Oracle Financials Functional Basics

This article gives a brief overview of the core Oracle Financial modules and how they interact or exchange information.

The Oracle Financials family of applications is designed to capture the key financial transactions in a business and to generate financial statements and other useful reports from the same. With the addition of Financial Daily Business Intelligence, it also gives the manager revenue and expense information on a daily basis.

The Oracle Financial family includes the following core modules:

• General ledger
• Payables
• Receivables
• Assets

General Ledger: is the central repository of all financial transactions in your business. It is integrated with other financial application that generates financial data and, it can also be integrated with other application families like Manufacturing, Order Management and Human Resource etc to capture the financial data generated from them. Other applications in Oracle financials that send financial information to the general ledger are usually referred as Sub ledgers (E.g.: Asset, Payables, Receivables etc.). General Ledger generates the key financial reports like financial income statement, balance sheet etc. The key function of this module is to manage Journal entries, Budget Information and account balances.

Payables: is the core module that manages the enterprise spending. The payables module process the supplier invoices, automate the payment of supplier invoice, perform accounting of the invoice and payment information and transfer the accounting information to the general ledger module. It is fully integrated with the general ledger module and also performs the back end processing for Oracles Procure to Pay and Travel and expense management solutions provided by Oracle. This module can also be integrated to the application of other families like Procurement (eg. Purchasing), Human Resource Management for invoice and payment management.

Receivables: helps to manage the customer invoices and do the exact opposite function as that of Payables. It automates the processing of customer invoices and cash receipts. In simple words Payables manages what goes out of your hand (bills/invoices that you need to pay) and Receivables manages what comes in (customer bills/invoices). The key functions of Receivables are processing of customer invoices and cash receipts and sending the accounting information from the same to general ledger.

Assets: as the names implies, manages the assets of your business. It is fully integrated with Payables and General Ledger modules. The key function includes Asset addition, depreciation and transfer of accounting information related to asset management to general ledger module.

Make the best use of Depreciation Rollback!

Depreciation process in asset, includes lot of complex calculations and we might want to check if the Depreciation calculated is accurate before the same is posted to Journal.
One good new is, starting from 11i, depreciation rollback feature is introduced. If you run the depreciation without closing the period, you can rollback the same if some descrepencies are identified.
The following sequence of asset depreciation process can be followed, to make the best use of depreciation rollback feature.
1. Run Depreciation (without closing the period).
2. Run Create Journal Entries - Standard (FAPOST).
3. Review FA reports and verify results are as expected.
4. Review the FA journals in GL to verify results are as expected.

If everything is correct:
5. Resubmit Depreciation (close the period).
6. Do not run Create Journal Entries - Standard again.
7. Post the FA journals already created in GL from #2.

If corrections are necessary in FA:
8. Run Rollback Journal Entries.
9. Run Rollback Depreciation.
10. Make the necessary corrections in FA.
11. Repeat the process starting with #1.

Important : Depreciation cannot be rolled back without rolling back journals first. If this is done, Rollback Depreciation will error with message to rollback Create Journals.
The period should not be closed until the FA subledger is verified accurate and complete.

Setting Up the Folder Block

Folder Block is a feature provided by Oracle, to customize the data displayed in a form form. You can define a query, customize the layout of the form columns, and then save the query and layout in a folder definition that can be retrieved later.

To define query criteria for a folder:

1. Run a query, either by using the Find command or Query By Example.
2. Save your query criteria by choosing Save As from the Folder menu.
3. Enter a name for the folder.
4. Select Always, Never, or Ask Each Time from the Autoquery option group to definehow frequently to perform the saved query.
5. Select the Open as Default check box to set this folder definition as the defaultevery time you navigate to this form.
6. Select the Public check box to allow other users to access your folderdefinition. Selecting Public does not enable other users to modify your folder.
7. Select the Include Query check box to include your query in the folder definition. Ifyou do not select this check box, only the folder layout is saved.

Customizing the Layout of a FolderUse the Folder menu or the Folder Tools window to customize the folder layout. Somelayout changes can be made using the mouse. For example:

• Change the width of a column by dragging the column’s border.
• Change the sequence of a column by dragging the column’s heading to a newposition.
• Change the name of a column by using the right mouse button on the column’sheading. A window prompts you for the new name.

To access the Folder Tools window:

• Select the Folder Tools toolbar icon, or choose Folder Tools from the Folder menu.