Oracle General Ledger R12 New Features

Overview

Oracle General Ledger delivers extraordinary enhancements in this release so you can maximize accounting process efficiencies across your enterprise while still achieving a high level of information and setup security. Fundamental improvements in Oracle General Ledger enable you to perform simultaneous accounting for multiple reporting requirements and allow super users to access and process data for multiple ledgers and legal entities at the same time powering ledger and reporting shared services. For those users who should have more limited access, you can secure both information and setup definitions, like Mass Allocations and FSG reports, so they can only view, update, or execute those processes to which they have access. You are able to achieve a high level of efficiency and security, without having to sacrifice one for the other, with these new enhancements in Oracle General Ledger.

Features

Accounting Setup

Simultaneous Accounting for Multiple Reporting Requirements

Companies that are global in nature and that have operations in different localities often have multiple reporting requirements. These companies and their subsidiaries often need to satisfy the accounting and reporting requirements for each country as well as those of the parent company. This involves performing accounting in accordance with accounting principles and standards of multiple countries and in different currencies, charts of accounts, and/or calendars. The reporting requirements can also be statutory in nature, and one subsidiary may even need to satisfy multiple sets of statutory requirements. Oracle General Ledger simplifies the simultaneous management of the accounting for all of these different reporting requirements in this latest release. You are able to define your legal entities and the setup needed to address each accounting and reporting requirement using the Accounting Setup Manager. New enhancements and integration with Subledger Accounting enable Oracle General Ledger to perform accounting for all reporting requirements of a legal entity simultaneously.

Centralized Accounting Setup

The Accounting Setup Manager is a central location to define your accounting-related setup across all financial applications. Here you can define your legal entities and their accounting context, which includes the ledgers* that contain the accounting data for each legal entity. If a legal entity has multiple reporting requirements, you can include additional reporting currencies or ledgers in the accounting context to satisfy the additional requirements.

Enhanced Reporting Currency Functionality

Multiple Reporting Currencies functionality is enhanced to support all journal sources. Reporting sets of books are now simply reporting currencies. Every journal that is posted in the primary currency of a ledger can be automatically converted into one or more reporting currencies. This conversion can be performed by Subledger Accounting, to convert all Subledger journal entries, or by General Ledger, to convert more summarized General Ledger journals. You can choose to convert any journal sources and categories.

Improved Processing Efficiency

Simultaneous Data Access to Multiple Legal Entities and

Ledgers

You can access multiple legal entities and ledgers when you log into Oracle General Ledger using a single responsibility. This improves processing efficiency by reducing the need to switch between responsibilities when trying to access data for different ledgers or legal entities.

Simultaneous Opening and Closing of Periods for Multiple

Ledgers

The Open and Close Periods Programs has multiple enhancements. You are able to run any of the Open and Close Periods Programs from the Concurrent Manager. This allows you to take advantage of scheduling and request set capabilities for greater processing efficiency. Also, if you manage multiple ledgers, you can open or close periods for multiple ledgers simultaneously.

You can even keep the status of periods across multiple ledgers in synch with new programs that ensure a specific period is open or Closed for all of the ledgers you manage.

Cross-Ledger and Foreign Currency Allocations

You are able to allocate financial data from one or more ledgers to a different target ledger. This enables you to perform cross-ledger allocations, which is useful for purposes such as allocating corporate or regional expenses to local subsidiaries when each entity has its own ledger. This is possible even if the target ledger is in a different currency than the source ledger(s) because you can create allocations in foreign currencies. Foreign currency allocations are also useful within a single ledger if you need to allocate amounts to a currency that is different from the primary currency of a ledger.

Simultaneous Currency Translation of Multiple Ledgers

If you manage multiple ledgers, you can run the Translation program for multiple ledgers simultaneously.

Financial Reporting Across Ledgers

You are able to run Financial Statement Generator (FSG) reports for multiple ledgers simultaneously. This is useful if you manage multiple ledgers and want to run a balance sheet or income statement report for all of your ledgers at the same time. You can also create an FSG report that includes data from multiple ledgers in a single report; the data in each ledger can be displayed in a separate row or column, or data from multiple ledgers can be aggregated into a single row or column. This is useful for reports such as consolidating financial statements that display data for each subsidiary in separate columns, as well as aggregated data in a total column.

Automatic Journal Copy

You are able to automatically copy an existing journal batch to create a new journal batch with the same journals and journal lines. This reduces the amount of work you need to do to re-create a journal that has already been defined. During the copying process, you have the option to change the period and effective date of the journal batch.

Streamline Automatic Posting

AutoPost Criteria can be shared across ledgers that have the same chart of accounts and calendar. This dramatically reduces the number of AutoPost Criteria sets you need to define. Furthermore, you can automatically post journals across multiple ledgers simultaneously.

Streamline AutoReversal Criteria Setup

AutoReversal Criteria can be shared across ledgers. This dramatically reduces the number of AutoReversal Criteria sets you need to define.

 Streamline Consolidation Mappings

You are able to define Chart of Accounts Mappings (formerly known as Consolidation Mappings) between two charts of accounts. Therefore, if you have multiple Consolidation Definitions for parent and subsidiary ledgers that share the same chart of accounts pair, and their mapping rules are the same, you only have to define a single Chart of Accounts Mapping. This significantly reduces the number of mappings you need to define if your

Consolidation Definitions involve the same pair of charts of accounts and the mapping rules are the same.

Replacement for Disabled Accounts

When an account is disabled, you can prevent transactions that include the account from erroring during journal import by defining a replacement account for the disabled account. Journal import replaces the disabled account with the replacement account and continue the journal import process if the replacement account is valid. This improves processing efficiency by preventing the journal import process from erroring and enabling the successful creation of the journal with minimal user intervention when an account has been disabled.

Data Security

Data Security across Legal Entities and Ledgers

In this release, since you can access multiple legal entities and ledgers when you log into Oracle General Ledger using a single responsibility, Oracle General Ledger provides you with flexible ways to secure your data by legal entity, ledger, or even balancing segment values or management segment values. You are able to control whether a user can only view data, or whether they can also enter and modify data for a legal entity, ledger, balancing segment value or management segment value.

Management Reporting Security

You can designate any segment (except the natural account segment) of your chart of accounts to be your management segment and use Oracle General Ledger’s security model to secure the management segment for reporting and entry of management adjustments.

Prevent Reversal of Journals with Frozen Sources

Journals with frozen journal sources are prevented from being reversed to streamline the reconciliation of data from Subledger Accounting sources.

Prevent Reversal of Unposted Journals

Users are no longer allowed to reverse ‘Unposted’ journals.

Control Accounts

You are able to control data entry to an account by ensuring it only contains data from a specified journal source and to prevent users from entering data for the account either in other journal sources or manually within general ledger.

Definition and Setup Security

You can secure your setup and definitions by granting specific privileges to users to view, modify, and/or execute a definition. This enables you to control which of your users can view a definition, but not modify or execute it, or execute a definition without modifying it, or vice versa. For example, since MassAllocations and Financial Statement Generator components are sharable across ledgers that have the same chart of accounts, you can secure these definitions so that some users cannot view or modify the definitions created by other users. Following is a list of definitions that have this security available:

• Mass Allocation and Mass Budget Formulas

• FSG Reports and Components

• Accounting Calendars

• Transaction Calendars

• AutoPost Criteria Sets

• AuoReversal Criteria Sets

• Budget Organizations

• Chart of Accounts Mappings

• Consolidation Definitions

• Consolidation Sets

• Elimination Sets

• Ledger Sets

• Recurring Journals and Budget Formulas

• Rate Types

• Revaluations

Auditability

Accounting and Reporting Sequencing

Sequential numbering of accounting entries is a strong business requirement in many countries in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America and is used by fiscal authorities to check the completeness of a company’s accounting records. You can assign sequence numbers to journals during the posting process to ensure that finalized journal entries are properly sequenced.

Separately, you can also assign a sequence number to journals when a period is closed to sequence journals for reporting purposes.

Journal Line Reconciliation

The ‘GL Entry Reconciliation’ feature within Oracle Financials Common

Country features is part of Oracle General Ledger and renamed ‘Journal Line Reconciliation’. This feature enables you to reconcile journal lines that should net to zero. This is often done to reconcile suspense accounts, or in countries like Norway, Germany, or France, it is used to audit or reconcile payroll and tax payable accounts, or to verify the open balances of specific accounts at the end of the period.

Others

Entered Currency Reporting and Analysis

Oracle General Ledger tracks the balances that are entered in your ledger’s primary currency. This enables customers to perform currency analysis on amounts that are entered in the ledger’s primary currency for the purposes of currency valuation and hedging.

Foreign Currency Recurring Journals

You can use Recurring Journals to create foreign currency journals. This enables you to pre-define journals that are recurring in nature and that are in foreign currencies and simply generate them when you need them. For example, a subsidiary (with a different primary currency than its parent company) that has borrowed money from its parent company can generate a recurring monthly interest payable entry to the parent company in the parent’s currency.

Intercompany Balancing Support for Encumbrances

Intercompany encumbrance journals are automatically balanced during journal posting.

New i Setup API’s

Oracle General Ledger adds the following iSetup API’s to enable you to quickly create your setup data and definitions:

• Ledger Sets

• Data Access Sets

Integration with Subledger Accounting

Oracle Subledger Accounting provides tools that allow users to meet multigaap, corporate, and fiscal accounting requirements. With a flexible tool called Accounting Methods Builder, users can determine the accounts, lines, descriptions, summarization, and dates of their journal entries. Users can also add detailed transaction information to journal headers and lines. Detailed subledger accounting journals are available for analytics, auditing, and reporting. They are summarized, transferred, imported and posted to Oracle General Ledger. Oracle General Ledger’s integration with Subledger Accounting provides a unified process to post data to general ledger from Oracle subledgers and external feeder systems. Also, it provides a consistent view when drilling down from general ledger balances to subledger transactions.

Enhanced Intercompany

The Global Intercompany System (GIS) feature from previous releases has been incorporated into the Oracle Advanced Intercompany System product. Please refer to the Oracle Advanced Global Intercompany System section of this document for more information.

Account Analysis and Drilldown

Account Analysis & Drilldown is a new web-based interface that allows you to easily review and analyze your general ledger financial data. You can view the balances of multiple detail or summary accounts in a single page and drill down to supporting journal entries and subledger transactions all within a browser window. You can control the display of your data by choosing from various layouts, specifying your sort criteria, or defining filters to only retrieve balances that meet your specific conditions. After fine-tuning your personal search criteria, you can even save the search criteria for future use. These features give you immediate access to your live general ledger data so that you have the information you need to make better business decisions.

Note: This feature was first released in Oracle Financials Family Pack G.

GL Standard Reports Integration with XML Publisher

Oracle General Ledger’s Account Analysis, General Journals and Trial Balance standard reports are now integrated with XML Publisher. Using XML Publisher allows you to leverage the formatting features of a word processing application to design the layout of your report. You can personalize your report by changing fonts, adding images, inserting headers and footers, creating borders, changing column widths, and reordering/ adding/deleting columns. This enables you to create professional-quality reports directly from the general ledger, which ensures the integrity and auditability of the information. For more information on all formatting features, please refer to the XML Publisher User Guide.

Terminology

Term Definition

Ledger Defined in Oracle General Ledger, one or more legal or business entities that share a common chart of accounts, calendar, currency, and accounting method. Ledgers replace set of books in Release 12.0. Ledger sets a group of ledgers that share the same chart of accounts, calendar, and period type. In Oracle General Ledger, they enable you to perform certain operations for multiple ledgers at the same time, i.e. opening periods and running reports. Set of books Set of books is converted to a ledger in Release 12.0.

Oracle Subledger Accounting – New Product

Overview

Oracle Subledger Accounting is a new product in this release. Oracle Subledger Accounting enables corporations to comply with corporate, local and managerial accounting and audit requirements via increased control, visibility and efficiency. Oracle Subledger Accounting increases control by storing a complete and balanced journal entry for each subledger transaction and GL date. Detailed drilldown and audit information is captured for each journal entry line. By storing journal entries in a common data model, Oracle Subledger Accounting constitutes a single source of truth for all accounting, reconciliation and analytical reporting. As Oracle Subledger Accounting stores the articulated balance sheet side of every entry and cross references it to the business transaction’s evidentiary document, reconciliation from General Ledger through Subledgers to the documents and from there to the business transactions is greatly simplified. Oracle Subledger Accounting facilitates exercising internal control and policy by implementing accounting rules you define. The rules refer to system data from many sources, and can be tailored very finely by document type and document line. Oracle Subledger Accounting streamlines the close by providing a common posting engine, so that all subledger products and non-Oracle products can transfer controlled and summarized data to the General Ledger using a standard methodology and auditable, reviewable process. Oracle Subledger Accounting improves efficiency by speeding period close, simplifying business and regulatory changes and making acquisitions easier. Oracle Subledger Accounting increases management visibility by supporting multiple parallel accounting representations. Corporate accounting policies can be defined and implemented globally; free from limitations imposed by local fiscal reporting requirements. Oracle Subledger Accounting allows accounting policies to be created once and deployed many times. Minimization of maintenance and elimination of duplication makes accounting policies easier to implement, maintain and hence, control. Subledger accounting enables business users to control all aspects of journal entries including debits and credits; accounting flexfields, descriptions and GL date

Features

Journal Entry Setups

Oracle Subledger Accounting gives users control over the definition of their journal entries.

Users are able to define the following components of journal entries:

• GL Dates

• Entry Descriptions

• Line Descriptions

• Amounts (accounted and gain/loss)

• Accounts: rules can be created for either the entire account combination or for individual segments based upon constants or from transaction information

• Journal Lines: side, summarization, type

• Reconciliation References

The definition of these components can be based upon information from subledger applications such as transaction or setup values. Conditions may be used to determine how and when many of these components are used, and to create defaults. Setups can be quickly copied and altered to modify seeded definitions. Multi-language support is available for journal entry descriptions.

For each setup, Oracle Subledger Accounting stores information to determine whether it was seeded or completed by the user allowing customers to take advantage of upgrades without worrying about overwriting their customized setups.

Date Effective Application Accounting Definitions

Oracle Subledger Accounting allows users to group a consistent set of journal entry setups used in generating accounting for the transactions of an application. These are called application accounting definitions. For example, a user can create an application accounting definition that consists of setups to provide a U.S. GAAP representation of their inventory accounting.

Because accounting requirements change over time, Oracle Subledger Accounting provides the ability to enter date ranges for application accounting definitions. Multiple application accounting definitions can be created for each product with different date ranges. New definitions can be tested and implemented in advance of required changes and scheduled to automatically take effect on a chosen date. The setups related to an application accounting definition can be locked to prevent changes.

Multiple Accounting Representations

Oracle Subledger Accounting offers the ability for users to create multiple accounting representations for the same subledger transactions each to be stored in a separate ledger. These can be used to meet mutually exclusive accounting requirements. For example, a customer may need to use a fiscally mandated chart of accounts and at the same time create a corporate representation using a management chart of accounts. Any of the Oracle Subledger Accounting journal entry setups can vary by representation.

Summarization Options

For each ledger, customers can decide, by application, whether they would like to summarize their journal entries. If they would like to summarize, they can do it either by GL Date, or by GL Period.

Draft Accounting

When users create accounting they can elect to use draft mode. This allows them to view and report on the accounting without saving it. They can change Oracle Subledger Accounting setups or transaction data if they are dissatisfied with the accounting for any reason. The accounting can be recreated as final, and any changes in setups or data will be used to derive the final accounting.

Draft accounting may be used in an unlimited manner for each journal entry allowing iterative corrections before committing the accounting as final. This minimizes the need for correcting journal entries and facilitates a clean audit.

Online Accounting

Users have the ability to immediately create, view, transfer and post accounting in General Ledger when entering transactions into Oracle subledger applications such as Oracle Payables and Oracle Receivables. Oracle Subledger Accounting uses the same accounting rules and validations for both the offline and online accounting. Users can create the accounting online in draft mode, which allows them to preview accounting online, and to make adjustments before accounting in final mode.

Replacement for Disabled Accounts

When an account is disabled, users can continue creating accounting for transactions that include the account, without erroring. Oracle Subledger Accounting replaces the disabled account with the replacement account and continues processing. This improves processing efficiency by enabling the successful creation of journal entries with minimal user intervention if an account has been disabled. Oracle Subledger Accounting stores substituted disabled accounts on  subledger journal lines for audit and reconciliation purposes.

Process Category Accounting

Users are able to elect to account for a limited subset of their journals based upon business transaction entities using process categories.

Straight through Accounting Processing

Oracle Subledger Accounting allows users to create subledger accounting and transfer and post the GL accounting in a single step. When creating journal entries either online or offline by the concurrent program, users can choose to immediately transfer and post the accounting in General Ledger. Subledger Accounting therefore supports straight through processing from the sub ledger transaction to General Ledger balances.

On-line inquiries

Oracle Subledger Accounting provides multiple inquiries to view subledger accounting. Key transaction information is stored so users can easily understand what transaction has been accounted. For example, a journal entry for an Oracle Receivables invoice includes the customer name, customer number, the source, the transaction type, transaction date, and the invoice number.

• Users can inquire upon all the accounting for a transaction either from the transaction workbench or from a common inquiry form. In the case of multiple accounting representations, they can compare the journals for each representation side by side to see the differences

• Users can inquire based upon subledger journal entry header information such as the GL date, or the ledger

• Users can inquire based upon subledger journal entry line information such as the amount or account

• Users can view their subledger journal entries in a T-account format Oracle Subledger Accounting takes advantage of the Oracle personalization framework that allows users to customize their view of the accounting using any of the attributes of the journal entry and to save predefined searches. Embedded flows support a bi-directional drill between journal entry headers, lines, T accounts, and transaction data.

Journal Entry Sequencing

Oracle Subledger Accounting supports two different mechanisms of sequencing its journal entries. The sequencing information is available for querying and display of journals.

Accounting Sequencing

Oracle Subledger Accounting assigns a sequence to its journal entries as they are completed.

Reporting Sequencing

Oracle Subledger Accounting supports separate sequencing designed to meet legal requirements in Southern Europe. The reporting sequence is assigned to both the subledger and general ledger journal entries when the General Ledger period is closed. This feature replaces the Accounting Engine (AX) legal sequencing and Libro Giornale features. This type of sequencing is used by most of the legal reports required in some countries as the main sorting criterion to display the journal entries

Third Party Merge Accounting

Users have the ability to account for changes in third parties. These would include correcting the third party related accounting if the party involved in the transaction was incorrect, or managing the impact of third party merges or acquisitions on control accounts.

Manual Journal Entries

Oracle Subledger Accounting offers manual subledger journal entries that are within the context of an application. These can be used to record changes in third party information or reference values. Manual entries can be accounted online. They can be accessed via on-line inquiries and reports.

Third Party Control Accounts

Oracle Subledger Accounting stores balances for control accounts by customer and supplier. It uses a new key accounting flexfield qualifier that allows users to specify control accounts. General Ledger also prevents the entry of manual journal entry lines for control accounts thus ensuring that subledger control account balances are consistent with General Ledger balances for the same account combination. To calculate the balances, Subledger Accounting uses the customer and supplier information it stores on journal entry lines. Users can complete inquiries based upon the customer and supplier information. Reports are available that detail, by third party, the journal lines that are used to create the balance for each third party control account.

Transaction Account Builder

Transaction Account Builder provides a flexible mechanism to derive default accounts for transactions. Product development and implementation teams can create rules to determine the accounts that will be defaulted onto transactions. Rules can be created for either an entire account combination or for individual segments. They can be based upon transaction information or created as constant values.

Multi-period Accounting

Users can create accrual and recognition journal entries to allocate costs over a range of accounting periods. When creating transactions, users specify the date range for which a line should be accounted. The standard Subledger Accounting journal entry setups such as how to determine the account and description of the subledger journal entry lines are available for defining both the accrual and recognition journal entries. Users can also configure the GL dates, a prorating method, and have the ability to create a single recognition journal based upon the multi period end date. Recognition journals for future periods are created as incomplete until the period is open or enterable and are available for inquiries and reports.

Accrual Reversal Accounting

Users can indicate that a journal entry should automatically be reversed on either the next day or in the next GL period. This feature can be used for period end accruals or for other accounting that requires an automatic reversal of an accrual. It is possible to drill to the related reversal when viewing an accrual journal entry and vice versa.

Business Flows

Users can create accounting policies based upon both intra and inter-product business flows. This allows accounting definitions to explicitly handle cases where there is a logical relationship between accounting for two or more transactions facilitating reconciliation for intermediary accounts. Examples are as follows.

• When creating the accounting for a payment, the user can indicate that the account used to book the invoice liability through the invoice transaction should be relieved

• When accounting for a Payables invoice matched to a receipt, the user can indicate that the receipt accrual booked at the time of receipt be relieved and that the description from the receipt be used

Accounted and Gain/Loss Amount Calculations

Subledger Accounting can use conversion information such as the conversion rate, entered amount and currency information to calculate accounted and gain/loss amounts.

Rules can be created that determine the account used to account for gain or loss based upon whether there is a gain or a loss.

Application Accounting Definitions Loader

The Application Accounting Definitions (AAD) Loader enables customers to import and export application accounting definitions and journal entry setups. Users can build and test their journal entry setups on a test instance, export them, and then import them to their production instance.

The AAD Loader also supports concurrent development and version control of the application accounting definitions.

Errors Accounting and Reporting

Subledger Accounting creates journals as completely as possible, even if there are conditions that make the journal invalid. These journals have an error status and are not eligible for GL transfer and posting. However, they are useful for troubleshooting setup and information issues.

For example, if the journal entry has a GL date in a closed period, the entry is be created and an error message indicates that the GL date must be adjusted or the period must be opened. To minimize reconciliation issues, Subledger Accounting ensures that when there are multiple representations, all journals related to a given transaction must be valid before they may be accounted. Users can resubmit a request to create accounting and specify that they would like to only process entries that have previously had errors. Errors may be viewed both on standard XML Publisher templates and via on-line inquiries.

Standard Reports

Oracle Subledger Accounting reports is built to allow users to take full advantage of the features of Oracle XML Publisher. Oracle Subledger Accounting delivers data definitions and Oracle XML Publisher templates for the following reports:

• Journal Entries Report: This report provides detailed journal entry information on a transaction-by-transaction basis for a period or period range

• Account Analysis Report: This report provides drill-down information about the movement on a particular account or account range for a period or period range

• Third Party Balances Report: This report provides balances and account activity information for suppliers and customers for a period or period range • Open Account Balances Listing: This report gives users the ability to net account activity across all the journals related to a document, and to reconcile the outstanding amounts with the GL balances. This report replaces existing product functionality such as the Payables Trial Balance

Enhanced Reporting Currency Functionality

Multiple Reporting Currencies functionality is enhanced to support all journal sources. Reporting sets of books are now known simply as reporting currencies. Every journal that is posted in the primary currency of a ledger can be automatically converted into one or more reporting currencies. This conversion can be performed by Subledger Accounting, to convert all subledger journal entries, or by General Ledger, to convert more summarized General Ledger journals. You can choose to convert any journal sources and categories.

Diagnostics Framework

Oracle Subledger Accounting relies upon transaction information provided by other applications to create accounting. The Diagnostics Framework provides a tool to view the information used to create subledger journal entries. This can assist in understanding how the journal entry setups were used to create journals. It can also be useful for Oracle support and for customers using

Subledger Accounting to better understand the information provided to Subledger Accounting.

The results of the diagnostics are available as an HTML report.

Enhances the Functionality of the Global Accounting Engine

In this release, Oracle Subledger Accounting replaces the Global Accounting Engine. Oracle Subledger Accounting further extends the Global Accounting Engine functionality by providing customizable accounting rules via a flexible and robust accounting rules setup. All Global Accounting Engine features are supported by Oracle Subledger Accounting. A fully automated migration of all Global Accounting Engine generated data to Oracle Subledger Accounting is provided.

The following table lists the Oracle Subledger Accounting feature(s) that replace the functionality of the Global Accounting Engine

Global Accounting Engine Oracle Subledger Accounting

AX Rules Journal Entry Setups

Subledger Setup Date Effective Application Accounting

Definitions

Dual Posting Multiple Accounting Representations

Draft Accounting Draft Accounting

On-Line Inquiries On-Line Inquiries

AX Sequences Journal Entry Sequences

Customer Merge Third Party Merge Accounting

Manual Journal Entries Manual Journal Entries

Control Accounts Third Party Control Accounts

The following table lists the Oracle Subledger Accounting reports that replace the corresponding reports of the Global Accounting Engine. XML Publisher templates are provided so that any user can comply with their fiscal or statutory specific reporting requirements.

Global Accounting Engine Oracle Subledger Accounting

AX Daily Journal Journal Entries Report

AX Account Balances Account Analysis Report

AX Control Account Balances Third Party Balances Report

Italian Daily Journal Book Journal Entries Report

The Global Accounting Engine supported subledger accounting requirements in multiple European countries and delivered subledger accounting rule sets that addressed those countries specific fiscal and legal requirements. Oracle Subledger Accounting enables our customers to   define rules sets to support subledger accounting requirements for all countries, and all subledgers our rules definition setups. Oracle Subledger Accounting also delivers default accounting rule sets that replace the rule sets of the Global Accounting Engine as well as rule sets to support standard IAS/IFRS or US GAAP accounting. Oracle Subledger Accounting provides easy methodologies to create rule sets (accounting methods) for any regulatory environment, while at the same time, complying with the parent's company fiscal and management requirements. Both the Global Accounting Engine and Oracle Subledger Accounting generate accounting from a compiled definition of accounting rules defined by users. Oracle Subledger Accounting further maintains version control on the rules enabling users to modify the rules while maintaining audit ability. Oracle Subledger Accounting also enhances the integration of the accounting within the E-Business Suite, streamlines the posting to General Ledger, and provides standardized Subledger accounting tables.

Terminology

Term Definition

Application Accounting

A consistent set of journal entry setups for a specific product (application). Each application accounting definition determines the accounting that will be generated for a transaction or multiple events on a transaction. For example, a user can create a product definition that consists of setups to provide a US GAAP representation of their inventory accounting.  Multiple Application Accounting Definitions can be created for each product. Term Definition Subledger A ledger that is subsidiary to the General Ledger, representing the accounting for a single subledger product. Transactions occur in Subledger products such as Oracle Payables and Receivables. To represent the financial impact of these transactions, accounting is created as subledger and general ledger entries. Subledger Journal Entry A subledger journal entry includes all of the journal entry lines used to account for an accounting event originating from a subledger product. Several subledger journal entries can be summarized to create a single general ledger journal entry. Because subledger journal entries provide the details for accounting, their corresponding general ledger entries are typically summarized.

Oracle Legal Entity Configurator

Overview

Legal compliance remains of paramount importance in today’s global marketplace. From an external viewpoint, all transactions are entered into by a legal entity. Being able to easily manage transaction data by legal entity is a key to achieving such compliance. Oracle Legal Entity Configurator is a new addition to Oracle E-Business Suite that enhances the ability to manage one’s legal corporate structure and track data from the legal perspective. The solution provides the foundation for features that help daily operations comply with local regulations. For example, strengthening the recognition of legal ownership enables accurate inter company documentation as well as sophisticated tax calculations specific to local jurisdictions. The legal functions set for each legal entity provide basic process controls that facilitate internal control management. Tracking one’s data from the legal perspective enables detailed reporting at legal entity, establishment, and registration level. The Oracle Legal Entity Configurator solution is built upon the principles of completeness, flexibility, and convenience.

 • The centralized data model supports legal information for internal legal entities, legal authorities, and jurisdictions. It fulfills global requirements to capture specific legal information that can differ by jurisdiction

• While compliance is important, achieving compliance should not compromise flexibility in managing business operations to maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, the user is able to maintain legal and operational organization structures as distinct and independent views

 • To make legal compliance simple and convenient, the Oracle Legal Entity Configurator provides a single place for setting up and maintaining legal entities, legal functions, and supporting legal information

Features

Oracle Legal Entity Configurator

Oracle Legal Entity Configurator strengthens one’s corporate legal structure in a centralized solution. With an accurate representation of one’s internal Legal Entities, users are able to obtain a clear view of the organization and identify transactions for legal compliance and reporting. Oracle Legal Entity Configurator is the user interface that allows user to conveniently setup and manage their legal structure, legal functions, and supporting legal information in a single place. Oracle Legal Entity Configurator is built to support global requirements for legal entity information entry, supporting global requirements for registering legal entities to several domains (e.g. income tax, commercial law) by geographic region with the appropriate government/legal authorities, for the purpose of claiming and ensuring legal and/or commercial rights and responsibilities.

Country specific fields and names are used to make the user interface intuitive for a user in any region. Companies are able to include additional country-specific information that they want to record for each legal entity. Management tools are also provided to keep track of the latest information entered so the user can easily monitor the required registration status for both legal entities and establishments.

Legal Authorities and Jurisdiction

 The legal authorities and jurisdictions feature allows the creation and maintenance of the supporting legal information in a central place. Users are able to setup jurisdictions that legal entities and establishments will register to, in order to achieve legal compliance. This feature provides consistent fiscal and other government information for reporting and tax purposes. To facilitate the setup, the most common jurisdictions are seeded. Users are able to define additional jurisdictions and legal authorities, categorize them by territories (at country, state, city levels) and legislative categories (e.g. income tax, commercial law, transaction tax, etc). Users can also setup information at jurisdiction level such as registration number format and legal functions to be performed by legal entities, which default automatically during legal entities and establishment registration processes.

Legal Date Tracking and Auditing

Legal date tracking and auditing captures changes to critical legal data. In many countries a full history of the changes to legal data is mandatory. The changes to the legal structure are usually required as a result of changes in the company’s business operations, moving to new location, or the introduction of new legislation. Auditing records the user who makes the change and reasons for the change. Tracking allows the user to specify exact dates when a particular change will become effective.

Terminology

Term Definition

Establishments Registration of a legal entity with provincial or state and other authorities in addition to its central registration, required in countries where legal registrations are needed at certain local levels. Legal Authority Government, legal body in charge of enforcing legislation (laws), collecting fees/taxes, and making financial appropriations within a given physical area, for a type of law (legislative category).