That Prohibition on the disposal of assets (also prohibition of offsetting) is prohibited under § 246, paragraph 2 of the German Commercial Code (HGB), to offset items on the asset side with items on the liability side and expenses with income. Therefore, a company must present receivables and liabilities separately.
Background
The prohibition on aggregation is part of the principle of clarity and transparency. A knowledgeable third party should be able to quickly get an overview of the company’s situation based on the books. This prohibition ensures an unedited annual financial statement. Therefore, the gross principle applies to the profit and loss account (GuV); the net principle is prohibited. For example, a company may not account rental income for rental expenses and only report the surplus. Otherwise, the reader of the GuV would never know that there were also rental expenses.
Special cases
Professional sources cite cases where positions are charged. Capital companies are not allowed to show value adjustments on the liability side. Therefore, they account for the value adjustments in the closing balance sheet using the account “Accounts payable”. In the consolidated financial statements, the debt consolidation is calculated by comparing the debts and liabilities of the company because an entity cannot have any debts or liabilities towards itself. However, under the BilMoG, latent taxes on the liability and the asset side are not allowed to be offset with each other: they must not be settled together.
In SAP Business One
SAP Business One works with separate reconciliation accounts for receivables (debitors) and payables (creditors). According to the contribution, this separation is intended to be commercially legal.
Link to the post
The contribution limits the clearing prohibition to operational netting: According to its author, the prohibition concerns the balance sheet statement, not the operational payment settlement. If both parties agree and the settlement is properly booked, operational netting is permissible under the contribution. This classification is a statement in the contribution.
Demarcation
Related entries: Setoff, Netting (Versino Financial Suite).
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