Document Sequencing: Setup

for Oracle Payables and Cash

Management
Joan Currence
Oracle Support
Abstract
This paper provides an overview of the
steps to setup and use document
sequencing for Invoices and Payments
within Oracle Payables as well as Bank
Statements within Oracle Cash
Management.
Scope
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.

Document Sequencing Overview

Defining Document Sequences
Defining Document Categories
Defining Document Assignments
Activating Document Sequencing
Troubleshooting

I. Document Sequencing Overview

Document sequencing provides a
method of numbering documents
uniquely from numbers generated within
the application. The number is

generated when the document

transaction is committed to the database.
If the document is subsequently deleted,
the document sequence data remains for
audit purposes. This data is stored in
audit tables in each application.
In the sysadmin responsibility the
following steps are performed.
Define a document sequence
Define a document category if
necessary.
Assign the document sequence to a
document category.
Enable the Sequential Numbering
profile option.
In the Payables responsibility, you can
optionally enable Document Category
Override in the Payables Options
window in either the Invoice or Payment
region. This allows users access to any
custom defined document categories.
In the Cash Management responsibility
defining a document category is not an
optional step since the category is based
upon the bank name.

II. Defining Document Sequences

The first step in setting up document
sequencing is to define a sequence. The
sequence determines how the document
numbers are to be generated and to what
application the sequence will belong.
There are 3 different methods for
generating the document number:
Automatic sequential number
generated automatically. These numbers
are not guaranteed to be gapless.
Gapless same as automatic except
that it ensures that the document was
successfully generated before issuing a
number so that no gaps exist due to
incomplete or failed document creation.
(The recommendation is to use this
method only if absolutely necessary due
to performance issues).
Manual instead of being
automatically generated by the system,
the number is entered manually by the
user. No number ordering or uniqueness
is enforced.
Navigate:Application:Document:Sequences

assigning document numbers to. It also

specifies what table the transaction
information will be written to. This step
is optional for Oracle Payables
transactions because Payables seeds
categories for all payment and invoice
types. These seeded categories are what

will default into the Payables

transactions.
In Cash Management there are no seeded
categories. Thus, this is a required step.
The category for Cash Management
bank statements is defined using the
bank account name as the code. A
separate category would need to be
defined for every bank account for
which you want to use document
sequencing. The table used to store the
information is
CE_STATEMENT_HEADERS.
Navigate:Application:Document:Categories

III. Defining Document Categories

The second step is to define a document
category. A document category defines
what type of transactions you will be

IV. Defining Document Assignments

V. Activating Document Sequencing

The last setup step is creating the

document assignment. The sequence
assignment ties together the document
sequence and the document category.
There are several items specified on the
document assignment that are used by
the application as selection criteria when
searching for a document assignment for
that transaction. The combination of
these values must be unique for active
assignments. When the application
searches for a sequence assignment for a
transaction, it should return only one
row.
Application the application the
document is generated from.
Category from step 2, it specifies the
document type.
Set of Books* specifies the chart of
accounts document is generated from.
Method* specifies how the document
is generated.
There are 2 methods.
Automatic, for transactions
entered through a concurrent process,
(ie. Invoice Import, Payment Batch).
Manual, for transactions entered
in the system manually through a form.
Begin Date specifies the date that the
sequence assignment begins to be active.
End Date if specified, is the last date
that the sequence assignment is active.

Once document sequence is complete,

you need to specify the profile option,
Sequential Numbering. This activates
document sequencing specifying both
what level of the applications to activate,
and what level of enforcement will be
used. This profile option can be set at
either the site or the application level.
When set, there are 3 levels of
enforcement,
Always Used - requires assignments for
all documents.
Not Used will not check for any
assignments.
Partially Used will check for
assignments on all documents and will
issue a warning if not found.

*These optional fields are enabled via

the descriptive flexfield Document
Flexfield.
Navigate:Application:Document:Assignments

Navigate:Profile:System

Payables Options to consider:

Invoice Region
Allow Document Category Override
Payment Region
Allow Document Category Override
These options allow the user to override
the default category assigned to the
document by Payables.
For Invoices, this allows the user to
choose a custom invoice category rather
than the default category that comes
seeded with the application.
For payments, this allows the user to
choose a custom category or populate
the category in the payment document.

This can be useful when document

sequencing was setup after the payment
document was created. If document
sequencing was not setup at the time that
the payment document was entered, the
document category would not get
populated.
VI. Troubleshooting
The most common errors result from
problems with the sequence assignment.
APP-1702 An assignment does not
exist for these parameters and one is
mandatory.
This error results from the profile option
being set to Always Usedand the
application is not able to find and
assignment that matches the criteria for
the transaction being entered.
To resolve this issue, check the
following:
- Does the application creating the
transaction, match the application on
the document assignment?
- Does the document category match
the document category of the
assignment?
- Does the assignment set of books
match the set of books on the
transactions?
- How was the transaction entered?
Manually or automatically? Does
this match the method on the
assignment?
- What is the GL date on the
transaction? Does it fall within the
begin and end dates of the
assignment?
APP- 1728 An assignment does not
exist for these parameters.
This message is a warning, not an error.
It occurs for the same reasons as the
error message above, but is a warning

because you have your profile option set

to Partially Used. Use the same steps
to troubleshoot. If document numbering
is not needed for the transaction, the
message can be ignored.

Q: Why does an Automatic

numbering method not guarantee a
gapless number?
A: If the record insert fails for any
reason, Oracle does a rollback. The
sequence select does not roll back
because other users may have
successfully committed transactions
using the numbers read into memory
from the sequence select.
For performance reasons, Oracle uses
caching with a default cache value of 20.
This means that when a transaction is
entered, 20 numbers are selected from
the sequence and read into memory. The
next time a number is requested from the
sequence, it can be read from memory
rather than disk

About the Author

Joan Currence has worked with Oracle
Support Applications for the past four
years.