Release 12 - Impact of

Subledger Accounting (SLA) on

General Ledger
An Oracle White Paper
[May] [2007]

Release 12 Impact of
Subledger Accounting (SLA) on General Ledger

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Overview ......................................................................... 3

Introduction...................................................................................... 3
Scope ................................................................................................ 3
Overview .......................................................................................... 3
Impact of SLA on Drilldown............................................................ 5
Impact of SLA on Journal Import .................................................. 16
Technical Reference....................................................................... 23

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Impact of Subledger Accounting (SLA) on

General Ledger

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
The purpose of this document is to familiarize the users of
Oracle Applications Release 12 (R12) with the Impact of
Subledger Accounting on the two main functionalities of General
Ledger - Drilldown and Journal Import. The aim is to know the
changes brought in by Release 12 and to understand the
advantages and effects of the same.

INTRODUCTION
With the Release 12 of Oracle Applications, Subledger
Accounting (SLA) has been introduced. This is a Rule-based
accounting engine, toolset & repository supporting Oracle EBusiness Suite modules (also called as subledgers). The main
idea behind this introduction is to have an option of allowing
multiple accounting representations for a single business event,
resolving conflicts between corporate and local fiscal accounting
requirements. Also this introduces a common data model and
user interface (UI) across subledgers, replaces various disparate
11i setups, providing single source of truth for financial and
management analysis. Due to SLA, there are some changes in the
functionalities of General Ledger. There are also certain setups
that need to be done in General Ledger for SLA.

SCOPE
The scope of this Document is to understand the changes
brought by SLA in the two main functionalities of General Ledger
- Drilldown and Journal Import. The document would also
discuss some of the SLA setups that need to be done in General
Ledger. Some table level details are also provided which may
help in customizations or troubleshooting. Please note that the
document is mainly referring to the changes brought by SLA and
hence for the details on the functionalities that are similar to the
prior releases, please refer to Oracle General Ledger User Guide
for Release 12.

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OVERVIEW
For understanding the Impact of SLA on General Ledger, we
have divided this document into three parts:
1] Drilldown This will deal with the change in the Drilldown
data, which appears now. Also the setups, which decide what
data, can be viewed and how data can be secured.
2] Journal Import This will deal with the transfer of data from
Subledgers to General Ledger. This will also explain the various
setups that are done for the Ledger which govern the import for
various applications.
3] Technical Reference This will give the technical references,
for journal import and drilldown functionalities, which will help
in understanding the architecture and will also help in
troubleshooting.

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Part I :
Impact of SLA on Drilldown in General
Ledger

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Drilldown functionality enables users to navigate from a Journal

in General Ledger to the Subledger Journal Entry in SLA and
from there to the transaction which has resulted into that journal.
To enable Journal drilldown from General Ledger, the "Import
Journal References" option should be enabled for the Source.
This can be checked under General Ledger Responsibility at
Setup -> Journal -> Sources -> Define.
Only when this is enabled, the reference data is populated by
SLA engine.
The Drilldown in Release 12 is different from the prior releases
of the Application. R12 drilldown is Web based and not in the
Forms. The following screenshots show the Drilldown
functionality in Release 12:
Navigation to perform Drilldown is the same as in Release 11i.
Journals -> Enter -> Review Journal
Select the journal line and click on Lines Drilldown.

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Drilldown can also be performed from:

Tools -> Drilldown

As mentioned above, Drilldown opens the Web Page instead of

Form.

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The SLA Page for Drilldown shows the following:

GL Journal Line information
Subledger Journal Line information

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There are two Options available on this SLA page:

View Transaction
View Journal Entry

View Transaction will take us to the Subledger Transaction

form. E.g for the current journal line, since the Source was
Payables, it opens Invoice Workbench.

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View Journal Entry will take to the Subledger Journal Entry

details

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View Journal Entry has three parts to it.

1. Transaction Information
2. Additional Information (this is hidden by default)
3. Line Details

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Apart from this there are some extra details shown at the top of
the page, which is the header level information for the Subledger
Transaction.
Some of the important fields in header part of the Subledger
Transaction Journal are:
Ledger Name
Journal Entry Status
Balance Type
GL Date

This is the 'Transaction Information' section of Subledger Journal

Entry page.
The fields here will change based on the transaction and the
subledger in which the transaction was entered.
Since the example transaction is entered in Payables, it is
showing the details of the invoice and the supplier.

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This is the 'Additional Information' section of Subledger

Transaction Entry page.
This section shows the details of
Event
General Ledger
Sequences
Application Accounting Definition
Note that Event and Application Accounting Definition are
important from SLA side. However, from GL perspective the
relevant details are Period, Transfer to GL Date and Transfer to
GL status.

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This is the last section, 'Lines' of the Subledger Journal Entry

page.
The important details in this section are:
Code Combination
Currency
Entered Debits and Credits
Accounted Debits and Credits
Select the link 'Show' for any of the lines to view additional
details for the transaction line

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This page gives various details for transaction line from the
subledgers side.

Thus the Drilldown from General Ledger, takes us to the

Subledger Journal Entry which shows the details of the Subledger
journal. From here we can further drilldown to the Subledger
Transaction.

Profile Options related to Drilldown:

SLA: Enable Subledger Transaction Security in GL
This profile option controls whether the drilldown to SLA will
enforce the transaction security of the application owning the
Transaction. For example, if one drills down to Payables, he will
only be able to see Journals for transactions belonging to
operating units to which he has access (based on your MO:
Security Profile.) Thus drilldown can be restricted to the
Operating Units to which the responsibility has access. In case
the GL responsibility does not have access to a particular
Operating Unit, the Drilldown will not show any data.

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Part II :
Impact of SLA on Journal Import in General
Ledger

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The way Journal Import is triggered from the subledgers has

undergone a major change in Release 12. Execution of Journal
Import from the Subledgers depends on the setting of the Profile
option SLA: Disable Journal Import.
The profile option SLA: Disable Journal Import can be set only
at the Site level and hence will be applicable to all the
subledgers/modules. The default value for this profile option is
No and this should NEVER be changed, unless suggested by
Support or Development. Setting this profile option to Yes
breaks the link between SLA and GL, so GL no longer knows
which journals came from SLA. This may cause problems with
inquiry and drilldown on these journals in the future. This option
is set to Yes only in cases where GL is on a separate instance
than SLA.

SLA: Disable Journal Import set to No.

Value No for this profile option indicates that Journal Import
will ALWAYS accompany the transfer of data from Subledger.
Another main implication of this value is that, on failure of
Journal Import, the data will be rolled back to SLA tables and
hence we will not have any data in GL_INTERFACE. Note that
for this setting of the profile option, General Ledger will have
very little part to play, as any error in Journal Import will take
the data back to SLA tables and GL_INTERFACE will not have
any data in it. This will also mean that Journal -> Import -> Run
and Journal -> Import -> Correct forms will not be used for the
Subledger data as GL_INTERFACE will never have any data for
them. However, these forms will continue to be used for the
data, which is being transferred from some other sources such as
Legacy or some user defined sources for which data is populated
in GL_INTERFACE table, and then Import is run in General
Ledger.
Whenever data is transferred from the subledgers, the request
doing so, will also trigger the Journal Import program. The name
of the program to transfer data to GL, will change as per the
subledger; we have explained the behavior below with respect
to the Payables module. In Payables, there are three options for
transferring data to GL:

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1. When Online Accounting is done for Payables transactions,

there are three options available (Refer Screenshot below):
a. Draft
b. Final
c. Final Post

For any value of the profile option, Draft and Final options
work in the same way i.e draft mode creates the SLA journals
in Draft mode which can be modified afterwards; Final mode
creates SLA journals and the transaction can not be modified
after this. The SLA journal can then be transferred to General
Ledger. Transfer of the journals created in Final Mode is done
using Transfer to General Ledger concurrent request.
However Final Post works differently for the two values of
the Profile option. If profile option is set to No, then Final
Post creates the SLA journals in Final mode, transfers the
data to GL_INTERFACE, runs Journal Import and triggers the
General Ledger Posting program too.
2. When Accounting is done from Submit request form i.e by
running the request Create Accounting, it gives the
following options:
a. Mode: Draft or Final
b. Transfer to General Ledger

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c. Post in General Ledger

If Transfer to General Ledger is selected as Yes, then the

data is transferred to GL_INTERFACE and immediately after
that Journal Import request is also triggered. In case of any
errors, the data is rolled back to SLA tables.
3. If Accounting is done in Final Mode and we are transferring
the data by running the request Transfer Journal Entries to
GL request, it gives the option of Post in General Ledger
which refers to the Posting program in General Ledger.
Thus there is no option for Journal Import as Journal Import will
always be triggered by the Transfer program.
From points 1, 2 and 3, it is evident that Journal Import has
become an inbuilt part of the Transfer Journal Entries program of
SLA in Release 12. Thus when the profile option SLA: Disable
Journal Import is set to No, GL_INTERFACE table will never
have data for Subledgers.
SLA: Disable Journal Import set to Yes
This setting for the profile option indicates that the transferring of
data from Subledgers will take place in the same manner as it
happens in Release 11i. However changing the value of the
Profile option to Yes is strictly not suppported and should
NEVER be used as this may lead to issues related to the linking
between SLA and GL journals. For this value of profile, the

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Transfer to GL programs of the subledgers, populates the data in

GL_INTERFACE and then Import needs to be run manually from
GL. In case the subledger is providing the option of running the
journal import too along with the transfer to GL, then the request
will fire the Journal Import also. However in case of a Journal
Import error, the data will remain in GL_INTERFACE table.

Setups related to Journal Import:

1. Journal Import can be run in Summary or Detail mode.
This can be set for each application, as per the
requirement. By default this is set to Summarize by GL
Period, but can be changed as per the requirement. The
setup can be changed from:

General Ledger responsibility

Financials -> Accounting Setup Manager ->
Accounting Setups
Query for the Ledger being used
Update Accounting Options
Select update for Subledger Accounting Options
Update Accounting Options for the Application
Here there is an option General Ledger Journal
Entry Summarization, which can be set to
following values:
i. Summarize by GL Date (Journal Import will
create summary journals based on
Acccounting Date)
ii. No Summarization (Journal Import will
create journals in Detail mode)
iii. Summarize by GL Period (Journal Import
will create summary journals based on
Period to which the Accounting Date falls)

Thus the option General Ledger Journal Entry

Summarization will determine if the Import for the
application is being done in Detail or Summary mode.

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2. Prior to Release 12, it was needed that the Journal Import

should be run in the same language as the language,
which was used to transfer data to GL_INTERFACE.
Though this is not much relevant now (the transfer and
journal import are triggered together); still Journal Import
can be made independent of the language. This can be
achieved by running journal import using the Source and
Category Key.
Generally the columns user_je_source_name and
user_je_category_name in gl_interface, correspond to the
columns GL_JE_SOURCES.user_je_source_name and
GL_JE_CATEGORIES.user_je_category_name respectively.
These values change for the different language and thus
making journal import language-dependent. However
while defining the sources (General Ledger Responsibility
: Setup -> Journal -> Source), if the option Import Using
Key is selected, then import refers to
GL_JE_SOURCES.je_source_key and
GL_JE_CATEGORIES.je_category_key. These being the
Key values are common across languages and hence
journal import becomes language independent.
3. While running Journal Import from General Ledger
responsibility, the LOV of Ledger appears provided there
is data in the table GL_INTERFACE for the ledger and the
Data Access Set attached to the responsibility has either
Full or Read/Write access to the Ledger.

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Journal -> Import -> Run

LOV for Ledger.
In case a different Interface table is being used, the LOV
will check for the data in GL_INTERFACE_CONTROL
instead of GL_INTERFACE.
4. Data Access Sets do apply to Journal Import too. To be
able to import data, one should have either Full or
Read/Write Access to the ledger and all the Balancing
Segment Values for which data is populated in
GL_INTERFACE.
In case one does not have access to the Ledger at all, the
LOV for Ledger will not appear in Journal -> Import ->
Run screen and hence he will not be able to submit
Journal Import.
If there are multiple balancing segments in the data in
GL_INTERFACE, and the responsibility has access to a few
and not to others, then you will be able to run Journal
Import but it will complete in Warning and data will not
be imported. Error shown in the Journal Import Execution
report would be:
EM29 : You do not have access to this ledger and account
combination.

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Part III :

Technical Reference

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Drilldown from General Ledger takes us to the SLA Journal

details. The technical flow for this is as follows:
Drilldown is performed from Journal lines in General Ledger.
This data is stored in the table GL_JE_LINES. The link between
SLA data and data in GL is through the table
GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES.
Note that data is populated in GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES only if
Import References option is selected in the Journal source
definition.
The data can be mapped from GL_JE_LINES to
GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES table using the columns je_header_id
and je_lines_num.
The SLA Journal line data is stored in the table XLA_AE_LINES.
The header details are stored in XLA_AE_HEADERS.
The data in GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES can be mapped to
XLA_AE_LINES using the columns gl_sl_link_id and
gl_sl_link_table.
Data can be transferred from SLA to GL in either Summary or
Detail mode. This option is defined for the Event Class, which is
attached to the Journal Line Type. Journal Line Type is then
attached to the Journal Line Definition, which is finally attached
to the Subledger Accounting Method. Please note that if the
transfer is done in Summary mode, then the Reference columns
will not be populated in either GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES or
GL_JE_LINES.
Data from SLA, which comes to GL_INTERFACE, can then be
imported in either Summary or Detail Mode. This option is set
while defining the Ledger in the Accounting Setup Manager. If
the import is in Summary mode, then the Reference columns are
populated in GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES (provided data has
come in Detail mode from SLA), while GL_JE_LINES will not
have the Reference columns populated. On the other hand if
data is Imported in Detail mode, both GL_IMPORT_REFERENCES
and GL_JE_LINES tables will have the Reference columns
populated (again provided the data has come in Detail mode
from SLA).
Please note that irrespective of the Mode of Transfer (Detail or
Summary), Drilldown will work from GL to all the Subledgers
that are using the SLA Engine.

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To identify the mode of Transfer:

Column gl_transfer_mode_code in XLA_AE_LINES indicates the
transfer mode from SLA to GL. For this column, value S
indicates that the transfer is done in Summary mode while D
indicates that the transfer is in Detail mode.
For the Journal Import mode, the values for specific applications
is stored in the table XLA_LEDGER_OPTIONS. This table stores
the setup for various applications for the Ledgers defined. The
column indicating the Journal Import mode, is
transfer_to_gl_mode_code. The values are:
P : Summarized by Period
A : Summarized by Accounting Date
D : No Summarization i.e Detail mode

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White Paper Title: Release 12 - Impact of Subledger Accounting on General Ledger

May 2007
Author: Meenakshi Mehra
Contributing Authors:
Oracle Corporation
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