Trading Community Architecture (TCA) is a structure which was based out of R11 Customer Model designed to support complex trading relationships to cater additional need which further extended in R12 with Supplier and Bank. So, TCA is a data model that allows you to manage complex information about the parties, or customers or suppliers or bank who belong to your commercial community, including organizations, locations, and the network of hierarchical relationships among them.

What is Trading Community Architecture (TCA)?

What is TCA, the Trading Community Architecture? Is TCA an Oracle Applications module? Is it functionality within an Oracle module? These are few common question, and there are often many answers given.

The TCA is a data model that supports the entry and management of entities that you interact with. So lets revisit the concept.

Trading Community Architecture is a Very flexible, very robust model which defines the components involve in trading within in E-business Suite.

The implementation of technology and applications to allow users to create and maintain relationships among entities

The universal data schema for customers, prospects, suppliers, distributors, resellers, consortiums, bank across all Oracle EBS applications

TCA not only allows for the tracking of relationships between the implementing organization and its trading partners, but also tracks relationships between the trading partners themselves.

You should also note, TCA is neither an Oracle Applications module nor requires separate license.

If you see TCA guide, you can find these are the key features of TCA

• Provides a foundation for a single source for customer information.
• Ability to represent all business entities as a “Party” (organizations, people, groups, relationships) and to handle them the same way. This approach provides flexibility to accommodate all B2B, B2C and hybrid models in the same repository.
• Many-to-many relationships between Parties and Locations, that allows for less duplication and easier updating.
• Capability for advanced relationship modeling between entities within the trading community. Any party can figure in any number of Party Relationships even within matrix hierarchies (relationship networks).
• Ability to setup and maintain any number of party classifications which can be used for reporting and assignment purposes.
• Extensible data model to enable various business data requirements.
• In reality , three entities Drive in the TCA model , which are Party, Account, and Relationships.

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Take a note ,when you are dealing with Health care or Telecom client,there is specific requirement for maintaining addressee field, which can be used for one of the attribute for billing purpose. Though this is not a correct Field in AR context , but still you can use to cater customer need. Products like SAP have this feature in Customer Master.

So what will you do , if you are dealing with customer Migration.

Dealing in Migration - Couple of options

1. Use TCA API’s - this will take care of most of field that you can see in customer master screen.
2. Use of Customer Import - The Field is not getting populated by interface table cum import program.
3. Use Customer import + TCA API’s to update customer site : This you can achieve.

Option 3 is bit realistic and safer if you are dealing with thousands of customer Migration.

The Field called “Addressee” on Customer Address Form

Addressee field is potentially used to assist with the interface with iStore. Receivable in real sense does not have any significance unless you are customizing your statement of account(SOA) or sales invoice format.

How it works

Addressee is used when an order is made by a customer and is shipped somewhere else.

It is just like you purchase a book and have it shipped to your friend . Your friend becomes the addressee at the address that the book is sent to.

Therefore you can use ADDRESSEE column to store an alternative displayed name which can be used in place of the party name on mailing labels or other external documents.

The usage of this column may vary in different applications within Oracle EBS.

Oracle Shipping

Oracle Shipping will display the column on mailing label for ship to customer when the customer account owning party is a party of party type PERSON.

Oracle OM

Order Management may display the column in a sales order along with the customer name (from party name), ship to org name (from customer site use simplifying the process of creating the on-time ship to address.

Oracle CRM Product

CRM iStore will use the column to display the person name in a personal address book since CRM consider that it is a huge overhead to create a party record for each person in a personal address book.

Technical walk through

TCA table HZ_PARTY_SITES parking the column data in ADDRESSEE field.

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Three banks you can manage in EBS

• House Bank or internal bank
• External bank for supplier and Customer
  • Supplier (or External) bank accounts are created in Payables, in the Supplier Entry forms. Navigate to Suppliers -> Entry. Query or create your supplier. Click on Banking Details and then choose Create. After you have created the bank account, you can assign the bank account to the supplier site.
• Intermediary bank for SEPA payment : An intermediary bank is a financial institution that as a relationship with the destination bank (in this case the supplier bank account you are setting up) which is not a direct correspondent of the source bank (the disbursement bank in AP/Payments), which facilities the funds transfer to the destination bank.

You can enter intermediary bank accounts on Suppliers->Entry->Banking Details->Bank Account Details

This is important when paying a foreign supplier from a domestic disbursement account, there may be an intermediary bank used, and it would be set up on the supplier bank account. Although the intermediary bank UI is owned by Payments, the implementation is as embeddable UI components in pages owned by i-supplier Portal (suppliers) and AR/Collections (customers).

Some information

1. The supplier bank account information is in the table: IBY_EXT_BANK_ACCOUNTS, the bank and bank branches information is in the table HZ_PARTIES.
2. Creating a supplier in AP now creates a record in HZ_PARTIES. In the create Supplier screen, you will notice that that Registry_id is the party_number in HZ_Parties.
3. The table hz_party_usg_assignments table stores the party_usage_code SUPPLIER, and also contains the given party_id for that supplier. Running this query will return if customer was a SUPPLIER or CUSTOMER
4. Payment related details of supplier are also inserted in iby_external_payees_all as well as iby_ext_party_pmt_mthds
5. IBY_EXT_BANK_ACCOUNTS, the bank and bank branches information is in the table: HZ_PARTIES.
6. The master record that replaces PO_VENDORS is now AP_SUPPLIERS. PO_VENDORS is a view that joins AP_SUPPLIERS and HZ_PARTIES.
7. The table that hold mappings between AP_SUPPLIERS.VENDOR_ID and HZ_PARTIES.PARTY_ID is PO_SUPPLIER_MAPPINGS. Query by party_id.
8. The bank branch number can be found in the table: HZ_ORGANIZATION_PROFILES .The HZ_ORGANIZATION_PROFILES table stores a variety of information about a party. This table gets populated when a party of the Organization type is created.

ER Diagram(Bank Model)

Oracle Table Involved

• IBY_EXTERNAL_PAYEES_ALL : This stores supplier information and customer information
• IBY_EXT_BANK_ACCOUNTS : This storage for bank accounts
• IBY_EXT_PARTY_PMT_MTHDS : This storage for payment method usage rules.
• IBY_CREDITCARD : stores the credit card information for a customer
• IBY_EXT_BANK_ACCOUNTS :This Stores external bank accounts . These records have bank_account_type = Supplier
• IBY_ACCOUNT_OWNERS :stores the joint account owners of a bank account
• IBY_PMT_INSTR_USES_ALL : This stores data from AP_BANK_ACCOUNT_USES_ALL for payment instruments assignments .This information is stored in the following iPayment (IBY) tables:

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This is short note for subledger reconciliation reports which helps during period end closure.

Reconciliations – Subledger Accounting on-line account reconciliation to streamline the reconciliation process.

1. Subledger Journal Entry Report : This will display detailed Header & Line information for Subledger and General Ledger journal entries by Source & Category
2. Subledger Account Analysis : This report can be used to display Transactions transferred to & posted to a GL account for a period or range of periods
3. Payables Third Party Balances : If you are managing third party account, then you can see Balances for your Third Party Control accounts
4. Open Items Listing :
   1. For this you need define this report by Segment or Accounting Flexfield.
   2. This report display Detail/Summary by Accounts/Third Party.
   3. This report output available in multiple output formats .
   4. This will shows only Open Transactions.
   5. This is very similar to SAP Open Item Report seeded report. User coming from SAP to Oracle Financial now find similar report with less information. Still SAP’s Compact Journal Report is missing from Oracle’s SLA.
5. Subledger Period Close Exception Report :During the period end run the Subledger Period End Close Exception report, and you can find the data with these information.
   1. Incomplete: Not ready for accounting, Run Subledger’s validation programs!
   2. Unprocessed: Transactions exist but have as yet not been accounted
   3. This report help in resolving exceptions quickly so that exceptions are not left to slow down the period-end close

SLA(Sub Ledger Accounting) -Characteristics

• All SLA data is stored in SLA and is imported to GL from SLA.
• A protocol exists to ensure all subledgers are transferring data into SLA consistently
• Creates the final accounting for Subledger Journal Entries (JEs) and transfers the accounting to GL
• During reconciliation subledgers to GL, all reconciliation reports point to the SLA tables
• Concurrent program used to transfer data into SLA and import to GL.
• SLA Can Fill In Individual Segments or Entire AFF
• SLA Can Create Multiple Representations of Each Subledger Transactions
• Stores a complete and balanced Subledger JE in a common model for each “business event” that requires accounting

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I have posted a number of previous notes defining and discussing Oracle diagnostics. This tool is enhanced because of new security model.Let’s take a quick look on revisiting this utility.

Six reason why ‘Everyone like Oracle Diagnostic’

Oracle E-Business Suite Diagnostics is a framework and a repository of diagnostic tests. These are six top reason why every one liked this product.

1. This is shipped product within the box
2. This is FREE …
3. This utility based out of common known problems
4. Test Result with corrective actions information
5. Available for most of the products
6. You will get enough documentation on metalink.

Changes in R12.1

• Diagnostics now have role-based security
• Customizable security layer implemented using Role- Based Access Control (RBAC)
• The name got changed to “Oracle E-Business Suite Diagnostics” from ‘Support Diagnostic Tools”
• The access is now taken care by Grant via Diagnostics Roles.
• ‘Application Diagnostics’ responsibility is new Navigational menu.
• Within new security model Sensitivity Levels is now being introduced which have three value 1,2,3.
• In other word Sensitivity is basically an attribute of the test that indicates the kind of data it is dealing with.
• Oracle Diagnostic is now a high performing tool coupled with Multi-threaded execution engine.
• Oracle Diagnostic have capability to includes Data masking.
• You can design your Custom roles based out of your business need.
• Oracle Diagnostic output is tagged with your SR, by passing SR number.

Diagnostics Architecture

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UPK Pre-built Content

You can take advantage of UPK pre-built content for pre-”go-live” and “post go-live” support training need. Pre Built Content are created by the Applications Development Documentation teams and documenting best practices for system processes within the Oracle applications.

• You can use this tool to educate your project teams, core user, power user, and process owners before installing an instance of the application.
• You can utilize while rolling out a new application
• With this tool you can create system process documentation, user acceptance test scripts, training, and support materials without acquiring any extra skill.
• You can utilize these for your “pre-go-live” training and “post-go-live” support training need.
• You can fit this anywhere in you development/deployment methodology
• With Pre-content you can get some help in project scoping and fit/gap.

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If your business need to drill down the Reporting for your financial report like Balance sheet ,P & L or Cash Flow then you can explore these options in EBS :

1. Financial Analyzer
2. Report Manager
3. Summary Accounts online drill down
4. Third Party tools like GL WAND where you can run the report or multiple report through Excel and drill down, which will show both sides of the journal.

R12 “Drilldown” Vanilla Functionality

With this feature business user allowed to drill into report values using the Account Analysis and Drilldown feature once the FSG output is generated. This is exactly the same as available from the applications using the Account Inquiry form.

If drilldown from the report is required, the underline template should be drill-enabled while uploading to the server. What you need to do you can use template builder and enable this feature which comes within box.

Those who are still on R11i can achieve drilldown feature only if you having FRM.H plus Patch 5377946. You can find my details under report manager availability section in this pots.

Power of Report Manager

This is Framework in EBS for web based reporting of financial data generated by mostly Financial Statement Generator (FSG). You can submit and publish the following types of reports: FSG Reports, Ad Hoc FSG Reports, Standard Reports, and RX-Only Reports.

Therefore this tool coupled with end user for e-reporting need directly with the self service pages. Additionally report manager can provide you :

• Reporting need into multiple formats(Excel, PDF, html)
• You can manage from central secured report repository
• These are supported based out of MS-Word & MS-Excel based templates, which is one productive office tool used for finance department.
• You can customize the look and feel of report output
• Distribution based on expansion values and time frames
• Facilitates data comparison and trend detection
• Preview reports prior to mass distribution

Take a note :

1. Report Manager is the reporting processes and Web ADI is the data loading processes.
2. Report Manager is included in the ATG R12 Product Family Pack Patch.

Report Manager Architecture

Report Manager have other key components like:

• FSG Template Editor
• Repository Management
• Security Workbench : For both Flex field value as well as user to value security
  • Flex field Value Security
  • Users to Value Security

What can you see from above diagram is reports are published to a file system on the middle tier. Therefore you can choose to make your report available from the personal home page at the same time as you publish the report, or alternatively you can create a form function at a later stage to make the report accessible to users.

You can also apply some control if required When publishing reports by:

• Use Expansion Values and Time frames to group reports together
• Use Security to control which users can see a Published Report
• Select a date and time to make your published Report available for viewing
• Select Reviewers for the Report

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Nine months since the launch of SEPA, Oracle has finally released patch for SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) for much demanded need for European EBS customer.

High Points of SEPA Project

Lets recap some of high points of SEPA project.

• Objective: Harmonize electronic payment schemes according ISO 20022 rules.
• Countries: Euro zone countries
• Transactions: Only Euro transactions.
• Period: From January 1, 2008.The goal of EPC is to make SEPA mandatory from 2011

SEPA support at Oracle

• Oracle plan is support in major product(EBS,Fusion, Enterprise) lines
• Oracle plan is to support only two types of SEPA messages in most of these products:
  • Customer Credit Transfer Initiation
  • Customer Direct Debit Initiation
    • For Availability of these functionality , check out documentation of respective products.

SEPA@ EBS

Oracle EBS functionality for SEPA messages customer credit transfer initiation (pain.001.001.02) is based on the ISO20022 format. ISO20022 format have these benefits;

• Batch booking
• Grouping : This reduce the number of transmitted files
• Remittance message
• End to end id . This will ease reconciliation and referencing

SEPA messages with Oracle EBS Release dates for 11.5.10 and 12

These are summary of different SWIFT message.

Fig 1: SEPA swift Message

Out of these list Oracle EBS supports for both Customer Credit Transfer(pain.001.001.02 ) as well as Customer Direct Debit (pain.008.001.01)

Here are the summary of information for SEPA out-of-box Functionality in EBS.

Fig 2: Oracle Support for SEPA

SEPA availability in EBS

The SEPA Credit Transfer Initiation Message is available for R11.5.10 via Patch 6741280.Customer using 11.5.10 can get the functionality enable by applying patch.

Wrapping up

• The SEPA out-of-box functionality will be released as patches
• Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 is a official transition period
• Extensive test is required with bank when you are utilizing this functionality.

Will keep you posted for any updates.:)

Similar Post

• THE SINGLE EURO PAYMENTS AREA (SEPA)
• A bit on SEPA - IBAN & BIC

Oracle white paper

• Note:738361.1 :Supporting SEPA Credit Transfer in Oracle Payables for Oracle Applications Release 11.5.10

This year in OOW 2008, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced a new storage server product, Exadata, a hardware/software solution for offloading I/O processing to proprietary storage nodes. This is first time when Oracle moved in hardware side.Exadata is joint effort by Oracle and HP .

Oracle has put up in 22 page paper. The newly Exadata performs joins between large tables and small lookup tables, a very common scenario for data warehouses with star schemas. Read details

Take a note , current release is limited for data warehouse.

• Oracle’s Exadata white paper
• Exadata Website

More on Oracle Exadata Architecture

• Oracle’s New Exadata Architecture