What is posting key in sap?

Posting key is a two digit number which plays a very crucial role in posting an accounting document. As per standard practice, each key is used for a specific business transaction. Standard sap offer large number of predefined key. Custom key can also be created but often not required since large number of predefined key are good enough to serve the business requirement.

Let’s understand with example

Double book keeping mandates that, in every document sum of debit amount should be equal to sum of credit amount. Net of debit and credit in an accounting document should always be zero. Hence every accounting document will have some line items with debit balance and some line items with credit balance.

For example consider below document

Dr. is represented by number 40

Cr. Is represented by number 50

These numbers are called posting key. There are many more keys, each having specific purpose.

Posting key controls below

Type of posting: Debit or Credit

A Posting Key can only perform one action either debit or credit.

Example: key 40 is for debit, key 50 is for credit

 

Permitted account type: Asset/ customer/ vendor/ material/ GL account

In any accounting document, line item will have below fields entered

Posting Key + account + amount

Posting Key decides which type of account can be used with it.

Type of accounts in SAP

Field status: Suppress/ display/ optional/ required

As we already know, while posting an accounting document “input fields behave as per their status in field status group which is assigned to GL master”.

But field status group is not the only thing which controls field status; field status is also controlled by posting key(PK).

Field status conflicts between posting key and field status group

For a particular field, status in posting key might be different from status in field status group.

Then sap finalized the status in below order:

First priority Suppress: If the field status is ‘suppress’ in any of the two (posting key and field status group). Field status suppress prevails while posting document.

Second priority Display: If the field status is ‘display’ in any of the two (posting key and field status group). Field status display prevails while posting document.

Third priority Optional: If the field status is ‘optional’ in any of the two (posting key and field status group). Field status optional prevails while posting document.

Last priority Required: This field status gets the last preference.

GL ACCOUNTING

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

TAX ACCOUNTING

WITHHOLDING TAX

ASSET ACCOUNTING

SAP CONTROLLING

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