The Feature

Let’s Make Entry of Project-Related Purchasing Documents Easier!

August 31, 2010 on 8:27 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature of the week is for anyone using Oracle Purchasing and Payables with Projects (R11i and R12). I spent some time with a group of users who were new to Oracle Applications (they switched from Sage and QuickBooks), and was showered with a slew of questions like “Why do I have to enter so many fields?”, “Why is it so unintuitive?”, “Can we modify the forms to hide the fields we don’t need and change the order in which they are entered?”…

The area of particular interest and concern was processing of purchase requisitions and orders. They did not use iProcurement, and hundreds of PO documents have to be entered manually in Purchasing. To make matters worse, some of their purchases were project-related, some were not; switching to a fully project-centric processing is out of question at this time.

Anyway, I don’t know how many times I had to defend Oracle’s design of the Distributions window for Requisition and POs. And quite honestly, I am running out of arguments to explain why it is so cumbersome. It is obvious that the option to enter project-related information was added on at later date, and its workflow is quite contra-productive. Let’s take a project-related requisition for example:

• Enter requisition header
• Enter requisition lines
• Enter requisition distributions

Now, if it was a non-project requisition, you’d enter Charge Account and you are done.

However, if it was a project-related requisition, you’d need to ignore the Charge Account, switch to the Project tab, enter the project-relate information, come back to the Accounts tab, finish the remaining required fields there, and finally, save your changes to initiate the Account Generator to assign the Charge Account. The process for entering the PO distributions is pretty much the same. Now, explain that to users.

Suggestion for Improvement

Why not make the Requisition Distributions and PO Distributions folder-based forms like the Invoice Distributions in Payables? It would not be difficult to do, and this way, users could arrange, display, hide the fields according to their business needs.

Finally, it was really disappointing to see that this particular process and the Requisition and PO forms, were not enhanced in R12. Is this being discussed in the Supply Chain SIG? Is there a plan to incorporate the existing enhancement requests in the future?

Confused About Setting Up MOAC in R12?

August 20, 2010 on 12:48 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Don’t despair, you are not alone. This feature applies to Oracle EBS R12. If you are implementing, or upgrading to R12, you’ve probably already heard of the new Multi-Org Access Control (MOAC) functionality. In fact, it is one of our main talking points, when we solicit new R12 projects…

Multiple Organizations feature (MOAC) provides security profiles which enable users to access, process, and report data in multiple operating units from a single “global” responsibility.

Both in 11i and R12, the MO:Operating Unit profile option ties a responsibility to a single operating unit. If the MO:Operating Unit profile option is blank at the responsibility level, the MO: Default Operating Unit profile is used for all responsibilities.

In order to make responsibilities “global” and give them access to multiple operating units, you have to define the MO: Security Profile system profile option. Note that if the MO: Security Profile is set, then the MO: Operating Unit profile is ignored, (regardless of which level the options are set at).

When it get tricky is when you need to define a combination of responsibilities intended for one operating unit and responsibilities that cross multiple operating units. In this case you need to carefully design the use of both MO Operating Unit and MO Security Profile options.

And another heads up: you should probably never set the MO: Security Profile at the site level because this overrides the MO: Operating Unit setting at the responsibility level and all responsibilities have access to all operating units.

Projects, Templates Form Does Not Let You Update More Than 25 Records

June 30, 2010 on 9:57 am | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

You can encounter this feature in Oracle Projects 11.5.10, form PAXPREPR, version 11.5.640.

Background

I am building up a project template and using DataLoad to create project and task options like project assets, task-level transaction  controls, or task-level asset assignments.  There are several hundreds of these to upload, so DataLoad seems a perfect method.

The Feature

For some reason, however, and I am not even able to properly articulate this, I am unable to upload more than about 25 records at one time. When it reaches some limit, the form simply freezes up, and you have to shut down the browser and re-open your Oracle Applications session.

Has any of you experienced this? What is causing it? I do not believe it is caused by some DataLoad limitation, I’ve used it to upload hundreds and thousands of records in “one run”.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. This is truly driving me insane.

How to Make ‘Close Other Forms’ Option Updatable

December 12, 2008 on 10:20 am | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 1 Comment |  Print |  Email

This feature of the week is for anyone using Oracle Projects 11i plus.

The Feature

When using certain responsibilities the ‘Close Other Forms’ option in the Navigator window, ‘Tools’ menu is protected against an update.

Solution

The function ‘Navigator: Disable Multiform’ needs to be included in menu exclusions of the given responsibility. As System Administrator:

• Navigate to Security > Responsibility > Define.
• Query the responsibility in which you want to allow to control the Close Other Forms option.
• In the Menu Exclusions, enter a function Name: Navigator: Disable Multiform
• Save changes.

The values are stored in FND_USER_PREFERENCES table by user. To see whether the checkbox is checked or not:

select * from fnd_preferences
where preference_name = ‘NEW_WINDOW_FLAG’

‘N’ means defaults to checked, ‘R’ means defaults to not-checked. We have had some inconsistencies with this checkbox. You would un-check it and exit the applications, and the next time when you log in, it’s checked again.

Recording Project-Related Receipt Accruals in Oracle Projects

November 25, 2008 on 9:27 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature is for anyone using Oracle Purchasing, Payables and Projects 11i and beyond. I’ve been asked today to provide a solution for recording project-related receipt accruals in Oracle, and was very pleased when I found out this was a standard functionality. A summary of my research [from four different Oracle user guides] is available below.

Recording Project-Related Receipt Accruals

Oracle Purchasing records the received goods as delivered for your project when they are delivered and assigned to a project-related purchase order distribution line. When a purchase order line is flagged to accrue on receipt and the purchased goods are delivered to an expense destination, you can interface receipt accrual accounting entries from Oracle Purchasing to Oracle Projects as actual expenditure transactions. This allows you to recognize the cost to your project in the period in which it is incurred rather than in the period in which it is invoiced.

Interfacing Receipt Accruals to Projects

To interface receipt accruals from Oracle Purchasing to Oracle Projects, use the PRC: Interface Supplier Costs process in Oracle Projects. The process selects transactions based on the project-related values entered on PO distribution lines.

The process first retrieves all eligible accounted, project-related receipt accrual information, supplier invoice distributions (including non-recoverable tax lines) and all payment discounts that are distributed to project-related distributions. The process then interfaces the amounts to Oracle Projects.

The interfaced items are grouped into expenditure batches as follows:

• All invoice distributions, excluding non-recoverable tax lines, are included in one batch.
• Non-recoverable tax lines are grouped into a second batch
• Payment Discounts are included in a third batch, and
• Receipt accruals for project related items with a destination type of Expenses are grouped in the fourth batch.

Each time you run Interface Supplier Costs process, Oracle Projects generates reports you can use to track the interfaced supplier invoices distribution lines, receipt accruals, as well as those invoice lines and receipt accruals that are rejected during interface from Oracle Payables and Oracle Purchasing, respectively. The following reports show you the results of this process. These reports show amounts in the functional and transaction (AP invoice) currencies.

• The Interface Project Costs from Payables Report. Lists all invoice distribution lines and receipt accrual transactions that were successfully interfaced to Oracle Projects. In addition, summary information is provided to display the total number and total costs of the interfaced transactions.
• The Interface Project Costs from Payables Exception Report. Lists all invoice distribution lines and receipt accrual transactions that failed to interface to Oracle Projects during the process. For each transaction that fails to transfer, output reports list the rejection reason.

Submitting the Interface Supplier Costs Process

The PRC: Interface Supplier Costs process retrieves the following items and interfaces them from Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Payables to Oracle Projects:

• All eligible accounted, project-related supplier invoice distributions
• All eligible receipt accrual information from Oracle Purchasing
• Tax lines for project-related intercompany invoices
• All eligible accounted payment discounts that are distributed to project-related invoice distributions

The process first populates the Transaction Import Interface table, creating an expenditure item and cost distribution line for each invoice or payment distribution line, and an expenditure for each invoice. This process also checks for original items being adjusted when processing adjusting items from Oracle Payables, to ensure that every negative expenditure item adjusts a valid original expenditure item. If an original matching item is found, the process next checks to ensure that the original item is not already adjusted to have a net zero amount.

Select ‘Yes’ or ‘Accrued Cost Only’ in the Interface Supplier Invoices parameter if you want to interface supplier invoices. When this parameter is set to Yes or Accrued Cost Only, project–related supplier invoice costs are interfaced from Oracle Payables to Oracle Projects.

If an invoice distribution is matched to a purchase order line that is flagged to accrue on receipt and the receipt accrual information is interfaced to Projects, only additional invoice amounts are interfaced. These amounts can include tax or freight charges added during invoice entry, or price and exchange rate variances.

If Accrued Cost Only is selected, only additional invoice amounts are interfaced even when the receipt accrual information is not interfaced to projects. But if an invoice distribution is matched to a purchase order line that is flagged to accrue on receipt and fully interfaced to Projects, then for any invoice distribution matched to this purchase order line, the whole invoice amount will be interfaced to projects irrespective of the selected option.

Similarly, if an invoice distribution is matched to a purchase order line that is flagged to accrue on receipt and for which only additional amounts have been interfaced to projects, then for any invoice distribution matched to this purchase order line, only additional invoice amounts will be interfaced to projects irrespective of the selected option.

Select ‘Yes’ in the Interface Receipt Accruals parameter to interface receipt accruals. When this parameter is set to Yes, receipt accruals for project-related items with a destination type of Expense are interfaced from Oracle Purchasing to Oracle Projects.

Note: Receipt accrual entries are not interfaced if the received items are invoiced and the invoice amounts are interfaced to Projects.

Receipt Accrual Adjustments

You cannot adjust the expenditure item in Oracle Projects when the item is interfaced from Oracle Purchasing (i.e. receipt accrual).

If the invoice is matched to an accrue on receipt purchase order line and the invoice line (rather than the purchase order receipt) is interfaced, then the invoice line can be adjusted in Oracle Projects.

After you have made adjustments to supplier invoice items, you must send the adjustment information back to Oracle Payables so the Payables distribution lines match what is recorded in Oracle Projects. Oracle Payables will interface adjustments that affect the GL account number to Oracle General Ledger. You run the following processes in Oracle Projects for supplier invoice adjustments:

• PRC: Distribute Supplier Invoice Adjustment Costs
• PRC: Interface Supplier Invoice Adjustment Costs to Payables

If you need to change the invoice amount, supplier, or expenditure type, organization, or item date for a supplier invoice line, reverse the line and create a new line in Oracle Payables.

Troubleshooting the Projects to Receivables Interface

November 17, 2008 on 9:10 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature is for anyone using Oracle Projects and Receivables 11.5.10 and beyond. There were several new features introduced to Projects 10.5.10 (Family Pack M), which now require additional [not quite documented] configurations for the Receivables interface to work. I find myself scrambling to make the interface work everytime I run it the first time in a new installation or a new operating unit. Here are few quick tipts I consolidated from the Metalink notes and user guides to remember what to do the next time…

Open Periods

Make sure to open respective accounting periods in Receivables. As Receivables Manager, navigate to Control > Accounting > Open/Close Periods.

Retention Error

You may not be using retention or multi-currency in Project Billing, but you still receive the “Transaction Code: TRA OU Level Retention Accounting flag N… Some transactions are disabled. Please Check auto-accounting setup” error when running the PRC: Interface Invoices to Receivables program (PATTAR).

To resolve the error you need to enable the AutoAccounting Assignments for Unbilled Retention Account and Rounding Account.

As Projects Billing Super User:

• Navigate to Setup > AutoAccounting > Assign
• Query up function ‘Revenue and Invoice Accounts’
• Define Segment Rule Pairings for the Unbilled Retention Account
• Define Segment Rule Pairings for the Rounding Account
• Make sure to enable the Function Transactions!

Again, you need to do this even if you do not intend to enable retention and multi-currency billing in your Implementation Options.

Sales Credit Type Rejection

You might get a ‘No sales credit type at Implementation or Projec Level’ rejection when running the PRC: Interface Invoices to Receivables program (PATTAR).

In order to resolve this error as Projects Billing Super User:

• Navigate to Implementation Options
• Select ‘Exchange Rate Type’ in the Currency tab
• Select ‘Sales Credit Type’ in the Billing tab

Transaction Source and Transaction Type Errors

The seeded Project Transaction Source and Project Transaction Types might be incomplete. Make sure to review and update these for your setting you defined in the Implementation Options > Billing tab. The source It is going to be ‘PROJECTS INVOICES’ (if new 11i or R12 implementation, or ‘PA INVOICES’ if upgraded from 10.7) and Transaction Types are going to be ‘Projects Invoice’ and ‘Projects Credit Memo’ (11i and beyond) or ‘PA Invoice’ and ‘PA Credit Memo’ (10.7) respectively.

As Receivables Manager:

• Navigate to Transaction Sources: Setup > Transactions > Sources
• Query up your Transactions Source you defined in the Implementation Options > Billing tab
• Make sure the Reference Field Default Value field = ‘interface_header_attribute1′
• Make sure the Standard Transaction Type = ‘Projects Invoice’
• Make sure the Credit Meno Batch Source = ‘PROJECTS INVOICES’
• Also navigate to Transaction Types: Setup > Transactions > Types
• Query up ‘Projects Invoice’ transaction type
• Make sure the Credit memo Type = ‘Projects Credit Memo’

Let Contractors Buy!

November 10, 2008 on 8:23 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature of the week is for anyone using Oracle HRMS and Purchasing 11.5.10. When the contingent worker functionality was rolled out to Oracle Financials in this release, (see the original story from February 2006), the contractors could charge their time and expenses to projects, and have their costs calculated based on their time or purchase orders, and few other things.

Few months ago our implementation team at a local hospital in Seattle was surprised to find out that contingent workers were not allowed to enter or approve purchasing documents. Since a major part of the company’s supply chain was outsourced to 3rd party vendors, this was a major problem. It seems that other companies face the same problem, as documented in the bug 4534789 on Metalink. The business need can be summarized as follows:

“…Contingent workers who are allowed (in both business terms and in Oracle functionality) to have employees report to them and who can be entered into the requisition hierarchy do not have the ability to enter requisitions or approve their employee’s requisitions. This requires someone else to do that for them and that individual may not have the knowledge of whether the purchase is allowable or acceptable, creating delays and inappropriate approvals in the requisitioning process…”

Few Questions for Oracle Development:

• Can contingent workers buy in Release 12?
• Is this functionality going to be back ported to Release 11i?

If anyone has more information on the subject, I invite you to share it as comments on this post. Thank you!

Tips and Tricks for Oracle FSGs

April 29, 2008 on 2:17 pm | by Melanie Cameron | In Feature of the Week, How To Guides | 1 Comment |  Print |  Email

Financial Statement Generators (FSG’s) are a necessary evil at any company running Oracle’s E-Business Suite General Ledger. Row Sets, Column Sets, Content Sets, Parents accounts or Ranges, Publish with XML, ADI. . .the combinations and possibilities are endless. And the decisions you make when creating and maintaining your FSGs can affect their ease of use and maintainability in the future.

See my Tips and Tricks for Oracle FSGs white paper for Best Practices, Tips and Tricks to making this task a little more manageable and less time consuming. When working with FSGs, perhaps the most important thing to remember is the FSG functionality is old. I have been a heavy user of General Ledger for 13 years, and except for generating outputs, it is basically the same.

That means that the majority of older installs (implemented prior to 11i) had one-off patches that greatly affected the way FSGs behave. A report created three years ago that is copied or mimicked for a new report-well, they just give different results. Research shows the new report is behaving as Oracle documentation explains it should, but the old report is not.

So I leave you with my biggest tip of the paper: Tip: If it works, don’t change it! See the while paper for more details…

Changes to Web ADI Documents in R12

February 13, 2008 on 8:35 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 2 Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature is for everyone who is trying to create Web ADI documents in Release 12. The documents in R12 are cleaner, more user-friendly and intuitive; they are easier to create and update. Finding them, however, might be a challenge.

The main difference between R11 and 11i was introduction of function security. You either need to figure out which module-specific responsibilities include the Web ADI integrators you want to use, or you need to find out which integrators (functions) need to be associated with the new Desktop Integrator responsibility. Either way, this is not well documented in the Oracle Web ADI User Guide R12; and you have to figure it out by reading product-specific user guides. It took us a couple of hours to find the right Metalink note (472160.1), in which these changes were described…

The Feature

In R12, the existing responsibility Oracle Web ADI is obsolete! The Create Document function does not work and integrators are missing.

The Solution

Add a new responsibility Desktop Integrator. The Create Document function under this responsibility should work for a handful of seeded integrators. You will need to research the user guides to find out how to include additional integrators.

The seeded integrators included in the new Desktop Integrator responsibility:

• Enterprise Performance Foundation: Hierarchy Integrator
• Enterprise Performance Foundation: Member Integrator
• Financial Consolidation Hub: Intercompany maps
• Financial Consolidation Hub: Dimension Hierarchies
• Financial Consolidation Hub: Value Set Mapping
• General Ledger - Budgets
• General Ledger - Journals
• Intercompany - Single Batch Entry

To include additional integrators, you need to include additional menu functions in the menu assigned to your Desktop Integrator responsibility. Navigate to System Administrator > Application > Menu, and include the following sub-menus in your menu (Desktop Integration Menu if you use Desktop Integrator responsibility. Here are few examples of Projects Integrators:

• For Project Budgets and Forecasts, include Financials: Project: Budgets and Forecasts function. This is documented in Oracle Projects Implementation Guide.
• For Project Expenditures (Transaction Import), include Expenditure Entry Using Microsoft Excel menu. The seeded integrators are also available in the Project Super User responsibility and documented in the Oracle Project Costing User Guide.

I find Oracle’s approach to document setup steps in multiple user guides and make them accessible in multiple responsibilities troubling. It makes implementation workflow very confusing. Along with Web ADI, other examples of this approach include iExpenses, Project Management, Resource Management, or iProcurement…

When Oracle Asset Security by Book Doesn’t Work

January 23, 2008 on 9:00 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 4 Comments |  Print |  Email

This feature of the week is for those who operate in a multi-org environment with multiple Asset Books. Unlike other Oracle Financials modules (Payables, Receivables, Purchasing, Order Management or Projects), Oracle Assets is not operating unit specific. The way you separate your transactions is by defining the Asset Security by Book.

Summary of Setup Steps

Step 1: Define Asset Organizations.

As Fixed Assets Manager:

• Navigate to Setup > Security > Organization > Description.
• Query up the organization, for which you want to define the Asset Security. Typically, this could be your operating unit.
• Include classification ‘Asset Organization. Click ‘Other’.
• Associate the organization with the asset book. Now, this step is very peculiar. You want to find an existing asset book. But! If you ran an open query, you’d get all books, which were already associated with this organization. And if you were assigning the first book to this organization, you’d retrieve nothing.
• What you must do is submit a specific query, i.e. run it as View > Query by example > Enter, and enter the book name.
• Then you have to make a change, any change like changing the book description, in order to be able to save it. This is not a bug, it’s a feature! So be aware of it.
• Save you changes. Now your book is associated with the asset organization.

Step 2: Define Asset Security Profile

As Fixed Assets Manager:

• Navigate to Setup > Security > Security
• Define a profile, which you will later assign with user responsibilitities. The profile links together the asset book, asset organization and responsibility.
• Select Organization Hierarchy and Top Organization in it to be valid in this profile, or
• Include specific organizations, which will be valid in the profile.

Step 3: Assign FA Security Profiles

As System Administrator:

• Navigate to Profile > System.
• Enter the asset responsibility you want to assign to a specific asset book (FA security profile).
• Enter ‘FA Security Profile’ as profile.
• Enter ‘Your Asset Profile Name’ in the profile value.

Step 4: Validate Your Asset Security Setup

Log in with the responsibility, for which you just defined the Asset Security above. Navigate to Asset Workbench and select the book values. If you see more than the one book you expected, something is not right.>

When Asset Security Doesn’t Work

• Check the Organization and Organization Hierarchy Setup. The Security by Book feature enables you to designate an organizational hierarchy in which the assets of an organization can only be seen by either the organization or its parent.You may set up a number of organizations and include as many of them as you wish in the hierarchy. Make sure that your hierarchy is set up as you expect.
• Run the Security List Maintenance program. This program populates the LOV’s with the appropriate information. If you miss this important step, your LOV’s will not show the correct books that are available for each organization to access.
• Define Asset Security for all books. You will always see asset books, which are not associated with any security profile. If there is a book that already exists on the system and you have not assigned that book to a particular organization, all organizations will be able to see the book and its assets.

For more information, refer to the Oracle Assets User Guide, or this [old but good] white paper on the subject (Oracle Metalink sign-on required).