OPM R12 and SLA

Oracle Process Manufacturing in R12 and Subledger Accounting

For years Process Manufacturing (OPM) aficionados have reveled in the power of the Manufacturing Accounting Controller (MAC). The ability to utilize a single point of control to generate accounting against inventory impacting transactions was a source of pride. And the plumed feather in the cap of inventory accountants was the ability to generate ‘Test Subledgers’, make corrections/changes and re-run the accounting to achieve different results. Inventory accounting in OPM was straight forward, flexible, and even fun (at times). It was so easy to develop summarized views of the journals and then quickly show the transactions that drove the numbers.

Anyone who has worked with subledger generated journal entries in Oracle’s e-Business Suite can attest to the variation and disparate sources for the accounting. Some modules used AutoAccounting in varying forms, other modules used Create Accounting functions that read various accounting parameters and accounts entered directly against transactions. It was necessary for super users and support personnel to understand the different methods that each subledger used to build accounting. To a novice user the sources and varied rules could be confusing and often inflexible.

As Oracle continues to mature its e-Business Suite of business applications there has been a push to streamline and consolidate functions, taking the best practices of inherent in one area and combining with efficiencies in another to bring the most powerful application possible to bear. One of the single most significant changes to be introduced in release 12 is the concept of shared services for accounting. Across the different subledgers there is one engine that generates accounting, one place where rules are defined, a common set of tables where journals are generated. By leveraging the concept, found in the MAC, of a common engine that contains powerful, flexible rules with the consistency available through the use of sources common to AutoAccounting. Oracle designed a new model that is very powerful and flexible yet uses the same principles across multiple subledgers. The result is Subledger Accounting (SLA).

There are two challenges faced by organizations that feel comfortable with the MAC and are now faced with the new SLA. While the SLA works on a similar principle in the sense that it extracts and analyzes records from the material transactions table very much like the MAC and accounting can be generated over and over to evaluate scenarios and review results before finally committing to a set of journals however that is where the similarities end. The first challenge is that the way that rules are defined has been turned on its head. Oracle has introduced the concept of defining journal entry templates and then applying those templates to transactions based on matching criteria. The accounting for each line within the template is derived from applying one or more rules which generate each journal line respectively. The rules consider criteria provided and then draw accounting from the identified ‘sources’. The sources can be predefined accounting parameters or they can be custom PL/SQL functions that generate the accounting. The second challenge is that analyzing the journal entry results is no longer as simple as knowing one or two views and/or tables and utilizing simple tools to summarize the journal output. In order for the SLA to function across multiple modules it was necessary to build a series of tables and views that support a new html interface used to research and analyze transaction journal entries.