When is 'Clearing Balance Sheet' and 'Clearing Inc Stmt item' used?

Question

Hi,
In what circumstances, clearing balance sheet item and clearing inc stmt items are used. Commonly, it's used for balance carry forward task, where system recognized the net profit for the year (in PL) and current ytd profit (in BS).
i was trying to post the following entry via manual posting and system generated additional 2 lines:
DR Sales 100
CR AR 100
DR Clearing BS item 100 < System auto generated additional one line
CR Clearing PL item 100 < System auto generated additional one line
(The above entry is enter at posting level 01)
I was trying to post another  2 balance sheet items via manual posting at posting level 30. There was no additional 2 lines created.
Please advise.
Regards, Renee

Answer 1

Rene,
In real life there are usually closing periods in enterprises, when accountant close their books. Closing partially means that all revenues/gains and expenses/costs are summed up, and net profit in income statement calculated. During this procedure accountants usually make closing entries. After that this calculated net profit is to be transferred to balance sheet, to the retained earnings of the current year item.
In SAP SEM-BCS there are no closing entries. Instead, the system monitors whether entries in P&L were made. The P&L hierarchy in BCS has the following structure:
- one main node under which all revenues and expenses are gathered
- clearing item located OUTSIDE the P&L main node (equals to net profit).
The amount on the clearing item equals the sum of all P&L items under main node, with the opposite sign. So, the sum of P&L items & clearing item is zero.
If the system detects postings to the items located under P&L main node, it recalculates the net profit and adjust the clearing item in P&L accordingly. Since net profit in P&L should correspond to the RE in B/S, the system adjust clearing item in B/S also. So, AT ANY MOMENT the B/S & P&L in the system correspond each other. The work of special/clearing items is like pseudoclosing.
That's the purpose of these clearing items. And as I said earlier  they has nothing to do with balance carryforward.
Resume: in case of postings to P&L, the net profit changes and the system adjusts net profit in P&L & B/S (adds two additional entries).
There is NO NET PROFIT CHANGE (and additional entries) when postings made in the balance sheet ONLY (as in your case). -- (As you know, there is almost no possibility to make postings to clearing item in B/S).