Saturday, August 4, 2012

New features Offered in R12 Oracle Payables (Invoicing).

1.In R12 Oracle Payables we have 3-tier hierarchical Invoice architecture
a.Header
b.Line
c.Distribution.

2.In R12 Oracle Payable Invoice line is now a Child of Invoice header and parent of invoice distribution entity.

3.Three different ways are available to enter an invoice from the Invoice workbench
a.Invoice header to Invoice Lines and then to Invoice Distributions.
b.Invoice as matched to a Purchase Order or Receipt, they will need to
manually look for and pick the matched records from searching result.
c.Quick match to have the matched data automatically fetched from PO or
Receipt, and then populated into the invoice.

4.The Invoice distribution entity will now exist as the child of the Invoice line entity. When the invoice lines are created, the distribution data are automatically generated and tied to the lines.

5.Another new feature is multi-period accounting entry , with this mechanism used cab create deferred accounting data for future data.

6.Now Oracle Payables enables invoice approval at both header and line levels.

7.The invoice corrections can be made with various types, including price corrections, quantity corrections and amount corrections, at invoice line level.

8.With invoice lines implementations, freight charge can be easily allocated to the real item lines on item.

9.User can apply the available prepayment onto the current invoices during the creation of standard invoices. Pre-Payment will be created a separate line in the Invoice and Gross amount of the invoice will be automatically reduced based on the Pre-payment amount.

10.During Invoice Validation process Oracle Payable validation process will check for validation of the various rules (set of invoices) , and of there is any violation of the tolerances rules then the invoice will be put on hold.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

AME (Oracle Approval Management) Architecture

Today we will have a look at the flow of the AME. Following is the flowchart of the AME Process.

Overview about the architecture of AME

1.     Calling application send a request (to get list of approver) to the AME by means of sending Runtime data of transaction to AME API. e,g PO data to AME API
2.     AME execution Engine process the data.
3.     AME engine evaluate rules for that transaction types (rules are define in AME schema for  a transaction type).A transaction may have more than 1 rule associated with it.
4.     AME evaluate each rule depend on the conditions/attributes.
5.     Rules then execute action Type.
6.     AME then return calling application list of approvers(Sorted based on Setup in AME).
7.     (Please note when we call AME, it generate list of approvers, Identify next approver, check the status history to check if people has already approved or Not).
8.     Calling application receive response from AME and then send Notification to Approvers.
9.     PLUS calling application update the status of the Approver in AME by means of calling a AME API (Updatestatus API).
10.  AME is done when approves is complete
In general we will have a requirement to call the AME from workflow. This is a two steps process.
Process steps to link AME with workflow
1. Register your application in AME (in case it is not already registered). By registration, I mean, Create the Transaction type/Item Class/Mandatory attribute etc., for you Apllication (if it is not already defined) in the Approval Management Administrator Dashboard.
2. Once Step-1 is done, Call AME API to fetch the approver information from the Oracle workflow.

Friday, May 18, 2012

PO Match Approvals

When working with Purchase Orders in the Oracle Apps, we generally hear the word Match Approvals. Even though you all know the definitions of the approval and how they effect the invoice, lot of us stuck when we try to get the details, if we have access to only database.

First we will just have look at what the Match Approvals. Match approval is a rule associated between Purchase Order and the Invoicing. There are three types of Match Approvals,
1. 2-Way - PO Line quantity and Invoice quantity should match
2. 3-Way - PO Line quantity, Received quantity and Invoiced quantity should match
3. 4-Way - PO Line quantity, Received quantity, Accepted quantity and Invoiced quantity should match

Now from the Backend how will we come to know a which match approval it is following. Here comes the explanation.

In the PO_LINE_LOCATIONS_ALL table, there exists two columns name INSPECTION_REQUIRED_FLAG and RECEIPT_REQUIRED_FLAG. These two column values decide what is the match approval.

INSPECTION_REQUIRED_FLAG RECEIPT_REQUIRED_FLAG Match Approval
NN2-Way
NY3-Way
YY4-Way