Sometime back ,my client Finance IT manager asked about few queries for documentation details for Oracle, the reason was obvious as they have moved out from SAP to Oracle. Hope this information might be helpful to for Managers, line manager who are planning to go with Oracle EBS or recently started using Oracle.

What are the availability and unit cost (where applicable) of the following types of documentation?

Apart from User guide and technical reference manual, other information which is available electronically free of charge are:

In R12, apart from User guide and technical reference manual aka TRM, most of modules have there implementation Guide.

You can also downloaded free of charge once you have CSI number.

FYi...How SAP offers the documentation part?

Thats sound really interesting.. The website www.help.sap.com , is similar to Metalink as we have in Oracle. This site is FOC to clients and includes all the above information at no extra cost. New documentation is available with every new release/service pack in the portal.

What is the typical update frequency of the documentation?

A point release would typically provide an addendum to the guide, new guides each release.Datasheets and statement of directions are available by each point release. Each Point Release you can get RCD (Release content document) , which describe the some important changes between two releases.

Additional Link for Oracle Applications Documentation

• Oracle E-Business Suite Online Documentation Library Release 12+
• Oracle E-Business Suite Online Documentation Library Release 12
• Oracle Applications Release 11.5.10 + Online Documentation Library
• Oracle Applications 11.5.10.2 Online Documentation Library
• Oracle Applications Documentation -Home

Difference between "Internal" and "External" Drop-Ship

In Oracle Context External Drop-Shipping means your Oracle Order Management uses purchase orders to outside suppliers that are automatically generated from sales orders for goods supplied directly from the supplier. The “external ” supplier ships the goods directly to the 3rd Party customer and confirms the shipment through the use of an Advanced Shipment Notice(ASN).

You should take a note,Oracle uses this ASN to record a receiving transaction into inventory followed by an immediate logical shipping transaction. From these transactions, conveyance of title takes place and the customer can be invoiced and the supplier’s invoice can be processed.

where as “Internal” context Drop-Shipping functions in a similar fashion. The key difference is that no inventory transactions take place on the books of the selling operating unit; transfer of ownership of the goods from shipper to seller to customer with the only physical movement of the goods being out of the shipping organization.

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A Drop Shipment occurs when a customer order is sourced from and delivered by a supplier.

Order Management sends information to the Purchasing Application to create that PO, and then when that PO is received (to indicate shipment from the supplier to your customer), the order line is automatically updated to indicate that it was fulfilled.

In this process, the company running Order Management is modeled as the company to whom the end customer places the original order.

Drop Shipment - Setup

You need to make sure these are attribute setup Correctly:

• Item Attributes

Purchased : Enabled
Purchasable : Enabled
Transactable : Enabled
Stockable : Optional
Reservable : Optional
Inventory Item : Optional
Customer Ordered : Enabled
Customer Order Enabled : Enabled
Internal Ordered : Disabled
OE Transactable : Enabled
Shippable : Optional

• And ,your do set up for Order Source Type as External

Drop Shipment – Your Setup checklist

• Ensure you have created your Order Management Transaction Types and linked your Transaction Types to order and line workflows that support drop shipments.
• Ensure the Oracle Workflow Background Engine is running.
• Ensure all Drop ship locations you will use to perform drop shipments have the Ship To Site and Receiving Site defined.
• Ensure you have defined the Internal Ship To Locations for your drop shipment customers (Oracle Receivables Standard Customer window, Business Purpose Details Tab).
• Ensure your standard items have an associated List Price defined within your PO Inventory organization (Oracle Payables Financial Options window, Supplier-Purchasing Tab).

Drop Shipment - Process Steps

• Create a Sales Order with line where the line source is External
• Book and Schedule the Sales Order
• Run Requisition Import Process
• Now the line status will be in Awaiting Receipt
• Login to the Receiving Organization (Purchasing) who has been setup as an Approver
• Run Requisition Import
• Create Purchase Order from the Requisition
• Approve the PO
• Receive the full quantity
• Run Auto Invoice
• Verify Invoice in Sales Order

Check the details here .

Things not to forget in a DropShipment

• Release 11i/12 does not support Drop Shipment across operating units.
• Blanket PO's will not used with Drop Shipment , the reason the PO must be created when OM notifies PO that a Drop Ship order has been created.
• You can't cancelled Drop Shipments once Oracle Purchasing obtains the receipt.
• Standard Items can be used for Drop Shipment.
• In 11i, PTO's and ATO's cannot be drop shipped

Similar Post on Drop Shipment

• Understand “Drop Shipment” in Order Management?
• Understand “Drop Shipment” in Order Management? -Part II
• ‘Drop Shipment’, ‘BackOrders’ and ‘Back to Back Order’ …
• Drop Shipment - Functional Setup and flow

Balance Forward Billing is just a new name of "Consolidation Invoice billing" in Release 12, which provides enhanced billing options with a more complete and flexible solution.

Oracle R12 Vanilla Features of Balance Forward Billing

If you compare with R11i Consolidated Billing Invoice, there are some enhanced feature you can see.

• A balance forward bill includes all of a customer's transactions for the billing period and any balance carried forward from the previous billing period.
• A balance forward bill can have a daily, weekly, or monthly billing period depending on the balance forward billing cycle assigned to the payment term.

Additional feature you can get like

• You can also bill on specific days of the month. This way user can not only specify the day of the month for the billing date, or even multiple days like “every 15th and last day of month”. User can also elect to bill on a specific day of the week, such as every Friday.
• You can also choose to exclude weekends, in this case if user skip weekends when determining billing dates, so billing dates only fall on workdays

• A balance forward bill is consolidated at either the customer account or site level depending on the Bill Level value at the customer profile and account profile levels. You can change the Bill Level defaulted from the customer profile class at the account profile level. The Bill Level at the site profile level is a read-only field defaulted from the account profile level.
• A balance forward bill can be either detail or summary. Both the detail and summary formats present invoice totals. The detail format lists all line items.
• You can generate a balance forward bill in either Draft or Final formats similar to R11i.
• Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) configured formats provide a more appealing layout that can be easily modified and this can be viewed the completed bill online
• In 11i, there are five consolidated bill programs. The new feature consolidates these programs into three.

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The Consolidated Billing Invoice works in similar way that Statement Generation program works. The Consolidated Billing Invoice program lets you print a single, monthly invoice that includes all of your customer's transactions for the period . This will you send one consolidated billing invoice instead of a separate invoice for each transaction. For each bill to site one Consolidated bill will be generated.

Other Oracle Vanilla Features of Consolidated Billing Invoice are:

• You can print a single, monthly bill that includes all of a customer's transactions for the period. Consolidated Billing Invoice is normally generated at the Bill-To location level. A Consolidated Billing Invoice itemizes only Invoices, Credit memo and adjustment.
• Consolidated Billing Invoice also have details for receipts in summarized form.
• Customer qualified consolidated billing invoice are selected by the Cutoff date and payment terms.
• Consolidated Billing Invoice does not includes aging.

These are bit different from Statement .

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How can we Integrate OracleApps with Custom code by using public API's? What skill is required for E-Business Suite Integration with API's?

These are the question asked by someone who never exposed to OracleApps development environment.

This was topic I discussed with client IT department folks which includes people who recently inducted in Oracle Group from other technology area, college pass outs and other group like Middleware who are also responsible to putting some nut and bolts in Oracle.Thoughts to convert this in post for newbie and Inhouse IT folks who always struggling for right information for the API Integration.So here to go:

Important Points for those working first time with API's

• First and foremost Important, you need to understand API Definition, which includes purpose, input parameter, output parameter, in/out parameter as well as default values for parameter
• Next is mapping : This is where you map input data from source/staging/temp table to input parameter
• Next is development of code , you should use cursor/temporary table to load data from user's table and use Debugging information to detect and diagnose errors.

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An Adjustment in AR is an amount added or subtracted from the amount due of an Invoice, Debit Memo, Chargeback, Deposit, or Guarantee.

Oracle AR lets you create Automatic or Manual Adjustments.

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As mention in last post These adjustment API available in R11i and R12 with basic functionality via different API calls:

1. Creating an adjustment (R11i & R12)
2. Modifying an adjustment (R11i & R12)
3. Approving an adjustment (R11i & R12)
4. Reversing an adjustment (R11i & R12)
5. Create line level adjustment (This is only applicable in case of R12)

Details of Five Adjustment API's are herewith:

1. AR_ADJUST_PUB.CREATE_ADJUSTMENT : This routine can be used to create an adjustment for an invoice
2. AR_ADJUST_PUB.MODIFY_ADJUSTMENT : This routine can be used to modify an adjustment's status, comments and reason code .
3. AR_ADJUST_PUB.APPROVE_ADJUSTMENT : This routine can be used to approve an adjustment
4. AR_ADJUST_PUB.REVERSE_ADJUSTMENT: This routine can be used to reverse an adjustment
5. AR_ADJUST_PUB.CREATE_LINELEVEL_ADJUSTMENT: This Routine can be used to allow user to do line level adjustment. This is only specific to R12 .

While Choosing API..Do not get confused with Revenue Adjustment API's

There is difference between Revenue Adjustment API and Adjustment API, unless until you are not very familiar about the functional aspect of revenue recognition.

The Revenue Adjustment API provides an extension to the existing functionality of adjusting Revenue and Sales Credits through the standard AR (Accounting Receivables) Revenue Management form.

In Receivables, it is now possible to defer Revenue Recognition , and to earn the Revenue at a later date using the Revenue Adjustment. In this process, the API uses Auto Accounting to determine the accounts to be debited/credited with each operation. Sounds good...

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This is sample code that you can use for creating adjustment.This is tested while integrating with POS -Oracle Integration.

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Oracle AR supports two types of commitments:

• Deposit – This records a customer’s prepayment for goods or services that you will provide in the future.
• Guarantee : This records a contractual agreement with your customer to conduct a specific amount of business over a defined period of time.

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