Transfer Program

In Oracle Applications, modules such as AP, AR, PO, INV ,PA and WIP have concurrent processes that take the information from database structures in which the business activity is stored and inserts it into the GL_INTERFACE table.

Here are the list of some of the transferring concurrent programs are:

• Payables Transfer to General Ledger aka APPPST (AP)
• Create Journal Entries aka FAPOST(FA)
• General Ledger Transfer Program ak ARGLTP(AR)
• AX Transfer to GL akaAXXPSTGL(AX)
• Interface Burden Cost to GL PADTBC(PA)
  • PRC: Interface Labor Costs to General Ledger PAGGLT(PA)
  • PRC: Interface Usage Costs to General Ledger PASGLT(PA)
  • PRC: Interface Revenue to General Ledger PATTGL(PA)
• Transfer transactions to GL INCTGL(Inv)
• Payroll Transfer to GL(PAY)

Journal categories used while AP to GL Transfer

As you know journal categories classifications used to indicate the purpose or nature of your journal entry.Therefore in Payable the categories which are used are Invoices (also called Purchase Invoices), Payments, and All (both Invoices and Payments) and Reconciled Payments (for Payment Clearing and Payment Unclearing Events).

More Important the type of journal category you can select depends on the accounting method that you have selected for your set of books.

Doing a Transfer to GL from AP

After you create accounting entries in Payables, submit the Payables Transfer to General Ledger program which send invoice and payment accounting entries to the general ledger interface which is triggered with Journal Import program.

How and what Payables Populates into GL

Except Oracle Fixed Assets module, most of subledger transfer program moved via GL_Interface table.

Once you submit the payables transfer to General Ledger program , the data get populates into GL Interface table with accounting information for Payables transactions.

If you use Oracle General Ledger, then Journal Import uses the data in the GL Interface to create journal entries and populates the General Ledger GL_JE_BATCHES, GL_JE_HEADERS,GL_JE_LINES, and GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES tables.

When the Payables Transfer to General Ledger program transfers accounting information to the GL Interface, it always populates the following columns:

• GL_SL_LINK_ID: value is a unique, sequential number
• GL_SL_LINK_TABLE: value is APECL for Payables actuals, and APENCL for Payables encumbrances.

When you submit the Payables Transfer to General Ledger program you specify whether you want to transfer accounting information in summary or detail, and you specify the journal category. The parameters you select affect what is transferred to GL Interface columns REFERENCE21–REFERENCE30.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wireless Approval : What is meant for EBS user community

Oracle Business Approvals for Managers is a new class of task focused built mobile application to enhance productivity via immediate notification of key tasks needing review /action, with relevant analytics provided to support and better decision-making.

This allow you to secure access to business information on the go

• Performance Indicators
• Contact Information
• Sales data

This can be carried out Apple iPhone through flexible user interface features.

Benefits in Oracle EBS

This allows executives and managers to respond quickly and easily to common tasks such as approvals for Finance, Purchasing,HR and Sales. These are the some of activity that they can do..

• Expense approval
• HR Job Offer & Vacancies
• Purchase Requisition
• Sales Quotes

Other key features are:

• Oracle BI Apps pre-built Analytics : Oracle Business Approvals for Managers allows users to view and interact with approval tasks that include expenses,purchase requisitions, job vacancies and job offers that originate from Oracle enterprise applications. Additionally,related business intelligence from Oracle Business intelligence enterprise Edition Plus or Oracle Business Intelligence Applications can be associated with approval tasks as an option to provide insight to support approval decisions.
• Oracle SOA / BPEL technology :Oracle Business Approvals for Managers is tightly integrated with Oracle enterprise applications through the deployment of flexible and powerful Oracle SOA Suite technologies in a companion product called Oracle Business Approvals Connector
  for Managers.This also leverages the Identity Management facility within Oracle SOA Suite to authenticate user security which supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.

System Requirement

These are versions of software required.

• Apple iPhone 2.1 Software
• Oracle Business Approvals Connector for Managers 1.0
• Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0.4 (Purchasing, iProcurement, Financials, Human Resources or iRecruitment)
• This is currently supported only in english

iPhone + Apps R12 Integration Architecture

Check it out Steven Note, details post for iPhone + Apps R12 Integration Architecture

How much you have to pay

• With assumption if you are using R12.0.4 with pre-requisite product, You have to pay extra for licensing cost for Oracle Business Approvals Connector.
• Managers iPhone client application can be downloaded for free of cost from iTunes App Stores sites.

Moving Forward

As per Oracle Datasheet Oracle plan is to extend this feature in CRM area in near future and will be supported in other language.

Reference Notes

Check it out some of official documents from Oracle.

• Oracle Business Approvals for Managers
• Oracle Business Approvals for Managers Datasheet Download
• Oracle. Business Approvals Connector for Managers Configuration Guide Download

User may request you for enabling or disabling menu for File -> Export in Oracle Forms.

Take a note, File ->Export works itself on the basis of User Cursor Control.

1. If Cursor control is at block where we can view multiple records at a time, the Export function is enabled.

2. If Cursor control is at block where we can view single record at a time, the Export function is disabled.

The reason for providing this functionality is that if there are many records in a block, then it might be difficult for the user to scroll down to view all the records in that block. So, the user can actually export them using the Export function.

Moreover there is no profile option which gives you control for this function.

Oracle Applications allows you to export data that you see on the form to a file - like excel - which can be then be used as a normal excel file. These are really useful when you want a quick dump of the data for reference or are trying to trouble-shoot some issue.

The File - Export option allows you to dump the data you see on the form (or data set you have queried).

The default is a file type called "tsv", that means tab separated values and can be opened by default in Notepad in most cases, but can also be configured to open in Excel, which is a choice for most of user.

Problem : How Can you do a Setup File->Export as an XLS Type File default?

Here are the steps

1. Go to Explore(not IE) ->Tool -> Folder Options

Fig 1

2. Check out for TSV File format , if not exist , create a new type by Pressing NEW button.

Fig 2

3. Now you need to setup default to excel, go to change Button in fig 2, and point to Microsoft Excel

Fig 3

Hard Time this week for me ,struggling with Finance user from another entity to see unexpected things reported , Out of the box File -> export function was not working properly, some of them reported Browser crashing some of them reported data not exported 100% from form, some of them reported longer duration to export for nearly 500 records from Invoice Inquiry or Invoice Entry form.

There are few cases which user can experience

• File - Export does not bring up a Save As prompt
• File -Export may leads to Browser crashes
• File - Export takes long time to export into Excel
• File - Export not exporting 100% data from form
• File - Export creates zero byte file
• File -Export on selecting "Continue to End" causes system to hang

More less, these problems are encountered by some additional setup requirement in IE . Here are few troubleshooting points, if you are using IE 6 or 7.

1. Make sure your browser will have setup completed for these 2 categories:

You should follow these Steps:

• Go to IE Tools menu - Internet Options - Security - Custom Level
• Adjust all the settings for ActiveX Controls and Downloads to be either 'enable' or prompt for zones Internet, Local Intranet, and Trusted Zones
• Restart the browser and now test if the export process works

2. Make sure if users desktop are using a proxy server to access the web via MSIE. If you set "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" in Internet Options -> Connection -> LAN Settings check if the File > Export works without error.

3. Make sure you have set System Profile Options 'Export: Mime type' to 'text/tab-separated-values' or or 'application/vnd.ms-excel'

4.Delete Browser Cache > Tools > Internet Options > zone=temporary internet files : delete files {checked offline content}

5. You should also delete C:program files/oracle/jinitiator<version>/jcache/*

6. Make sure you disable Pop-up Blocker

7. If you have still an issue , try this based out of note :338545.1

• Make sure you have checked step 1,2,3.
• Login to AP responsibility and try exporting from the data from Invoice workbench after search for invoice batch.
  Are you able to export?
• If not ,Go to (Tool Bar) Help -> Diagnostics -> Examine
  Set Block = ENVIRONMENT
  Set Field = FND_EXPORT_DEBUG
  Set Value = TRUE
• Export and observe the messages that are generated during the export process.
  What is the last pop up message ?
• Try to run the following piece of code in SQLPLUS*

declare
db_file number;
mime_type varchar2(255) :='text/plain' ;
out_string varchar2(32767) :='Just some plain text that is stored' ;
web_server_prefix varchar2(500);
url varchar2(500);
begin
fnd_global.apps_initialize(user_id => <put your user id>,resp_id => <put your resp id>,resp_appl_id => <put your appl id>);
DBMS_SESSION.SET_NLS('NLS_LANGUAGE','AMERICAN');
db_file :=fnd_gfm.file_create(content_type =>mime_type,program_name=> 'export');
fnd_gfm.file_write_line(db_file,out_string);
db_file :=fnd_gfm.file_close(db_file);
url:=fnd_gfm.construct_download_url(fnd_web_config.gfm_agent,db_file,TRUE);
dbms_output.put_line(url);
end;

If still not able to fix, ask Oracle for further resolution.

8.If you are not able to 100% export in excel do a quick check

Run this query immediatly after Export get completed
select count(*) from fnd_lobs where program_name='export';

If counts not matches then you need to recreate the index using script $FND_TOP/sql/aflobbld.sql. This is because the File/Export functionality of EBS uses system LOB columns to store temp data before it is outputed to a browser. If that temp data becomes large enough as the result of large export query set, then the max_extents limitation of the column is reached thereby causing the export to fail.

Most of my user experinces these issues with WIN2K or XP SP1 and SP2, but not with SP3.No clue for me with service pack.

Is there any linkage with window XP or 2000 .Net Framework installation and Service pack in client desktop for this feature? Do share some thoughts if anyone got such kind of issue in past.

Before start of this topic you should be clear on these term;

• Encumbrance
  This is your any pre-expenditure, such as a purchase order, which will lead to a charge against an account.
• Commitment
  A journal entry you make to record an anticipated expenditure, as indicated by approval of a requisition.
• Obligation
  An encumbrance you record when you turn a requisition into a purchase order.

So...What Are Commitments?
Commitments are obligations for future expenditures made , and this should be for an employee or vendor PO's. Commitments are tracked to help departments forecast their expenditures so that they do not exceed their budget available.

If you are using encumbrance you can get answer of these two question.

• How much do I have left to spend?
• Alert me if spending too much from allocated budget.

How much I left to spend , will be based out of these formula

Funds Available = Budget - Actual - Encumbrances.

budget is always unaltered, Encumbrances is reversed when matching to AP invoice.

Oracle Vanilla encumbrance accounting -Briefing

Oracle encumbrance accounting feature is supported by a process called funds reservation, which is implemented in the General Ledger as a user-exit or spawned program.

What is required if enabled Purchase Orders and Purchase Requisitions to first undergo a funds check when they are submitted. The system checks the line amount(s) of the requested purchase against the budget for the GL account(s) and alerts the user if that PO or Req. will exceed the funds on the account.This process of verification of available funds based on pre-defined summary templates.

Journals are then recorded in a special table called GL_BC_PACKETS, where they will sit temporarily before being converted by a concurrent process called “Program – Create journal” into permanent encumbrance journals.

The modules capable of initiating such transactions are the purchasing module for the creation of three documents, Standard Purchase Order, Requisition and Purchase Order Releases and the Accounts Payable module for the different invoices. It is possible to control the type of encumbrance created by these modules via the set-up of the applications.

The benefit of the encumbrance accounting feature is the ability to have the system control the expenditure budget from the General Ledger, reducing the risks of potential over expenditure.

This is often a legislated requirement for public organizations.

The transactional flow has funds reservation being performed through the GL_BC_PACKETS table when reserving funds for purchasing documents, and through the GL_INTERFACE table for receipt accruals which can be either On Receipt or at Period End. The funds checker process takes place whenever funds reservation and/or adjustment is made.

After transactions have taken place in Purchasing, it will become necessary to run the Create Journals program in GL. This program essentially sweeps through the GL_BC_PACKETS table and creates journals for the entries as entered.

Essentially this process allows the different manager to understand their “funds available” based on the following formula.

Funds Available = Budget – Actual – Encumbrance

The Oracle system has the ability to control this formula per fiscal period using the different balances tracked within GL_BALANCES (Essentially the General Ledger) by PTD (Period To Date), QTD (Quarter To Date), YTD (Year To Date),PJTD (Project To Date).

If you are coming from other Products like SAP or SUN , let clear these two terms in Oracle context in Project module specific.

• Actual Transactions - Actual transactions are recorded project costs. Which may includes labor, expense report, usage, burden, and miscellaneous costs.
• Commitment Transactions - Commitment transactions are anticipated project costs. Such examples include purchase requisitions and purchase orders or contract commitments.

Basic Oracle Process

The basic process flow for encumbrance accounting activity related to Oracle Purchasing typically is as follows:

1. Create a requisition.
2. Approve and reserve funds for the requisition.
3. AutoCreate requisition onto a purchase order.
4. Approve and reserve PO (which automatically reverses the requisition funds reservation)
5. Receive against the purchase order (either period-end or online accruals) and the funds are reversed for the amount received and entered against the charge account.

Take a note, funds reversal also occur when documents are cancelled or finally closed.

Requisitions, when autocreated onto a purchase order, have their funds reversed either when the PO is approved and reserved or when the requisition line(s) are rejected or returned.

Oracle Product associated with encumbrance

• General Ledger
• Purchasing
• Payables
• Projects
• Grants

Next will see Accounting Treatment in encumbrance.