Accounts Receivables FAQs

1. What are the two key flexfields in Oracle Receivables and what is its purpose?
Location Flexfield: - Mandatory
This Flexfield is used for calculating the Location based tax (i.e.) Sales tax.
Territory Flexfield: (Max 20 segments) - Optional
This Flexfield is used for tracking the location in which the sale is taking place.
This Flexfield is for ascertaining the profitability of each of the sales location through generating reports.

2. What are the modules that are interfaced with Oracle Receivables?

i. General Ledger
ii. Order Management
iii. Fixed Asset
iv. Inventory

3. What is Auto invoice ? What are its related setup steps?

Auto invoice is the process used for importing the transactions from feeder modules like order entry, project accounting etc. and also from existing applications/systems if the receivable module is installed for the first time.

To invoke auto invoicing the navigations is - Interfaces à Auto Invoices
Run a program called Auto Invoice Master Program and specify the Invoice source and submit it.
If any error occurred during validation all the transactions will be stored in the below mentioned tables

RA_INTERFACE_ERRORS_ALL

4. What are the database tables involved for performing Auto invoice?

1. RA_INTERFACE_LINES_ALL
2. RA_INTERFACE_SALESCREDITS_ALL
3. RA_INTERFACE_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL

5. What is an Application Rule set?

Application rule sets specify the default payment steps for your receipt applications and how discounts affect the open balance for each type of associated charges. By defining your own application rule set, you can determine how Receivables reduces the balance due for a transaction's line, tax, freight, and finance charges.
Receivables provides the following application rules:
· Line First - Tax After: Apply to the open line item amount first. Apply any remaining amount in the following order: tax, freight, and then finance charges.
· Line First - Tax Prorate: Apply a proportionate amount to the open line item amount and the open tax amount for each line. Apply any remaining amount to freight and then to finance charges.
· Prorate All: Apply a proportionate amount to the line, tax, freight, and finance charges.
6. What is a flexible address format? How can a user-defined format be defined and where will this be affected?
Oracle Applications let you enter customer, supplier, bank, check, and remit–to addresses in country–specific formats. For example, if you have customers in Germany, you can enter German addresses in the format recommended by the Budapest, or you can enter addresses for customers in the United Kingdom in the format recommended by the Royal Mail.

This is done by using descriptive flexfields to enter and display address information in the appropriate formats. The flexfield window opens if the country you enter has a flexible address style assigned to it, which lets you enter an address in the layout associated with that country. If there is no address style associated with the country, Oracle Receivables uses the standard address format.

Attention: (Receivables users only) if you use a Sales Tax Location Flexfield that contains a segment other than country and wish to set up a flexible address format for your home country, every component in your Sales Tax Location Flexfield structure must also exist in your flexible address style for that country.

7. What do you mean by Auto Accounting?
It helps the Receivables to determine the general ledger accounts for transactions that are entered manually or import using Auto Invoice.
Receivables creates default accounts for revenue, receivable, freight, tax, unearned revenue, unbilled receivable, finance charges, bills receivables accounts, and Auto Invoice clearing (suspense) accounts using this information.
When you enter transactions in Receivables, you can override the default general ledger accounts that Auto Accounting creates.
You can control the value that Auto Accounting assigns to each segment of your Accounting Flexfield, such as Company, Division, or Account.
You must define Auto Accounting before you can enter transactions in Receivables.
8. What are the different classes of Transactions available in Receivables?
(I) Chargeback (ii) Debit Memo (iii) Credit Memo (IV) Deposit (v) Guarantee (VI) Invoice
9. What are Transaction Sources?
Receivables uses transaction sources to control the transaction and transaction batch numbering, provide default transaction types for transactions in batch, and to select validation options for imported transactions. Receivables provides the following predefined transaction sources: MANUAL–OTHER, DM Reversal, and Chargeback.
10. What are Adjustment Approval Limits? Where & why are they used?
Approval limits, defined in the approval limits window are used for adjustments created in receivables and request for credit Memos initiated from I-Receivables. Receivables uses transactions that have a document type of Adjustment when we create an adjustment in the Adjustments, Submit Auto Adjustments and Approve Adjustments windows.
When you enter an adjustment that is outside the approval limit range, Receivables assigns the adjustment a status of pending until someone with the appropriate approval limits either approves or rejects it.

Glossary of Terms – AP

Glossary of Terms in Accounts Payables:

http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/A60725_05/html/comnls/us/ap/gls.htm

ORACLE PAYABLES FAQs continued

Payables FAQs Continued

31. What are the Payment Programs?

The following are the Payment Programs which is used in the payment batches.

1. Build Payment Programs

2. Format Payment Programs

3. Separate Remittance Programs.

Build Payment Programs

It groups the Invoices of the suppliers in the manner in which payment should be made.

Format Payment Programs

This program is used to know the layout of the payment documents and accordingly format the payments.

Separate Remittance Programs

If the Payment Documents does not contains the Remittance advice, then we need to run the Separate Remittance Programs other this will run along with Payment Documents.

32. What is difference between entering Invoices in Invoice Gateway and Invoice Work Bench Window?

Invoice Workbench used for entering and maintaining more complex invoices for which you require extensive online validation and online defaulting where as Invoice Gateway used for your everyday entry of invoice records. Use this window for rapid, high–volume entry of Standard and Credit Memo invoices that are not complex and do not require extensive online validation or defaulting of values during entry.

When you use the Invoice Gateway, you enter invoice header and line information in the same window, and can view only one record at a time. In the Invoice Workbench, you enter invoice header information in the Invoices window, and the related invoice distributions in the Distributions window. You can view multiple invoices at the same time in the Invoices window.

In the Invoice Workbench we can enter and apply prepayments. In the Invoice Gateway we cannot enter prepayments, but we can apply existing prepayments to invoices you enter.

33. What are the tables involved in AP Invoice Interface?

AP_INVOICES_INTERFACE

AP_INVOICE_LINES_INTERFACE

34. What is Proration of Invoice Lines?

When you check the Prorate in the Invoice Lines it will prorate expenses and Tax according to the Proportion of Line amount in the Invoice.

35. What are the Offset Taxes? Where it is used?

Offset Taxes

Offset tax codes are used to record self–assessed taxes on invoices, while reducing or completely offsetting tax liability. Offset taxes have negative–amount rates, so when you use them, you enter negative–amount invoice tax distributions.

It used in European Union, if you are a member of the European Union (EU), you can report on these zero–rated taxes using the Intra–EU VAT Audit Trail report.

36. What are the types of Holds that are used to prevent the payment of Invoice?

Holds that we can apply manually or that Payables applies, prevent payment and, in some cases, creation of accounting entries for an invoice. We can remove holds that we apply, and we can manually release certain holds that Payables applies during Approval.

Payables provides some generic invoice holds for our use, and we can define our own, based on our invoice approval needs. We can also prevent payment of supplier invoices by placing a hold on the supplier rather than on each individual invoice.

There are two major category of hold 1] Manual Hold 2] System Hold.

Manual hold we can create and release manually where as system hold is created by system and normally released by system after due rectification.

There are three types of holds we can use to prevent payment of an invoice

Invoice Hold. We can manually apply one or more Invoice Hold Reason Approvals (”holds”) to an invoice using the Invoice Holds window of the Invoice Workbench.

Scheduled Payment Hold. We can hold payment on part of an invoice by placing one or more of the scheduled payments on hold in the Scheduled Payments window of the Invoice Workbench.

Supplier Hold. In the Supplier Sites window, we can enable the Hold All Payments, Hold Unapproved Invoices, or Hold Unmatched Invoices options. We also have the option of

Specifying an Invoice Amount Limit for a supplier site.

37. What are the hold options at the supplier Site?

In the Supplier Sites window, we can enable the Hold All Payments, Hold Unapproved Invoices, or Hold Unmatched Invoices options. We also have the option of specifying an Invoice Amount Limit for a supplier site.

38. What are the ways in which invoice can be approved?

Before you can pay or create accounting entries for an invoice, including prepayments, you must submit Approval for the invoice in one of three ways:

• Online by using the Invoice Actions window.

• Online by using the Approve button in the Invoice Batches

• Batch by submitting the Payables Approval program from the Submit Request window.

39. What are the methods of taking Discounts in Payables?

There are two ways to take discounts with Payables:

• Enable the Always Take Discount Supplier option. Payables takes a discount regardless of when you pay the invoice.

• Select Discount for the Pay Date Basis for the supplier, and disable the Pay Only When Due check box for your payment batch. Payables takes a discount if you pay the invoice within the discount period.

40. What are the matching approval Levels?

Match Approval Level. If we use Oracle Payables with Oracle Purchasing or another integrated purchasing product, we can perform online matching of invoices and original purchase orders or purchase order receipts. Matching ensures that we only pay for the goods and services we ordered and that our suppliers do not over–billed us. If we are billed for an item over the amount and quantity tolerances we define, the Payables Approval Program applies holds to the invoice and prevents payment until we release the holds.

41. What are the Payable Open Interface Table?

The Payables Open Interface tables store invoice information. The Payables Open Interface Import program builds Payables invoices based on the invoice records in the Payables Open Interface tables.

After the import program builds the invoices, they can be viewed, modified, and approved in the Invoice Workbench.

The invoice data is from e–Commerce invoices from your suppliers, invoice records that you entered in the Invoice Gateway window, invoices that you loaded with Oracle SQL*Loader, lease invoices that were transferred from Property Manager, and credit card transaction data.

42. What are the Invoice Matching Options?

The following are the Invoice Matching Options available:

Purchase Order Matching - (2–Way matching): When you match to a purchase order or receipt, Payables Approval performs these control checks:

1. Quantity billed <= Quantity ordered

2. Invoice price <= Purchase order price

Receipts Matching (3–Way matching):

Control checks 1 and 2, plus:

3. Quantity billed <= Quantity received

Invoice Matching ( 4–Way matching):

Control checks 1, 2, and 3, plus:

4. Quantity billed <= Quantity accepted

43. What is the Prepayment Invoice? What are the Types of Prepayment Invoice?

A prepayment is a type of invoice we enter to make an advance payment to suppliers (vendors) or employees.

The Following are the Two Types of Prepayments

1. Temporary and

2. Permanent.

Temporary prepayments can be applied to invoices or expense reports you receive.

Permanent prepayments cannot be applied to invoices.

44. What are the purchase order matching database tables?

Payables uses several of Oracle Purchasing tables for matching. To implement matching in Payables, you need to load these tables with the data from your non–Oracle purchasing application.

The following are the list of such tables:

• PO_HEADERS

• PO_LINES

• PO_LINE_LOCATIONS

• PO_DISTRIBUTIONS

• PO_DISTRIBUTIONS_AP_V (view of PO_DISTRIBUTIONS)

• PO_RELEASES (Blanket Purchase Orders)

• PO_LOOKUP_CODES

Auto Install automatically installs these and other necessary Oracle Purchasing application tables when you install Payables.

45. What are the pre-requisites for entering Payments?

The following are the pre-requisites:

1. The invoice(s) we paid must be approved, uncancelled, validated, without holds, and must have the same currency as the payment.

2. The bank account must have at least one payment document that uses the Recorded or Combined disbursement type.

46. What are the stages in Payment Batches?

Building - Payables is determining which invoices will be paid by each payment document.

Built - Payables has determined which invoices will be paid with each payment document. You can now review the Preliminary Payment Register, Modify the Payment Batch, or Format the Payment Batch.

Cancelled - You have cancelled the payment batch.

Cancelling - Payables is cancelling the payment batch.

Confirmed - You have confirmed the payment batch.

Confirming - Payables is either confirming or partially confirming the payment batch based on the action you selected in the Confirm Payment Batch window.

Formatted - Payables has completed formatting your payments and has created the output file that you can use to print checks or, if you are making electronic payments, you can deliver the output file to the e–Commerce Gateway or your bank for processing.

Formatting - Payables has created the output file that you can use to print checks or, if you are making EFT payments, you can deliver the output file to your bank for processing.

Modified- Payables has modified the payment batch based on the modifications you made in the Modify Payment Batch window.

Modifying - Payables is modifying the payment batch based on the modifications you made in the Modify Payment Batch window.

Rebuilding - You have modified a payment batch, and Payables is rebuilding the modified payment batch.

Restarting - You have confirmed a partial payment batch and have chosen Restart Payment Batch in the Confirm Payment Batch window. Payables is rebuilding and reformatting the remaining portion of the payment batch.

Selected - Payables has selected invoices that match the payment batch criteria you entered.

Selecting - Payables is selecting invoices that match the payment batch criteria you entered.

Unstarted -The payment batch is unstarted.