New Products in Release 12.1

1.Product Name : Oracle Landed Cost Management (LCM)

The new product Oracle Landed Cost Management (LCM) gives organizations financial visibility into their extended supply chain costs, including
transportation and handling fees, insurance, duties and taxes therefore this product is being integrates with logistics, procurement, and financial applications to provide a comprehensive landed cost tracking solution.

Just who are new to ERP, landed cost is sum of Purchase cost , Freight Cost,Octroi , Labor charges involved in loading and unloading and GST /VAT Taxes.

Landed cost = Purchase Price + Freight Charges + Octroi + Labor charges for loading and unloading + Taxes.

Oracle LCM is integrated out of the box with Oracle EBS

• Oracle Procurement
• Oracle Inventory
• Oracle Cost Management
• Oracle Payables
• Oracle Advanced Pricing
• Oracle Transportation Management

Details for Reference

Oracle notes :Oracle Landed Cost Management | Data sheet

Channel Revenue Management

2. Product Name : Oracle Supplier Ship & Debit

This application automate all agreements, tracking, accounting journal entries and chargeback’s to vendors manual processes for timely claims processing.

Oracle notes :Oracle Supplier Ship & Debit | Data sheet

This Product is being integrates with the following finance modules:

3. Product Name : Oracle Price Protection

Channel Revenue Management product enabling orchestration and automation of supplier price changes.With this timely claims processing through automated integrations to through various Oracle Products..

Oracle Price Protection is integrated out of the box with Oracle EBS

• Procurement
• Warehouse / Inventory
• Costing
• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable

Details for Reference

Oracle notes :Oracle Price Protection | Data sheet

Already Available

4. Product Name : Oracle Site Hub

As a part of Oracle MDM This Product is going to cater some of industry like retail banking, telecom and even manufacturing which they need to maintain and manage many locations.

Therefore Oracle Product Site Hub is a repository for site specific data that will be leveraged during the life cycle of a site including analytics, such as market planning, competitive analysis, site selection, project management, location management, facilities management to closure. Site Hub allows for master site records, centralized data storage, data quality management and integration of services.

Organizations with many locations, whether manufacturing plants around the world or a mix of stores, kiosks, ATMs, offices and/or distribution centers around the country, need a repository for location data to assist them with these business requirements.

• Single HTML interface
  • Create, manage, search and map sites
  • Create and group user-defined attributes
  • Assign sites to hierarchies, clusters, maintenance orgs and inventory orgs
  • Create parties and relationships, e.g. competitors and partners, in Trading Community Architecture (TCA)
  • Create a property in Property Manager
  • Create an inventory organization from an existing inventory organization
  • Create maintainable assets based on a site asset template in a maintenance organization (eAM)
  • Google Maps and web services
  • Leveraging Oracle Database, Oracle Spatial, and Oracle Trading Community Architecture

Major Benefits of this Product is you can enhance operational efficiency in site opening, closing or maintenance and improves decision making .

Oracle notes : Oracle Site Hub | Data sheet

5. Product Name : Oracle PIM for Retail

This Product is used fir single view of product information that can be leveraged across all departments so retail side you can manage sell-side as well buy-side product catalog.This application consolidate, manage and synchronize all product information with other source systems and trading partners.

There is two major advantage with this product

• Improves speed of New Product Introduction
• Decreases cost of collaboration with partners and suppliers

Oracle notes :Oracle PIM for Retail | Data sheet

6. Product Name : Oracle Advanced Planning Command Center

This is the new application built on top of Oracle Advanced Planning that maximizes the value of your planning information by increasing accessibility and strengthening business orientation.

This is coupled with a role based analytical UI (with concepts such as business scenario management) and the automation of planning processes

Oracle notes :Oracle Advanced Planning Command Center | Data sheet

7. Product Name : Oracle Demand Signal Repository

A separately deployable application designed to maintain a consolidated view of demand information between the OEM and Retailer to facilitate the transition to demand driven .

Oracle Demand Signal Repository captures, cleanses and harmonizes large volumes of external demand data to give users insight to consumer and supply chain behavior.

Oracle notes :Oracle Demand Signal Repository | Data sheet

8. Product Name : Oracle Service Parts Planning

This is the new application within Oracle Advanced Planning designed to support the increasing importance of after-market service through the management of service parts.

This Combines extensive and purpose-built service parts planning capabilities, all fully integrated with the rest of Oracle Advanced Planning and
the associated execution systems.

Oracle notes :Oracle Service Parts Planning | Data sheet

9. Product Name : Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center

Oracle notes :Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center | Data sheet

It was big news today evening when Oracle announced general availability of the Oracle(R) E-Business Suite Release 12.1. Therefore the product which you are going to use is R 12.1.1

This time too the focus of R12.1 is again some of existing product enhancements across human resources, supply chain management, procurement, projects, master data management, customer relationship management and financials.

Additionally, R12.1 also features industry specific features and solutions that help drive greater value across the companies. Industries with significant new functionality advancements include Wholesale Distribution, Public Sector, High Technology, Engineering & Construction, Life Sciences, Retail, Professional Services, Communications, Consumer Goods and Utilities.

Here is extract of information for Release 12.1 Details and Features from Oracle website

• The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 helps companies achieve rapid value by offering stand-alone solutions that complement existing Oracle E-Business Suite 11i or Release 12 environments. Customers can take advantage of rapid value solutions without having to upgrade to this latest release.
• • There are 9 new products been added in this version.
  • R12.1 will be available as stand-alone solutions available for some of major products like
    • Supply Chain Management
    • Oracle Sourcing On Demand
    • Oracle Incentive Compensation
    • Oracle Warehouse Management.
  • Release 12.1 will be delivers integrated analytics from Oracle BI Applications.
• Some of existing module have been enhanced, which includes
  • Enhancement in the some of the key features of the R12.1 which include an integrated talent management solution with enhancements to Recruiting, Succession Planning, and Performance and Learning Management.
  • A new addition in product called Oracle Landed Cost Management will give organizations financial visibility into their extended supply chain costs.
• R12 EBS also brings some rich industry-specific solutions that help companies strengthen their position in the market.
  • Distributors will benefit from greater visibility into ROI of promotional funds, accrued assets, the effect of supplier price changes and related liabilities with Oracle Supplier Ship and Debit and Oracle Price Protection for Wholesale Distribution.
  • Oracle Site Hub a new application helps organizations centralize information to help eliminate the problems associated with fragmented, incomplete and inconsistent site data resulting from rapid business expansion or mergers and acquisitions.
  • Retail industry can now leverage to Oracle Product Information Management for Retail (PIM for Retail) which is centralize product information from heterogeneous systems into a single view that can be used across all functional departments.
  • Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 provides out of the box Federal accounting support with Project Accounting for automating funds consumption and billing in compliance with funding rules, supporting advance processing and ultimately helping to reduce overhead.
  • Oracle Subcontractor Payments for Engineering & Construction helps owners and general contractors manage cash flow and ensure their subcontractors are satisfying contract deliverables by controlling the payment of subcontractor invoices.

Other key information for R12.1 are :

1. You can check it out R12.1 RCD from metalink.
2. Steve blog did mention announcement of software downloads will be publicly available from metalink.
3. Oracle.com have R12.1 dedicated publicly available .

Reference Notes for Interest

• Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 : Release Content Documents, a good list of "what's new" for this release.
• Oracle Applications Documentation Resources, Release 12.1. related links covering a lot of topics and products, and a good place to start reading when it's time to think about implementation.

As requested by some of reader , Here are steps and checklist for R12 AR Month End Close and Reconciliation.

1. Complete All Transactions for the Period Being Closed

2. Complete and review your unapplied receipts

3. Reconcile Receipts to Bank Statement Activity for the Period

Read the rest of this entry »

Herewith providing the generic period close process for Cash managment for R12.

1.Make sure you have Loaded & reconciled all bank statements for month

• You must verified Auto-Reconciliation Execution Report

2.If there any , resolve all exceptions

3.Create miscellaneous transactions

This step existed in Release 11i but the difference is that in Release 12 when you create the miscellaneous transactions in AR, the accounting is done by SLA.

4. Resolve unreconciled lines

A Note on Transactions Available for Reconciliation Report

Take advantage of this report.This report shows all transactions available for reconciliation for a specific bank account. It lists detailed transaction information for your Available Receipts, AvailablePayments, and Available Journal Entries for reconciliation.

Detailed information includes the Customer, Supplier, Transaction Date, Payment Method, Transaction Number, Currency, and Amount. It also lists detailed information for statement lines that are available for reconciliation against other statement lines.

5.Reconcile to General Ledger

A Note on General Ledger Reconciliation Report

Use this report to reconcile the General Ledger cash account to a bank statement balance.

This report lists a balance and an adjusted balance for the bank statement. It also lists a separate adjustment amount for un-reconciled receipts, payments, and journal entries, as well as bank errors.

This Report will show

Hopefully these steps will be helpful for doing Closure for CE.

If you are coming from 11i, there is slightly change in FA Period Closure process because of SLA.

Here are steps & procedures for performing period-end processing in Oracle Assets Release 12.

In FA, at period end, we require to run depreciation for depreciation books set up for the organization, and to Create accounting for Oracle General Ledger. Oracle Assets has only a single open depreciation period in each depreciation book.

1.Complete All Transactions for the Period Being Closed

You need to ensure that all transactions have been entered for the period being closed. Once a depreciation period in Oracle Assets has been closed, it cannot be re-opened. Check that no-one is entering transactions as Oracle Assets prevents transaction data entry while the Depreciation Run Process is running. You need to complet all transactions for Oracle Assets:

• Prepare and Post Mass Additions
• Complete Manual Additions
• Complete Adjustments
• Complete Retirements
• Complete Transfers
• Complete Reinstatements

2.Then if you required, you need to assign distribution lines to all assets.

If an asset has not been assigned to a distribution line, the period end Depreciation Process will not complete, and will not close the period. Take the advantage of running "Assets Not Assigned to Any Cost Centers Listing " report to determine which assets have not been assigned to a distribution line.

3.Run Calculate Gains and Losses

This is optional , the Calculate Gains and Losses program for retirements can be submitted prior to running depreciation. The Calculate Gains and Losses process is performed independently for each depreciation book.

4.Run the depreciation

In Release 11i when you ran depreciation you would automatically close the period whereas in Release 12 you can now run depreciation without closing the period.

5.Create accounting

Create Journal Entries (FAPOST) is replaced by Create Accounting – Assets process (FAACCPB)

6.RollBack Depreciation for adjustment

When you are trying to do adjustment on a particular asset, FA automatically rolls-back depreciation for that particular asset.This is one of the area where you will experience change if you are coming from other versions.

7.Once you are sure that all the balances are correct you need to run depreciation and close the period.

8.Create accounting

You need to run "create accounting" very similar as mention in step 5.

9.Post Asset Transaction in GL

You need to make sure the step 8 must be completed only if you done transfer and posting for the accounting entries to GL.

These steps are basically takes care of data movement , then next step for you to tie FA and GL.

For reconciliation of assets you need to take advantage of some of seeded and newly added report that will help business user to reconcile and closing the period.

10. Reconcile your Fixed Asset and GL

• Reconcile Assets to the GL Using Reports
  • Journal Entry Reserve Ledger - reconcile with the Account Analysis with Payables Details Report.
  • Tax Reserve Ledger Report
  • Account Reconciliation Reserve Ledger Report
• Balance Report
  • Cost Detail and Cost Summary Reports
  • CIP Detail and CIP Summary Reports
  • Reserve Detail and Reserve Summary Reports
  • Revaluation Reserve Detail and Revaluation Reserve Summary Reports
• GL Report
  • Journal - posted/Unposted
  • Account analysis

Once these report can tally, there is no way that your P & L report is not going to tally.

Suggested Reading

• Fixed Asset Transfer to GL
• Fixed Asset & SLA
• Release 12: 6 New and Changed Feature in "Oracle Assets"

Do you know when a well-designed Integrated system(like OracleApps/SAP) once properly deployed can connect every area of your organization—HR, customer service, internal business processes, inventory control, financial data centres, company information, order tracking, etc.—thereby the next big things is to improving your company’s effectiveness and efficiency for tax reporting need within product or outside product.

Taxation is having very complex model from implementation mapping point of view and must can be considered in two dimension.

• U.S. Taxes requirement
  • Sales Tax
  • Seller’s Use Tax
  • Consumer’s Use Tax
  • Rental Tax
  • Leasing Tax
• International Taxes
  • Input VAT
  • Output VAT
  • Import VAT
  • Export VAT
  • Acquisition VAT
  • Consumption Tax
  • Goods and Services Tax

Oracle EBS itself catering almost tax requirement expect few. Lets recap some of basic understanding of different tax type that might be big help and consideration for ERP implementation.

• VAT
  In simple layman term you understand like when you sell something you add on tax which is payable to the tax authorities. When you buy something you are able to recover the tax.Normally the net amount is paid to the tax authorities. Certain items are not recoverable, hence the term recoverable and non recoverable taxes are considered.

VAT is imposed on the value added to goods or services at each stage of their supply. The VAT charged on a customer invoice is referred to as Output Tax. Any VAT paid on a vendor invoice is referred to as Input Tax.

The amount due each period can be described as follows:

Amount Due = Output Tax - Input Tax

• GST

Goods and Services Tax – used in Canada and Australia ,Singapore– Similar to VAT

• Withholding Taxes

A withholding tax is where an amount is withheld from a payment to the supplier and paid to the tax authorities. If the overall payment due to a supplier was say 120, it may be that they are only paid 100, the remaning 20 being paid over. Essential you are acting as a tax collector. This only applies to certain types of supplier in certain countries.

• Recoverable Tax

Recoverable tax is one , which you can recover from your sales.

You can say VAT system. one suffer Tax when a person makes sales and which can be adjusted against the tax suffered when you make a purchase(Recoverable portion only) , end of the day , you pay to the tax authorities the Net of Tax paid on purchase and tax included on your sales.

• Sales Tax

Sales taxes are tax levies charged on applicable revenues according to law; and reported and paid periodically to the relevant taxing jurisdiction.

Understanding is very important . Take a case with USA implemenation.

There is one basic rule that we need to understand when it comes to calculating tax, which is always calculated for the destination shipping address.

Take senarios : Dell.com is an online retail website. It ships all its orders from a Warehouse. There are a couple of customers ordering a laptop of Model xyz drive on the website. One of the customers resides in NY and the other resides in the CA.

Now we have to decide which state’s tax law should we apply for calculating tax for the Laptop? Is it Dell for both of the customers? No its not.

For the customer who resides in NY, NY’s state’s law will apply and for the customer in CA, CA’s tax laws will apply.

Let’s understand the simple method:
List price of Laptop = $800
Tax on Laptop in NY = 7 %
Tax on Laptop in CA = 5 %
Sale price of Laptop for the customer in NY = $856.00
Sale price of Laptop for the customer in CA = $840.00
So, we understand that two customers, in two different states, might end up paying two different prices for the same product purchased.

• Use Tax or consumption tax

These are some sort of levied by local jurisdictions where goods and services are delivered from outside the jurisdiction but consumed locally, and are often accrued and paid by the buyer rather than the seller. Thailand is one such usage of such tax.Japan levies a consumption tax on the value of goods.

More on VAT

As Value Added Tax or VAT is a tax or levy on the business at all levels of the manufacture and production of a good or service rendered and based on the increase in price, or value, is provided at each level. The percentages of VAT vary depending on the goods or services provided.

Benefits of VAT?

The VAT has numerous benefits. They are:

• It reduces cascading affects of taxes and removes distortions
• It removes artificial incentives affecting choice of location of business since the VAT percentage on a particular type of good or service is same across all territories within the country
• It is eminently collectible and more transparent; it renders high cost to businesses not being part of VAT chain; i.e. if someone conceals the output, one cannot get refund on input
• Exports could be freed from Tax burden with World Trade Organization (WTO) compatibility

VAT @EBS

The VAT is defined as a Tax code in Oracle Applications in Accounts Payable module and the tax is attached to the invoice lines so that the tax is calculated as a positive tax on the invoice distribution lines.

What is important for Implementor for Tax

• Data identification and configuration (aka set up)
• Sales and use tax software integration (If using any third party tax software)
• Record retention
• Reporting : what is required is comprehensive data requirements of a tax department and tax reporting feature in ERP

Where is the Tax integration required

1. Order Management :Estimation of Sales Tax on Sales Orders
2. Accounts Receivables (AR) :Calculation of Sales Tax on Standard AR Invoices ,Credit memos/Debit memos & Adjustments ,Recurring invoices ,Manual invoices
3. iReceivables (credit memo requests)
4. Service & Project Billing (via AutoInvoice to AR)
5. CRM (iStore and Quoting via Order Capture)
6. Oracle Internet Expenses
7. Payables : GST included tax supplier Invoice
8. Purchasing :Estimate sales tax on POs, and update committed spend in Projects
9. Inventory :Self-accrue use tax on material transaction movements
10. General Ledger: Manually keyin Journal Entries
11. Oracle Trade Management
12. Oracle Services Contracts

Third Party tax @EBS

Vertex and Taxware are the two supported 3rd Party Software Vendors that Oracle Receivables uses to integrate with for tax calculating purposes. If you setup the integration the tax rates that are stored in the Oracle locations and rates tables are override and the calculation is done in the tax vendor.There is another Third party tax software called is SABRIX which is also widely used.

Next will discuss some important features of E Business tax . Till than ..:)

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »