1775202 - Error Message: Cannot change timeline of cost center XYZ; cost center is used by financial accounting

You are trying to check or activate an organization unit or organization structure, however the system raises the following error:

"Cannot change timeline of cost center XYZ; cost center is used by financial accounting" (where XYZ represents the org unit ID)

SAP Business ByDesign

1. Go to Organizational Management work center.
2. Select Edit Org Structures.
3. Insert an effective date and click on OK.
4. Select an Org unit.
5. Navigate to the Timelines tab of the org unit.
6. Modify the end validity date of the org unit.
7. Click on the Check button.
8. Click on Selected and Dependent Org Structures.
   Note: Alternatively, the same error happens when using the Activate button.

This error happens when the org unit being delimited is a cost center. There are different causes that may lead to this issue:

Cause 1:

There are postings which still exist for the cost center for a date after the end of the new validity. The system has prevented the shortening of the timeline to prevent the cost center from being inactive by the date of the postings.

This can be verified as follows:

1. Go to Cost and Revenue work center.
2. Enter the Reports view.
3. Open the report "Cost Centers - Line Items".
4. Enter the relevant cost center.
5. Click on the Go button.
6. In the results you will find postings for the date after the one being set as the end of the validity.

Cause 2:

The validity of the cost center is being split into more than one time period interval. This causes the error message since there is an open/active Financial Accounting for this cost center, since it is not possible to split the validity of the Cost Center even if the validity dates do not have any gaps.

Cause 3:

If the cost center validity of the org unit is already split in more than one time period interval and these timelines are merged into one, the error message happens for a similar reason as of cause #2.

Solution for Cause 1:

It is possible to end the timeline before a fiscal period with postings. In this case, the balance in the affected timeframe must be zero. In order to reach a balance of zero, try to reverse the journal entries that generated the postings. Where this is not possible, you can transfer the values so that the final balance would be zero. You can do this in the General Ledger work center under New Journal Entry Voucher.

After this adjust, you can change the validity of the org unit.

You may also choose to end the timeline of the cost center at the end of the latest fiscal period in which the cost center has postings. In this case, if you set the Valid To date of Org Units as the end date of the latest fiscal period, there should not be errors related to the financial accounting.

Solution for Causes 2 and 3:

To rectify the issue with splitting/merging time periods of the cost center, you can check the currently active version of the org Unit in the Active Area of the org structure and restore the same in the Planning Area.

For Example: if you merged the two time periods into one, then you can follow the below steps:

1. Go to Organizational Management work center.
2. Select Edit Org Structures.
3. Insert an effective date and click on OK.
4. Select an Org unit.
5. Navigate to the Definitions tab.
6. Uncheck the Cost center attribute.
7. Again mark the Cost center attribute.
8. Navigate to the Timelines tab.
   Here you can see the changes will be rolled back as they were in the old time period.
9. Set the effective from date as today's date.
10. Click on the Check button.
11. Click on Selected and Dependent Org Structures.

Posting, Timelines, Validity , KBA , SRD-MD-OM , Organizational Management , AP-OM , Organisational Management , Product Enhancement