Last week there was some note in metalink for Oracle Critical patch (CPU)updates. Oracle spends a lot of time producing its Critical Patch Updates, but apparently most DBAs don’t pay much attention to them a website reported….read this intresting research note….

Read this:Research: Oracle Applications Not Secure

Over the coming weeks , I will feature a series(SAP-ORCL) of posts on some functionality gap among two great ERP product: SAP and Oracle.The posts will include comparative study ,answers in two product dimensions,the functionality gap and ofcourse end user/FinanceIT/ISD/IT department frustration with Oracle EBS which was replaced with SAP, as whole in term of initial acceptance.

Lets start with four question in ‘Security’ from end user prospective !

Is security defined by user, user group or a combination? Can this be set by Ledger/company/module or is it across the system?

In oracle security is defined by user - Responsibility -menus ,request set , which can be easily customized or tailored able and can be reused so can use include/exclude functions.Menu Exclusion is also embedded to exclude from standard menu list.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was one of the requirements of my current client, who has replaced SAP to Oracle.In migration there are journals from SAP systems are over 45,000+ lines long, so client are bit concern . I took lot of research over internet and metalink,and refer Oracle benchmark data sheet, it was no help, but still manage those activity.Finally , thought to share…

What we can assume we have to reach the maximum as the journal line ID allows 15 characters so 999,999,999,999,999 is theoretical maximum .

UBS have benchmarked the GL system and upload over 1 million lines per hour.

There is a case mention in document , and a benchmark test was conducted to validate overall performance.

• Data Load: Import and post at least 10M postings in less than 1 hour
• Month End: Perform a “period open” in less than 12 hours (transfer 500M balances into the next month)
• Daily Extract: Extract 500M balances in less than 60 minutes and calculate the daily balance sheet of the bank by cost center in less than 30 minutes

And these are the outcome of benchmark set of the EBS tool

• They Imported and posted 11.42M journals per hour
• Period Open on 500M balances in 11 hours and 8 minutes
• Extracted 500M balances (including the merge of 26 dimension values) in 48 minutes
• Generated the daily balance sheet on the base of 500M balances in 23 minutes

Sound great ! what you say.

Suggested Reading

• Oracle Applications Standard Benchmark
• Oracle Applications Standard Benchmark White Papers
  

Implementing a POS system in Healthcare sector is not easy task in Oracle application. In healthcare there is always a need to integrate with a POS solution for front desk user, which is exposed directly to end customer. The typical requirement for such kind of segments in term of ‘point of sales’ are:

• Transaction entry
• Receipt creation
• Receipt printing
• Recognizing the payment from Remittance bank.
• Reconciliation in General ledger

So what is POS Software?

POS stands for Point Of Sale. This is a rather broad definition that can include merchandising aids, displays and the methods used to enable transactions. A PC point-of-sale system designed around a standard personal computer.

Customers can add various peripherals to the system to meet their own particular needs. Basically a POS system consists of a receipt printer, a reader (check reader, magnetic stripe reader), keyboard, barcode scanner, applications, software, etc. The main goal of a POS system is to complete the whole transaction in an acceptable amount of time.

POS systems now are days can automate several other areas of company business and are not limited to simple cash register functions which was once a time. With new technological development these can be automate accounting functions like payroll, accounts receivable and payable, they can track inventory, control and automate price updates and much, much more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read this: Managing receipts for credit card or ACH transactions

Very similar to prepayment functionality in Oracle AR, the alternate options can be use of Receivables Automatic Receipts feature to automatically generate receipts for customers who use a credit card to remit payments for open debit items. By providing a credit card number as payment, your customer expects that the credit card issuer will transfer funds to your bank account as payment for their open debit items. The Automatic Receipts program lets you collect payments according to a predefined agreement with your customer. The Automatic Remittances program transfers funds from the customer’s bank account to yours on the receipt maturity date.

The Following Steps are Required to Process Credit Card Payments In Receivables:

• First things is to assign a credit card payment method and credit card bank account to the transactions that you want to pay by credit card in your oracle side. This assignment “flags” transactions for credit card payment.
• Next is to run the Automatic Receipts program and this will select the transactions that are flagged for credit card payment. The Automatic Receipts program creates a batch of receipts (payments) for the selected transactions.
• Then , approve the batch of automatic receipts to reserve the payment amount from your card holder’s account and close the selected transactions. When the approval process is complete, automatic receipts that do not require confirmation close the invoices that they are paying. Receipts that require confirmation close invoices when you manually confirm the receipts in the Receipts window.

As per Technical Reference manual(TRM) ,from the Oracle side , when you approve a batch of automatic receipts, Receivables checks the Payment Server Order Number (PSON ) field for each receipt in the batch. If the Approve Automatic Receipts program encounters a null value, then it generates a PSON and sends the receipt batch to Oracle iPayment for credit card authorization. iPayment integrates with third party payment processors to authorize your customer’s credit card account number and assign an approval code to the transaction. If authorization is successful, then iPayment assigns the approval code and the receipt is approved. If authorization is not successful, then the receipt is rejected from the batch. If the PSON exists, then Receivables will not attempt to authorize, but will create and approve the receipts. We will take ipayment architecture in greater details in some other post.

• Then, have to create and approve a remittance batch to request transfer of funds from the credit card issuer to your bank. For automatic receipts, you remit receipts to your bank so the bank can transfer funds from the customer’s account to your account on the receipt maturity date. For manual receipts, the bank credits your account when the customer’s check clears. The remittance process initiates the transfer of payment for transactions that are paid by credit card or electronic funds transfer . The remittance process is very similar to the automatic receipt creation process. You must Create, Approve, and Format your remittances. You can combine these operations into a single step or perform each separately. You can either create one remittance batch per remittance bank account or choose a clearing institution. If you choose a clearing institution, Receivables will select all the receipts belonging to remittance banks that have this clearing institution assigned to them.

Following Step are The Key Set Up Considerations for Credit Card Set Up in Receivable

1. Step-1 Define Remittance (Internal) Bank Account
   Define Remittance Bank
   Setup->Receipts->Bank
2. Step-2 Define Receipt Class
   Define Receipt Class
   Setup->Receipts->Receipt Class
3. Step-3 Create And Assign Document Sequence For Automatic Receipts
4. Step-4 Verify That The Ipayment Server URL Is Defined
   In Sysadmin
   Profile->System
   Check Site Level
   Query Profile: ICX: Payment Server URL
5. Step-5 Create Invoice And Flag For Credit Card Processing
6. Step-6 Run Automatic Receipts For Approval
   N->Receipt -> Batches
   Provide Appropriate Values For Automatic Receipts,Payment Method,Receipt Class and approve in the last.
7. Step-7 Run Automatic Remittances For Capture
   Receipts->Remittance
   Choose The Batch That You Created And Run Automatic Remittances. This Program Captures (Settles) The Funds Via The Ipayment Server.

Suggested Reading

• Managing receipts for credit card or ACH transactions
• ACH briefing
• Managing receipts for credit card or ACH transactions - Part II