Understanding AR Receipt, Point of sale, API’s & Intergration with Oracle Application

Posted on January 11th, 2008 by Sanjit Anand | Print This Post | Email This Post

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.

How does the point of sale receipting function work?
Once Customer is agreed to pay, front end office need to be initiated the acceptance of payment of transaction which is already been booked .Once customer makes their payment, front end needs to issue a receipt back to the customer.

Very often , these are question in mind if such kind of requirement came to your implementation phase..

• Do we have seeded functionality to accommodate POS system?
• Is there any module in 11i/R12 , which can be used to some other application or can we handle it in AR by any work around?
• Does anyone know if Oracle has a P.O.S. module of any sort that can handle cash receipting?

The one and only answer is not yet in oracle have capability, which can directly plug with any POS system for receipting.

Then, what are the options for a point-of-sale system that will integrate in with Oracle?

Three options can be best deal with this case:

1. Customize Oracle: This mean customize AR Transaction form (arxtwmai.fmb), use zoom feature in of custom.pll and add few screen to capture some details from POS feeder system, and printing receipt.
2. Buy a 3rd Party system and have batch mode interface for receipt creation.
3. Third Party POS system and use of Middleware to interface with Oracle in real time.

As we know, one of the great functionality of EBS is nut and bolt, by mean of Third part application or integrating via API’s. Oracle offers a middleware piece to communicate with the database, with the use of products like MQSeries ,allows you to communicate directly to the Oracle database by using APIs.The flow should like:
POS -> MIDDLEWARE -> API -> Oracle

Let take a dive for other part of the game:

The difference in handling both kind of receipt:

As it well known oracle allows two types of receipt Cash and Miscellaneous.
Cash receipts are those that apply to a customer account and can be applied to a customer and/or their transactions.

A miscellaneous receipt is a receipt such as bank interest that is income but which does not apply to an outstanding debt.

Then ‘Reversing’ means..

Reversing a receipt is usually necessary when cheques are returned as unpaid -when the customer has insufficient funds or for example. In these cases Oracle allows the reversal of a previously recorded receipt thereby showing the invoice balance as unpaid.

The only pre-requisite for this is to be informed that a check has bounced or there are insufficient funds to pay a receipt.

…Applying the Receipt

Once a receipt has been recorded it needs to be applied to a customer invoice so that the customer balance is updated and they are not chased for the outstanding amount.

Business scenarios for managing receipt

1. Receipts against multiple customer transactions
In these instances your customer will pay invoices on behalf of another customer, in addition to their own. You can apply a receipt to more than one customer.

2. Receipts against multiple invoices
In some instances a customer will send one payment that must be applied to numerous outstanding invoices. You can apply a receipt to more than one customer Invoice.

3. Apply Receipts on Account
In some instances a customer will send a payment without having any outstanding transactions to apply it to. These might be duplicate payments or payments for invoices

Unapplied Receipt

This receipt is not applied to an existing invoice when it is entered. When the customer does not want to apply the entered receipt they can leave it as unapplied and apply the amount on a later date.

On-Account

In case of an On-Account receipt, there is no identified invoice against the receipt. Advance money is received from the customer and the invoice for the same can be raised at a later date.

The World of API’s

To integrate with Oracle apps there are 10 API’s, such as:

a) Creating a cash receipt
b) Applying it to a debit item
c) Creating a cash receipt and applying it to a debit item in one pass
d) On-account application
e) Unapplying the On-Account application
f) Unapplying the receipt application to a particular transaction
g) Reversing the receipt
h) Create a Miscellaneous receipt
i) Create a cash receipt activity application
j) Unapplies a cash receipt activity application

The 10 Receipt API’s:

1 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.CREATE_CASH : This is for creating a single cash receipt, as in case of manually created cash receipts.

2 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.APPLY : Applies a cash receipt if used in (1) to a particular installment
of a debit item. The application can also be a cross currency application.

3 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.CREATE_AND_APPLY : This API’s can be used in place of 2 sepearte call as in (1) & (2) above. This will Creates a cash receipt and applies it to a specified installment of a debit item in one pass.

4 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.APPLY_ON_ACCOUNT : Does an On Account application for a cash receipt.

5 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.UNAPPLY_ON_ACCOUNT : Unapplies the On-account application on the specified receipt.

6 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.UNAPPLY : This unapplies the application of a particular installment of a debit item against the specified cash receipt.

7 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.REVERSE : This is used to reverses the specified receipt.

8 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.CREATE_MISC : This is used to creates a Miscellaneous receipt

9 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.ACTIVITY_APPLICATION : This is used to creates an activity application on a cash receipt

10 AR_RECEIPT_API_PUB.ACTIVITY_UNAPPLICATION : This API used to unapplies a particular activity application on a cash receipt.

The solution can be best understood as figure:

Next we will see how Remitance Bank and receipting will be integrated. Will discuss with the case how to dubug API’s errors.