This topic is bit off track form the main subject area, but has its own importance specially if you are working as Consultant and also if you are responsible for letting customer know about its benefits.

A fortnight ago, I was reading a intresting post made by Kas Thomas in his blog for Oracle's plan for saving money and then topic just pop-up and thoughts to share how this benifits to existing EBS Customer.

"We have focused on lowering the total cost of ownership of our software products by improving integration, decreasing installation times, lowering administration costs and improving the ease of use. Reducing the total cost of ownership of our products provides our customers with a higher return on their investment, which we believe will create more demand and provide us with a competitive advantage." [This was claimed itself by Oracle in there last quarterly report page 23 of last paragraph under New Software Licenses ]

"Cost of support" aka "Cost of ownership" are quite significant for SME's where cost is the major factor. As more and More companies are opting for Release 12 upgrade and Fusion path therefore revisiting the topic makes lot of sense.

What is meant by Support Cost :

With Oracle Support, you know 'up front' and with certainty how long your Oracle products are supported.

Oracle's Plan for Saving your Money

The new Lifetime Support Policy provides access to technical experts for as long as you license your Oracle products and consists of three support components:

• Premier Support
• Extended Support
• Sustaining Support

Lets take a quick look, how these differ among each other:

• Premier Support :Provides maintenance and support of Oracle database, middleware, and application products for 5 years from their general availability date, which Includes:
  • Major product and technology releases which covers technical Support as well as updates, fixes, and security alerts,Tax, legal and regulatory updates
  • Oracle also provide upgrade Scripts
  • You can also get certification with new third party products/versions
• Where as Extended Support, is offered on specific defined releases, which includes most features of Premier Support for an additional 3 years from general availability which includes
  • Major product and technology
  • Technical Support
  • Updates, fixes, and security alerts
  • Tax, legal and regulatory updates
  • Upgrade scripts
  • The items which does not included under this schema is certification with new third party products/versions.
• Where as Sustaining Support provides technical support– i.e., access to our online and call-center support which is surly metalink—for as long as you license your Oracle solutions. These Includes
  • Major product and technology releases
  • Technical Support
  • Access to MetaLink/Customer Connection
  • Pre-existing fixes for your solution
  • Customers may also obtain customer specific fixes at an additional fee
  • Things which is excluded are :
    • New updates, fixes, and security alerts
    • New tax, legal, and regulatory updates
    • Certification with new third party products/versions
    • Certification with other Oracle products

A comparative study between these three can be best understood as:

When it get started

Since September 19, 2005.

Lifetime Support Policy & Coverage for Oracle Applications Products Versions

Here is the list[adopted] for coverage details for Oracle Application products.

In the above list you can see the key-code color shading of the rows as:

• Pink = Support does not follow the Lifetime Support Policy
• Light Grey = Release will have a direct upgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications
• White = Follows the Lifetime Support Policy

where as Latest release 12 is have details as:

Indeed there was relief for existing customer annoucment made during keynote at the COLLABORATE conference 2008 by Oracle President for extending Premier Support for the Oracle(R) E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10 through November 2010. This makes a great hope for OracleApps customers to get opportunity to plan more effectively for the Release 12 upgrade.

Oracle does have a seperate sheet for mentioning the details for Oracle application.

Extend Premier Support until 2012 with no additional fees

These are some of the high Points for Extending Premier Support untill 2012.

• Premier support ended for release 11.0.3 in February 2007 and Sustaining support ends in January 2009.
• Sustaining support ends for releases 11i 1 through 11i 6 in July of 2007. Companies who have not upgraded by then will need to re-license the software to gain access to new releases!
• Premier support ends for release 11i 7 in May of 2007
• Premier support ends for release 11i 8 in November of 2007!
• Premier support ends for release 11i 9 in June of 2008.
• Upgrading to release 11i 10 provides premier support through 2009, and it can be extended for an additional fee.
• Upgrading to release 12 gives you time to determine your own migration schedule.

Supporting Resources

• Lifetime Support Policy
• Lifetime Support Policy Data Sheet
• Lifetime FAQ

Additional Reading

• New Support Changes for Apps 11.5.9 and 11.5.10 SChan Blog
• Clearing Away The Smoke , Oct 2007 blog Post by Floyd Teter
• Our Iceberg Is Melting ,Nov 2007 blog post by Floyd Teter

Many of EBS users take advantage of the ‘File-Export’ functionality. This functionality was specifically designed for use on ‘Folder’ forms so users could export the data displayed on the screen to Excel.

This is one of the option that allows users to export information from a row based data set into a desktop file so that they can utilize these data's sheet for there own reference or any other reporting or feeding purpose .

This is yet another story of some basis functionality differences in two ERP Products(Oracle EBS and SAP), Here are some sets of of Q & A with core user discussion.

• Can the system export all data from all modules to external applications?
  • Oracle: In Oracle you can export all the data directly from form, where as you can't export all report data into Excel.
  • SAP : The SAP situation is opposite, that mean you a need interface for exporting data from modules where as for reports you can can be downloaded in Excel.
• Is the export tool easy to use? What user skill-set is required?
  • Oracle :In oracle you do it From the menu it is FILE/EXPORT
  • SAP :Yes, the method for exporting reports is via menu paths from within the report overview. This method is common throughout SAP. An understanding of Microsoft products is required.
• Can exports be set with run-time parameters?
  • Oracle:Yes but only limited for Forms
  • SAP : , answer is Yes,ie exports can be defined to run at specific times, this would run the appropriate report in SAP and download to the necessary network location or printer.
• Export Functionality from Custom Form?
  • Oracle:If your form is based out of Template.fmb, you can get use of Export Functionality.
  • SAP : Not sure about this
• Integration with Other Non Oracle and Oracle system like Hyperion , Third Party Tax or Other Product for Forecasting and Budgeting?
  • Oracle:Depends , what format is used by these application. As per industry practice .csv format is standard , there fore all Exported can be saved into .CSV that will be easily recognize by other application.

Exporting Apps Reports Into Excel sheet

There is no such seeded functionality that you can get from EBS for exporting into Excel.

There are several options available which depends upon the usage and volume of data into Report.

1. You cannot directly see the output in Excel from view -> Request -> output.
   You need to make changes to report so that the output is saved as delimited text file and then open with excel with the delimiter. This way at least some data get into excel, easy but ugly format, if have header and report title details.
2. Use Oracle XML Publisher.
   It should give you an option for output in Excel files.But make sure, if you are pulling Financial data, you must tell financial and Controllers that there are certain limitation for:

   • Number of rows generated exceeds the Excel maximum

   • Use of formulae or macros can't done in the Excel output

   • They can't get Pivot sort of report into Excel based XMLPub.

   • Amount alignment because of numeric value ( Seems this should be fixed by assuming string value)

   • Decimal Placement

Data loading and formatting into excel . as whenever you have lot of rows then it will take some more time to dump into Excel , because of XHTML with the mime type set to get Excel to open it.

3.) Seeded Functionality of Excel Output

1. Login to apps, using "System Administrator" responsibility
2. Navigate to Install -> Viewer Options
3. Add the entries as below
   File Format=Text Mime Type=application/vnd.ms-excel Description=Microsoft Excel
   File Format=Text Mime Type=application/vnd.ms-word Description=Microsoft Word
4. Save the changes
5. Bounce Apache (Not sure if it works without bouncing Apache)
6. View the concurrent requests log (view log button)
7. Goto Tools -> Copy File. It will open a new window viewer option with the choices to select the Viewer to open the logfile. Select Microsoft Excel here and press ok.

4) Use concurrent program output format as XML. Change the output format to EXCEL in this path
Submit Request--> Options-->Layout-->Format.

Additional Issue which user might encounter

1. User can't get Save Prompt
   • Check the version of the IE in desktop and do these additional Internet Explorer settings.
   • Tools>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level>Downloads
   • Automatic prompting for file downloads needs set to Enable
2. Another issue File-Export does not work in some pc's many times. Not sure, what is Oracle Solutions. I had a trick , whenever such issue I told me user to Press CTRL key and then do the file export. This works...

In summary

Any thoughts

Disclaimer : SAP Functionality which is discussed is based out of Personal observation and discussion with SAP user, which they are using bit older version.Any Conflicts with SAP functionlity must be validated. Oracle Version which is used for reference is 11.5.10.2/R12.

It was request from one of reader to provide some information for new organization Hierarchy model between two release of 11i and R12.Therefore invite you to run through the following diagram as below with some basics.

Read the rest of this entry »

One quick question from non Oracle user ..

Do we have any functionality in Oracle for handling "Alternative Payee" in payable ?

My answer is NO , at least I have never seen any seeded out-of-box, though Customer asked many times..

Does anyone have any answer from Oracle side?

In the real business environment, there are many cases where the vendor name used for procurement purposes may be different than the name that the vendor must be paid to. Instead of using the vendor name as the payee name, it required to have an alternate field where we can state the payee name.

The good is that SAP does has capability to handle such functionality as they maintain an alternative payee at the supplier master level and wherever you need to pick either of them just pass the information and print the name of Check. So simple...That's why user coming from SAP product really hates Oracle, and complaining why Oracle does not have such small things, but they don't have choice.

Minor Customization or work around is not always a choice for SME's as cost be major driving for the implementation.No comment on this..

I tried to explore by asking to core user, how they are achieving this in SAP. They simply run through few steps and demonstrated how they achive this. Within SAP this consist of few steps as:

• Created a vendor master record for the alternative payee. Block this account against posting.
• Specify the account number of the alternative payee in the Alternative payee field within the payment transactions section of the vendor master record.
• While making payments for this vendor, the payment program access the name and address of the alternative payee.Cool..

Oracle Approach

Some things called "Factoring Arrangements"

What is Factoring Arrangements ?

Exploring in accounting books and google , A factoring arrangement is basically a purchasing agreement under which a person or entity such as a big Corporation acquires outstanding debts, invoice or account receivable at a discount from another entity, usually a company.This was very common in US specially in textile industry. [Adopted]

Let see how Oracle trying to handle this in payable:

When the check is going to a factor or for a garnishment you can create a pay site and indicate the payee's name on the first address line starting with "OR Factor".

This is what 11i/R12 payable/Payment documentation says :

If a vendor A sells its receivables to a factor (ie third part for your Oracle), you can enter invoices for the supplier A and make payments to the factor by creating a pay site defined for the factor. On the first address line enter the name of the factor preceded by the word "and" or "or." On the remaining two address lines, enter the address of the factor. Payables then addresses the payment to the supplier and/or the factor, since Payables prints the vendor name and the three address lines on each payment.

How Oracle explain this case

Supplier ABC has sold their receivables to Factor B, and you want to send payments directly to Factor B.

Case (i) You want your payment document to be made out to "ABC or Factor B."
Case (ii) You want your payment document to be made out to"ABC AND Factor B."

Define a pay site for supplier ABC called Factor B.
On the first address line enter "OR Factor B." for case (i)
On the first address line enter " AND Factor B." for case (ii)

On the remaining two address lines enter Factor B's address.

If you select the Factor B supplier site when you enter and pay an invoice for ABC, the first two lines of the payment will read "Payable to: ABC OR Factor B" if setup is as case (i) or "Payable to: ABC AND Factor B." if setup is case (ii).

And this way the factor can endorse and cash the payment.

I tried and tested , but this does not serve the purpose.Any one have some better idea , Please ...

Don't tell customization , I have 2-3 options ready to fit but customer want $0 solution.

Finally

Is this a totally different things not any work around with alternate payee.

Lets hope, Oracle payment is new family in R12 might,consider this an enhancement request to cater the need for those user who is moving from SAP to Oracle.

Any thoughts welcome

Disclaimer : SAP Functionality which is discussed is based out of Personal observation and discussion with SAP user, which they are using bit older version.Any Conflicts with SAP functionlity must be validated. Oracle Version which is used for reference is 11.5.10.2/R12.

As mention earlier, SLA played a key role in most of accounting event based application.Some of high points of SLA and Fixed asset are:

• Oracle Assets is fully integrated with SLA, which is a common accounting platform for Sub Ledgers
  • There is no need to explaining again , we already seen why this concept brought into Financial application . Fixed asset though one of Application, which heavily utilize the accounting information ,therefore its is obvious Choice.
• You can use the seeded Account Derivation definitions or modify them as required
  • ADD as discussed in earlier post , can be used for as it is or we can manage and configure the definition to accommodate own custom derivation rule.
• SLA does supports Account Generator functionality for existing Asset Books
  • For those who are coming from 11i background knows Oracle FA Module uses the Account Generator to generate accounting flexfield combinations for which to create journal entries into GL. The Account Generator normally allows to designate a specific source for each segment in the account for which Oracle Assets creates a journal entry. These flexibility options can be archived by anyone ..
    • Flexibility to create journal entries that mean you can specify to what detail to create journal entries
    • Flexibility of managing detail level for each book and account type.

Technically speaking Account Generator in Oracle Assets is Oracle Workflow driven component which can be viewed and customized with some skill in Oracle Workflow.

In Release 12 , by default, Subledger Accounting is used to generate accounts which is defined at ADD, still you have options to use the 11i workflow based account generator. The minimum you have to do is to keep "FA: Use Workflow Account Generation" profile option is set to Yes, that mean the account generation rules set up in Oracle Workflow will be used.

• And, last ..SLA in FA can heavily used for SLA Accounting report and online account inquiry purpose.

How SLA works in Fixed asset

Subledger Accounting Process consist of these three steps

1. It start with entering transactions in the application.
2. Then running the Create Accounting Program to process accounting.
3. Once step 2 completed successfully, you can use this for inquire . You can also drilldown information from SLA Pages

Lets take yet another granular look for SLA with FA..

• Accounting Events
• Oracle Assets creates accounting events for every asset transaction

These are major four event entries Accounting Events Classes you can get in Fixed asset.

• Oracle Assets groups all the accounting events classes into the following four event entities:
  Transactions: This event entity groups the following event classes: Additions, Adjustment, Capitalization, Category Reclass, CIP Additions, CIP Adjustments, CIP Category Reclass, CIP Retirements, CIP Revaluation, CIP Transfers, CIP Unit Adjustments, Depreciation Adjustments, Retirements, Retirement Adjustments, Revaluation, Terminal Gain and Loss, Transfers, Unit Adjustments, and Unplanned Depreciation.
• Depreciation: This event entity groups the following event classes: Depreciation and Rollback Depreciation.
• Inter Asset Transactions: This event entity groups the following event classes: Source Line Transfers, CIP Source Line Transfers, and Reserve Transfers.
• Deferred Depreciation: This event entity groups the following event classes: Deferred Depreciation.

Apart from this there few additional event class exist like Retirements .

The Accounting Flow

Journal entries get created that summarize the activity for each account for each transaction type.

• There is significant mean of period ,for which you want to create journal entries and the period must be open or future entry , as discussed in last post.
• The period name used in the depreciation calendar assigned to the asset book must be the same as the period name in the general ledger calendar for the ledger you want to send the journal entries to.
• When you run the Create Accounting program, Oracle Assets sends entries directly to the GL_JE_BATCHES, GL_JE_HEADERS, and GL_JE_LINES tables.
• Oracle Assets allows you to run the Create Accounting program multiple times before closing the depreciation period.
• You can post journal entries to Oracle General Ledger for all transactions that have occurred thus far in an open depreciation period.
• If additional transactions occur during the open depreciation period, you need to rerun Depreciation, then you can rerun the Create Accounting program.

Oracle Fixed Assets creates journal entries for your depreciation expense, asset cost, and other accounts. That means application automatically creates transaction journal entries for your general ledger, if you have defined and configure set up the journal entry category for that transaction type for that book. Oracle Assets creates journal entries that summarize the activity for each account for each transaction type.

Another good things for FA is its allows you to run the Create Journal Entries program multiple times before closing the depreciation period. You can post journal entries to Oracle General Ledger for all transactions that have occurred thus far in an open depreciation period. If additional transactions occur during the open period, you need to rerun Depreciation, then you can rerun the Create Journal Entries program.

Not only it create the Journal entry but also allows you to roll back journal entries in an open depreciation period,and this should be as long as applies to those journals which havn't posted to General Ledger. After doing the necessary adjustments, you can run the Create Journal Entries program once again and post the journals to General Ledger.

You should also note , you cannot roll back individual journal entries. The reason .. when you run the Rollback Journal Entries program, all journals created thus far in the current open depreciation period will be rolled back. These journals will be reprocessed the next time you run the Create Journal Entries program.

In case of Rollback Journal Entries program failure, for example, if you have already posted some additional journals to General Ledger, you can still continue to process additional transactions. However, you will not be able to re-run journal entries for that period until you have fixed the error and run the Rollback Journal Entries program successfully.Sound good!!

Once you close the depreciation period, you can run the Create Journal Entries program only once more. When the depreciation period is closed, you cannot roll back Create Journal Entries, and therefore, cannot run the program again.Hope this makes clear.

Creating journal entries

Creation of Journal entries in Oracle Consist into two step process:

1. At the end of each accounting period, run the depreciation program for each of your books.
2. Run the Create Journal Entries program to create journal entries to your general ledger.

• Case 1 : Period is Closed
  • If the period is closed, you can run the Create Journal Entries program only once for each period in each book for which you allow posting to the general ledger.
• Case II : Period is Open
  • If the period is still open, you can run the Create Journal Entries program multiple times before closing the period.

Journal Entries :

Case 1 : When you are in 11i

The create journal entries process creates journal entries for the appropriate general ledger set of books.

Case 2 :When you are in R12

The Create Accounting process creates journal entries for the appropriate Ledger.

Asset Accounts for which Oracle Assets journal entries Created

These are asset account for which are used for JE Line creation. We will see a seperate post for accounting entry in some of the transaction events so that if you are coming from non -Oracle accounting system, you can see how its works here.

• Accumulated Depreciation
• Asset Clearing
• Asset Cost
• CIP Clearing
• CIP Cost
• Cost of Removal Gain,Loss, and Clearing
• Deferred Accumulated Depreciation
• Deferred Depreciation Expense
• Depreciation Adjustment
• Depreciation Expense
• Intercompany Payables
• Intercompany Receivables
• Net Book Value Retired Gain and Loss
• Proceeds of Sale Gain, Loss, and Clearing
• Revaluation Amortization
• Revaluation Reserve
• Revaluation Reserve Retired Gain and Loss

Will take a more granular details for JE and SLA in another post. Keep watching this space.

Auto lockbox Implementation been never been an easy task. Though it requires own set up to handle this functionality. Therefore Its is very important to understand some key points before implementing LockBox in Oracle.

1. How are you identifying the customer against which you apply the receipts? Are you using Auto associate, Customer Number or MICR number?
2. What do you have for the Match Receipts "By option" in Lockbox? Is this by Customer Bill-to-Site, Customer or Lockbox?
3. What do you have for Allow Payment of Unrelated Transactions when you submit lockbox and at the system level?
4. Do you Require Billing Location?
5. What do you have for Auto cash Rules?
6. What do you have for Remaining Remittance Amount? Do you want this as unapplied or Onaccount ?
7. Do you Apply Partial Receipts?
8. What do you have for Remainder Rule Set? How the setup is done ? Is it at customer site or customer profile level?
9. What do you have for Allow Payment of Unrelated Transactions?
10. Do you use Autoassociate?
11. What do you have for Invalid Transaction Number Handling? This mean how post partial amount as unapplied or you want reject entire receipt?
12. Are you expecting Miscellaneous Receipt through AutoLockbox?
13. Is customer expecting some Refunds with negative amount for returns to handled through Lockbox?
14. Is customer expecting any adjustment through Lockbox?
15. Are you using Lockbox standard format or have a different format? If not using standard format do you have details for transmission line details?

If you have already some more items need to be added, do share your experiences.:)

Similar Post

• Auto lockbox - Let’s connect with Bank
• Know 15 important things before you can do Auto lockbox setting?

Is this a one of the Business scenarios:

• Your company receiving payment from customers through mail.
• These mails containing cheque that come from customers who dispersed across a region or the country or out of country.
• Once Check received by AR department they normally submit all cheque with deposite slip
• Many time because of what ever reason, AR department hold checks over a day or two or longer.
• The totol number of customer payment per month would be 1000+.

If this is case and and your business is growing without AR work force, than get use of Lockbox services offered by Different Bank. You need to check with your banking partner, are they offering any such kind of service or not in your region.

LockBox - An Automated Banking Solution

In Financial term normally used by bank is called Lockbox, in which bank will improve your cash flow that enhancing company's working Capital.This is technology driven technique in which you have your customers' payments delivered directly to a special post office box instead of your business address and then bank will take care of all your remittance activity.

Its via ..PO Box

You might have one quick question at this stage, Is this same PO Box, that National Postal Department using?

The answer is no, as the key difference between the Lockbox post office box number and a regular post office box is that only your customers' payments are delivered to the box. Instead of you picking up the payments, bank's couriers have a key to the post office box, and they remove its contents and deliver your customers' payments to your bank. Your bank opens the payments and then processes the payments for deposit directly into your bank account.

The Flow

The entire business Flow can be best understood as :

>> What additional things bank handle when you are using Lockbox

These are the some of the services, now a days most of bank offering in LockBox Feature. This Includes

• Automated capture of receivables and customer information as mention above
• Consolidation of paper-based and electronic payment streams, regardless of whether the lockbox provider was the original recipient of the electronic payment.
• Integration with accounting applications for automated receivables matching.
• Remote check capture for accelerating the processing and/or electronic conversion of payments received outside of a lockbox or the normal receivables process.
• In some of the case Bank provide customized business rules for handling industry-specific receivables
• Deposit reconcilement for tracking deposits from multiple departments.
• Manage electronic bill presentment and payment (e-bills).
• Collections.

Which Kind of business does Requires Lockbox

Lockbox is best used by the companies which have numerous customers base such as:

• Public Utilities company
• Mobile or Telecom for receiving customer Payment
• Professional Membership/Club
• health care

Benefits of using LockBox

The LockBox Utilizes two primary benefits :

1. Fund Collection
2. Remittance Information Delivery

On top of that major benfits are that company is able to recognize the funds more quickly and customer's check is cashed bit faster.

AutolockBox setup:

1. Explore
   1. Explore your banking partner how they offer Lockbox and understand the cost.
   2. Explore the integration aspect of accounting system and lockbox integration, the next is to follow these steps:
2. Steps Involved
   1. Letting customer Know, about the channel of payment. The First you have to instruct customer to deliver there cheque and remittance advice to any any of the bank Lockbox PO Boxes. Most of bank will provide you a list of all there PO boxes.
   2. On receipt of cheque on the business day, the banking courier Partner collect items from each PO boxed and deliver to nearest Lockbox processing center.
   3. Once Cheuqe or remittance advice collected at processing center, data is captured from the cheque and remitted advice. End of day depends upon how bank provide the details you can get the data transmitted to your AR department. Most of bank now a days provide there Portal , you can download the data directly from the Portal.
3. Oracle Configuring :These are the basic Steps in Configuring the Autolockbox in Oracle
   • Maintain Control Parameters : How Autolockbox ...This should be based out of these 15 points that was mention in this post.
   • Create Lockbox Addresses for Bank
     • Bank Details
     • Bank Data file Trasmision Format

These steps should be prerequisite as per this post.

The Importance of receivables Information

Thats true , the importance of receivable information can not be neglected.

Most of the bank passes these information,

1. Cheque/Payment Information
   • Amount and Currency
   • Cheque/Payment Number
   • issue date and value date
2. Remittance/invoice Information
   • Reference/invoice
   • Remitte's Name

Once bank processed, a electronic File is transmitted and transferred to company which owns the lockbox.This files can be in one of two standard banking industry formats: BAI or BAI2 which is defined by Bank Administration Institute (BAI). In some cases and some countries if not following the standard , you can can also get use the transmitted via EDI using the ANSI X.12 823 for lockbox remittances.

Supported Format in Oracle AR

Oracle does provide some seeded file format that you can configure based out of your need.These are the list of Files:

• Example : The control file located under $AR_TOP/bin with name arxmpl.ctl. This format that contains an example of lockbox header information, several receipt records, and overflow receipt records.
• Default : A standard BAI (Bank Administration Institute) format used by most banks. Underline control file would be ardeft.ctl
• Convert :A standard format used for transferring payment information from other systems.Underline control file would be arconv.ctl
• Cross Currency :A default format used for importing cross currency receipts. Underline control file Format would be arxcurr.ctl
• Zengin : This is used to import bank files in the Japanese Zengin format.Underline control file Format would be arzeng.ctl

Global Bank & LockBox

Most of global(ABN, Bank of America, CitiBank, Deutsche, HSBC, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered) as well Local bank are offering Lockbox servics , therefore if you are planning to take an adavantage for lockbox services to boost customers' bottom line, then Choice is Obvious.

Let me know, in case if you need some more input , I will share some more implemenation senarios.

Similar Post

• Auto lockbox - Let’s connect with Bank
• Know 15 important things before you can do Auto lockbox setting?
• Lockbox - Functional Prospective

If you are customer/client is coming from other system like SUN or SAP, you can notice some good features and some missing feature Oracle Fixed Asset while comparing.

1. Assets purchased through AP coded to an asset clearing account are dynamically transferred into the asset register; there is no need for them to be re-input. This is what called asset Tracking in Oracle.
2. GL codes, depreciation method and useful lives default from asset category and do not need to be input, therefore reducing error. This is yet another good feature.
3. Ability to run and rollback depreciation many times to review results and correct errors in Oracle.
4. Ability to make mass changes (additions, adjustments, transfers, disposals) e.g. cost centre transfers,location, employee and to a group of assets therefore process will get faster.
5. Retirement and Disposal does not have any distinction in Oracle.
6. Capital budgeting requirements at category level as nicely controlled in Oracle, as compare to SAP.
7. In SAP, there is some good automation of feature like "Asset Shutdown" where SAP users like.Asset Shutdown can be consider in case if you have an asset which you do not want not be used for production purposes for next six months as the company is being closed for whatever reason.
8. See how you can transfer assets from one cost centre to another and across entities?
   • [Oracle ] As mention earlier also, assets can be owned by one entity and have depreciation charge going to another. Asset transfers would be typically be treated as a disposal and purchase by the new entity if across completely different legal entities- this can either be gone as a GL journal or via the AR/AP modules - the process will depend upon and varies business process and the local legislative requirements
   • [SAP] The SAP system provides transactions to transfer assets from one cost centre to another and from one company to another where-in the asset values and accumulated gets transferred automatically.
9. Asset register Usage and Maintance
   • [SAP] The asset register is a standard report available in the asset management module of SAP. This reports does shows all acquisitions, transfers, retirements, depreciations, revaluations.In asset management you create an asset first and then use the asset number created for capitalising the asset.
   • [Oracle] Assets (ideally) are created from Payables as invoices which goes to a Fixed Assets additions screen from where the Asset Manager/user can review which items to incorporate to the asset register.Assets can also be created in the Fixed Assets modules. CIP based assets can directly integrated with Project and PO modules.
     • Assets integrates with the general ledger which can process the journals automatically - this is typically done at month end so the depreciation can be run and rerun many times if required
10. Oracle does have iAsset , a purly web based application designed to cater to manage employees and access information about a company's capital assets, such as equipment and machinery.

Disclaimer : SAP Functionality which is discussed is based out of Personal observation and discussion with SAP user, which they are using bit older version.Any Conflicts with SAP functionlity must be validated. Oracle Version which is used for reference is 11.5.10.2/R12.

Oracle Asset does not draw a distinction between the retirement and the disposal of an asset. Since there may be a significant time elapse between the retirement of an asset (it is no longer being used) and the physical disposal of the asset.

The generic retirement Procedure normally consist of these sub-procedures from place to place.

1. Identification of assets to be retired.
2. Collection of details and supporting documentation including proper authorization.
3. Data entry of disposal information.
4. Data entry of retirement information.

The Oracle Asset Retirement Process

You can retire all or part of an asset when it is no longer in service. For example, you can retire an asset that was lost, stolen, damaged, sold, returned, or any other reason that caused you to stop using it. If necessary, you can undo the retirement. Oracle Assets will continue to track a fully reserved asset until you retire it.

The other feature and functionality that Oracle handles are:

• Retiring assets by units or cost.
• Performing a mass retirement by retiring a group of assets if using.
• You can synchronize asset disposal information between Oracle Assets and external systems , this can be achieved by Mass External Retirements interface, which is discussed at the end.
• You can create journal entries to separate accounts for each component of the gain or loss.

Retirement Limitation

These Limitation you should be familiar:

• You can only retire assets that were added in previous periods and are effective in the current fiscal year.
• You cannot retire an asset that you added in the current period. Therefore it is advisable that you must enter your retirement as a prior period retirement after you run depreciation. [[This is 11i Functionality]

You perform current and prior period retirements and reinstatements within the same fiscal year.

You create journal entries to separate accounts for each component of the gain or loss.

Oracle Processes & Navigation

(N) Assets > Asset Workbench (B) Retirements

Full Retirement

This mean retiring an entire asset including all of its units and cost.

When entering the date of the retirement, it must be in the current fiscal year, and cannot be before any other transaction on the asset.

Oracle Assets lets you use a different prorate convention when you retire an asset than when you added it. The retirement convention in the Retirements window and the Mass Retirements window defaults from the retirement convention you set up in the Asset Categories window.
If you perform a prior period retirement, Oracle Assets backs out the depreciation expense through the date of retirement.

Partially Retiring an Asset

You can retire part of an asset by cost or by units or by By Source Line in your corporate book. You cannot perform partial unit retirements in your tax books; you can only perform cost retirements (partial and full) in your tax books. The procedure to partially retire an asset is identical to the procedure for fully retiring the asset. The only difference occurs when you specify the cost or units to retire.

If you perform multiple partial retirements on an asset within a period, you must run the Calculate Gains and Losses program between transactions.

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