What is GL master in sap?

Account currency:

If maintained any currency other than company code currency, then document can be posted only in the maintained currency. If currency maintained in GL master is same as company code currency then document can be posted in any currency. Standard practice is to keep account currency same as company code currency. Only in rare cases (foreign currency balance sheet account) a different currency is used.

Tax category:

What type of tax code can be used with the GL account? This field decided if only input tax code should be accepted or only output tax code should be accepted or both type of tax code is allowed in the document.

Posting without tax allowed:

If ticked then document should get posted with or without tax code provided. It’s not mandatory to provide tax code for posting document.

Alternate account number:

When country chart of account is being used then it becomes mandatory to assign each GL account in operational chart of account to a GL account in country chart of account.

Line item display:

Over a period of time, a particular GL account would have got posted huge number of times. Now if you want to trace back the details of all the postings to this GL account, sap has provided line item reports (T code: FBL3N) where GL account can be provided as input and details of all the posting comes as output. But line item report works only for those GL accounts which have lime item display ticket in GL master.

Open item management:

Some GL account postings are initially kept as open item. Status ‘open item’ refers to the fact that some action is pending on this account. When that pending action is completed, then status ‘open item’ changes to status ‘cleared item’. E.g. Salary payable account is initially kept open, when salary is paid then open item status changes to cleared item, GR/IR account is open when good is received, GR/IR account is cleared when invoice is received.

Accounts which are kept as open item managed: Bank sub-account or bank clearing account, GR/IR clearing account, VAT payable, salary payable etc.

Sort key:

When a document is posted, field ‘assignment’ gets auto populated with some data. Sort key maintained in GL master decides what data should get populated in assignment field. E.g. Posting date, document date, purchase order number etc.

Authorization group:

This is used when you want to allow only certain employees to have access to GL master (change, display) and can post the document using this GL account.

Accounting clerk:

Person responsible to keep track of all the postings in the GL account. It’s his/her responsibility to maintain the GL master and clear the balances whenever needed.

Field status group:

It decides the behavior of input fields while posting a document. Field behave as per their status (suppress, required, optional) in field status group assigned in the GL master.

Post automatically only:

There are two ways to post a document: automatic and manual. In order to protect the authenticity of data some GL account are blocked for manual intervention and only automatic posting is allowed. This automatic posting get generated when a certain event is triggered e.g. Sales account get automatically posted when customer is invoiced, GR/IR account get automatically when GR/ IR takes place, tax account get automatically posted when tax relevant transaction taken place (tax code is entered in the document) etc.