Oracle R12 Subledger Functionality - Your Questions Answered

Last week over 90 people registered for IT Convergence’s latest webcast, Oracle R12 Subledger Functionality: Conditional Rule Creation.

Oracle Financials is of course at the core of Release 12 of the Oracle E-Business Suite, and the new Subledger functionality within the General Ledger has generated an enormous amount of interest in the Oracle user community.

As promised, we are happy to provide a transcript of the Q&A portion of the webcast.

• Christina, why you need to number the lines and the conditions 10 spaces apart?
  It’s similar to when you’re doing journal entries in the GL, If you put them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and you’ve forgotten something, you can’t go back in and add it into the sequence of events. But if you number them about 10 spaces apart; 10, 20, 30, 40, ect, you can always go back in and add something to your concatenation strings or to your condition sequence of events. So by the 10 I can go back in and put a 5 which would then become the first sequence of events or piece of information that it concatenates.
  
• If I copy an Oracle rule, it doesn’t automatically replace the Oracle rule with mine in the rest of the setup?
  No, so just like that accounting builder method overview showed, if you modified or create a rule a journal line type, account derivation, or journal description you have to go in and place it, into either in an existing journal line definition or create a new journal line definition. And then that journal line definition gets placed into or into a new created, application accounting definition and then that application accounting definition get placed into a Subledger accounting method. So remember that the flow of information works from the bottom up, you’ve touched almost the bottom most row and then you need to touch the rest of the flow as well.
  
• Do I have to modify the rules in Subledger accounting for it to work properly? Subledger accounting out of the box is running quietly and in the background, always in R12. If you do not modify any of the setups or the accounting methods builder the rules in the subledger accounting, out of the box it works just passing your information from your subledgers to your General Ledger. So there’s nothing you have to do in order for subledger accounting to work, it’s already setup and running in Oracle R12.
  
• Can we create custom events within R12’s subledgers?
  Yes, you will have noticed in our accounting methods builder when you’re under that setup list, there is a setup function for setting up custom events and sources. So you can do both you can create your own custom event based on your business need as well as your different sources, if you have something external coming in you can create a source for that as well.
  
• Are you planning to do another webcast or another presentation on Oracle R12’s Subledger accounting?
  Yes, so our first one on the overview of Oracle Financials R12 was back in August or September where I think we just did the overview of subledger accounting there. In October we offered our first webcast devoted to Oracle R12’s subledger accounting,, so now we are following up with rule creation and probably in the spring some time we’ll offer a third on subledger accounting on more custom creation and the rest of the journal definition accounting method and application accounting definition, ect.
  
• Is there any new reporting with R12’s subledger accounting
  Yes, there is a lot of new reporting with subledger accounting. One of the best is the Subledger Accounting Exception report, that runs when you create accounting from one of your subledgers and it is excellent. Really, Oracle has stepped up their game with new error messages that are extremely user friendly, so you are really going to like the subledger accounting exceptions report. There’s a couple of other canned reports that subledger accounting gives you, but it’s all about how the flow of information either got stuck or stopped or if a rule failed, things like that.

Our first webcast of 2011 will be on reporting options for the Oracle E-Business Suite R12.

Indeed, we’re expecting to offer another webcast on Oracle R12 Subledger accounting in either March or April of 2011. In the meantime, if you need to get up to speed on Oracle Financials R12 Subledger Accounting you can attend the workshop on it that we are offering with the Oracle Applications Users Group.

The R12 Subledger accounting workshop is part of the larger Oracle Applications Workshops that we’re sponsoring with the OAUG, whose members get 25% off the admission price, with additional discounts for companies that buy multiple workshop seats.

You can click here to register for our webcast on Oracle E-Business Suite Reporting options by clicking here. Likewise, click here for more information about our Oracle R12 Subledger Functionality workshop.

Q&A on Oracle Manufacturing R12 New Features

IT Convergence Began December with its webcast “Do Magic with Oracle R12 Manufacturing” which focused on R12 Manufacturing’s new features.

The host was Dan Natchek, a expert who worked for Oracle for over 17 years, and literally wrote the book on Oracle Manufacturing, as he was the co-author of Oracle E-Business Suite: Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management which, while it was on Oracle 11i, remains required reading for legions of Oracle consultants.

As promised during the webcast, we’re happy to provide a transcript of the Q&A session which followed "Do Magic with Oracle R12 Manufacturing."

You’ve mentioned that there are a lot of new capabilities with the new Oracle MES. Can you give us a quick summary of some more of them?

• Sure. You can control whether you can “skip” operations and require that each operation be performed in sequence; you can control whether the workstation is used in single-user mode or shared; that means that if you do charge actual time, the workstation can derive the employee from the signon, instead of having the enter your badge for each transaction.
  I don’t think I emphasized it, but right on the dispatch list you can perform express transactions, and you can perform two transactions at once, for example move part of the quantity and scrap or reject a portion.
  
  If you don’t need to calculate actual time, there is an option called Job On/Job Off; this lets your supervisor and co-workers know that you’re working on the job.
  
  And I think I’ve mentioned the ability to formally expedite (and also UnExpedite) jobs.

Can I use the component yield factor selectively?

• For example, on some production lines I don’t want to inflate the backflush quantities, but I do want that behavior for other lines.
  
  The parameter is set at the Organization level, so that’s the only selection ability you have. If your lines are in different organizations, you can do what you want, but within an organization, you’d have to decide which option is more useful, and use manual adjustments as needed.

Can I use the Quality Audit capability in Release 11?

• I don’t think Oracle has any plans to backport the templates … correct me if I’m wrong … but it’s all pretty standard Parent/Child quality collection plans, so you could duplicate the functionality in Release 11 if you want. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but the quality audit functionality was developed by one or more of Oracle’s customers who suggested that Oracle include it in R12.

You didn’t mention the merging of the Discrete and Process Inventory models; I thought that was a big enhancement in R12?

• You’re right, that is a big enhancement, but my area of expertise is really discrete manufacturing, and in my opinion, the Inventory Model Convergence benefits mostly Process manufacturers … they can use the cycle counting and physical inventory capabilities, for example.
  
  The one enhancement that I was looking forward to, the Dual Unit of Measure capability, can’t be used with items that have or are used in Bills of Material, so that really limits the usefulness of that feature for Discrete Manufacturing organizations.

Anyone who missed the Dan’s webcast will get multiple chances to take advantage of Dan’s expertise. Dan will be doing another webcast in February, titled “Oracle ERP 101 for Manufacturing Organizations.” You can register for that webcast by clicking here.

Dan will also be teaching several courses on Oracle Manufacture through the Oracle Applications Workshops sponsored by IT Convergence and the OAUG.

In January, Dan will be teaching Oracle R12 Manufacturing New Features, and Oracle ERP 101 for Manufacturing Organizations.

In March Dan will lead the workshops on Oracle MES. The first two days will focus on the setting up Oracle MES, and the second two days will focus on using the Oracle MES Workstation. Oracle MES Setup and Oracle MES Workstation can be taken as individual workshops or together.

For more information about these workshops or to register, either click on the highlighted course links or click here to visit the Oracle Applications Workshops home page.

Oracle R12 Financials Subledger Accounting Webcast set for Wednesday

IT Convergence marches on with its next edition in its series webcats on Oracle Applications Release 12. This latest one offers better insight into the subledger accounting engine in the R12 Financial Applications Suite.

The Title of this webcast is Sub Ledger Accounting: Conditional Rule Creation Using Accounting Methods Builder Webcast, and its core focus in this webcast will be the flow of information from the AP subledger to postings in the general ledger. We’ll be taking a look at the impacts this flow has on the new sub ledger accounting rules created using the Accounting Methods Builder. In addition, we will also give special attention to creating customized conditional rules for varying and specific instances.

IT Convergence Education Services Senior Principle Instructor Christina Dooley, a 12-year veteran in IT Training and Instruction, will lead the webcast. Dooley has analyzed, developed, designed and implemented training projects for numerous organizations on an enterprise-wide scale.

"Sub Ledger Accounting: Conditional Rule Creation Using Accounting Methods Builder" will be held on Wednesday, December 15th, at 8:00 am PST/11:00 am EST.

Click here to visit the our website and register for Sub Ledger Accounting: Conditional Rule Creation Using Accounting Methods Builder Webcast.

ITC to Produce Oracle Videos in Light of India Video Success

IT Convergence's customers and prospects can look forward to seeing much more of the company in the year 2011.

Literally.

IT Convergence chose the use the occasion of the opening of its India offices in Hydrabad and Banglore to make its first foray into the word of digital marketing. Instead of making the announcement via press release or some other traditional, formal announcement, ITC produced the video "India Never Sleeps" and released it on You Tube.

In three months since its launch, "India Never Sleeps" video has had over 2,611 views. This comes in addition to those who viewed the video on IT Convergence's India services page, as well as those who have viewed the cloned version.



The video went live at the end of August. Although the overall numbers were overwhelming by any stretch of the imagination, the vast majority of those views have been organic.

Beyond making an initial push via email, the rest of the growth in page views has come as a result of word of mouth contacts or referrals, and most of the growth occurred in the first two months after the video launch. How much more traction could the video gain with sustained effort to promote it?

Oracle Videos Coming Soon

With that final question in mind, IT Convergence is set to produce more videos on 2010.

To be certain, some of the videos will be similar to the India video -- a new one touting Brazil is already in the works -- but the rest of the videos will be on topics relating directly to ITC's core business -- Oracle.

Already a video on Oracle MLS (or non-MLS) language solutions for Oracle users in China is in the works.

So stay turned for further details. In the mean time, you can check out IT Convergence's India services page and its China Oracle Solutions page.