The Feature

How To Set Flexible PO Approval Limits

September 8, 2010 on 8:25 pm | by Marian Crkon | In How To Guides | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Sometimes you might need to maintain controls over purchases and set flexible limits in the PO approval process. You can set the dollar threshold over which POswould need to be approved manually by a buyer. Here is a summary of a solution to accomplish this:

• Establish the process for limit-base approvals.
• Define a descriptive flexfield (DFF) on the Supplier Site to record the Amount threshold limit. If the DFF is blank, there is no limit.
• Add PO Create Documents workflow attribute “Is PO Line within Tolerance?”, which will call a custom code.
• Add workflow activity “Is PO Line Under Threshold?” to the “Create and Approve Purchase Order or Release” process, following the activity “Is Automatic Approval Allowed”. Output result of ‘No’ ends process. Output result ‘Yes’ launches the Document Approval Process.

• Define a custom code to select purchase order’s supplier_siter_id in the PO_VENDOR_SITES_ALL table. Compare all Purchase Order Line(s) Unit Prices to the Site DFF Amount. If no DFF Amount has been defined, substitute 999,999,999. If any Line’s Unit Price is exceeds the DFF Amount, do not submit the PO to the PO Approval Workflow. The PO will remain at Incomplete status and the buyer must approve the PO manually.
• Optionally, create an Oracle alert to send a listing of the POs being held to the supplier.  The alert could contain the Creation Date, PO Number, Line Number, Supplier Item Number, Quantity Ordered, Unit Price, Buyer Name.

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.

Let Contractors Buy!

November 10, 2008 on 8:23 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 1 Comment |  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!