V3 Non calendar year (April 1st to March 31st).

Calendar year

This type of fiscal year starts on January 1st and has 12 posting periods, each corresponding to a calendar month.
Standard fiscal year variant provides by SAP is K4 (Jan 1st to December 31st).

Non Calendar year

This fiscal year does not start on January 1st. Any 12-month period not starting in January
Standard fiscal year variant provided by SAP is V3 (April 1st to March 31st).

Year Dependent	Year Independent
Year Dependent - With a year-dependent fiscal year variant, you can define a different fiscal year structure for each calendar year. This means that the fiscal year variant can change from one calendar year to another. If Every Year is different (either the number of Posting periods or Days in period).	Year Independent - Fiscal Year Variant is a type of fiscal year variant configuration that remains constant across all calendar years. This maintains the same fiscal year structure regardless of the calendar year. Every Year have the Same Number of Period and Same number of Days.

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Year Shift

A Year Shift allows you to align fiscal periods with a different calendar year, especially in non-calendar year variants.

Here’s how SAP uses year shift in a fiscal year like April to March (V3):

	Calendar Month	Calendar Day	FY period	Year Shift Indicator
Jan	1	31	4	0
Feb	2	29	5	0
Mar	3	31	6	0
April	4	30	7	0
May	5	31	8	0
June	6	30	9	0
July	7	31	10	0
Aug	8	31	11	0
Sept	9	30	12	0
Oct	10	31	1	+1
Nov	11	30	2	+1
Dec	12	31	3	+1

Shortened Fiscal Year

A Shortened Fiscal Year has fewer than 12 posting periods and is typically used when:

A company is newly formed
Mergers or restructurings occurs
Legal or regulatory changes require adjustments
This type of fiscal year must be year-dependent.

Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (OB29).

SPRO -> SAP Reference IMG -> Financial Accounting -> Financial Accounting Global Settings -> Ledgers -> Fiscal Year and Posting Periods -> Maintain Fiscal Year Variant

Assign Company code to a Fiscal Variant (OB37).

SPRO -> SAP Reference IMG -> Financial Accounting -> Financial Accounting Global Settings -> Ledgers -> Fiscal Year and Posting Periods -> Assign Company Code to a Fiscal Variant