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Recurring Journals in Oracle Fusion General Ledger: Oracle White Paper - Calculation Manager
Recurring Journals in Oracle Fusion General Ledger: Oracle White Paper - Calculation Manager
Abhijit Dhakephalkar
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Contents
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Executive Overview
Oracle Fusion Applications are next generation applications that provide a new standard for innovation,
work, and adoption. Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) plays a strong role in this
strategy by integrating analytics into key operational processes. Oracle Enterprise Performance
Management (EPM) is a complete, open, and integrated suite of applications and tools that help
organizations gain better insight, make enhanced decisions, and drive superior results. Oracle EPM
technology is embedded throughout Oracle Fusion Applications. This includes the Allocation Manager
that leverages Oracle Essbase, the industry-leading multidimensional analysis engine.
Introduction
In Oracle Fusion Applications, the Allocation Manager is used for allocations and formula recurring
journals to provide a solution that improves usability and performance. The Allocation Manager
provides an allocation wizard that is easy to understand, and formula components that provide
functionality for recurring journal formulas using the features of Oracle Essbase. The Allocation Manager
also provides rule set functionality that allows users to group different rules and generate allocations.
The Allocation Manager is a powerful tool that provides flexibility, automation, intelligence, and control
in distributing costs and revenues across the enterprise.
Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase is seamlessly embedded within Oracle Fusion General Ledger and provides
multidimensional balances cubes. Every time a transaction or journal is posted in Oracle Fusion General
Ledger, the balances cubes are updated at the same time.
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Balances are stored in cubes by dimensions. Example dimensions include the following:
• Accounting Periods
• Ledgers and Ledger Sets
• Currency
• Currency Type
Users can perform account analysis by pivoting on dimensions either online or through the Smart View
add-in to Microsoft Excel. Balances are also preaggregated in a balances cube at every level of
dimension and account hierarchy for rapid analysis. Preaggregation in a balances cube improves
performance.
Allocation Manager
The Allocation Manager is used to create allocation and other formulaic journal templates for
generating periodic journal entries automatically. Allocations are defined and generated on top of the
preaggregated balances in the balances cubes and provides the following benefits:
• Immediate real-time access to financial balances for allocations.
• Accelerated performance with highly scalable allocations.
Allocation components include run-time variables, rules, formulas, and rule sets. These components are
stored in Oracle Essbase. The Allocation Manager provides the following features:
• Simplifies allocation generation process by integrating with Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS).
• Groups rules together in rule sets to cascade allocations for processing efficiencies.
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Recurring Journals
Define recurring journal formulas for transactions that you repeat every accounting period, such as
accruals, depreciation charges, and allocations. Your formulas can be simple or complex. Each formula
can use fixed amounts and/or account balances, including standard, actual amounts, statistics, and
period-to-date or year-to-date balances from the current period, prior period, or same period last year.
When you use account balances in your formulas, you can retrieve total balances, entered currency
balances, or statistical balances. You can quickly create new recurring formulas by copying and
modifying existing formulas. You can define single ledger or multiple ledger recurring journal formula
batches. For the multiple ledger recurring journals, you can create a recurring journal formula batch that
contains recurring journal entries for different ledgers. You can define recurring journal formulas for
your ledger currencies, entered currencies, and statistical currency.
Skeleton Journal Entries: Skeleton entries affect the same accounts each period, but have different
posting amounts. After you generate skeleton journal entries, you can edit the unposted journal batch
using the Enter Journals form and enter the journal line amounts.
Skeleton journal entries are useful for statistical information when you want to record journals for
actual transactions based on statistical amounts, such as headcount, units sold, inflation rates, or other
growth factors. For example, if you want to enter headcount for each cost center every period, you can
define a skeleton entry with your headcount accounts. After you generate the skeleton entries, enter
the actual headcount amounts before posting the batch.
In Oracle Fusion use the ADFdi Journal Entry Feature to address the requirement of Skeleton
Recurring Journal Entries. You can download the spreadsheet template once and create the
skeleton journal entry as per your requirement. Every period you can enter the amount for the
journal lines already available in the template and submit the batch. The recurring journal batch
will be created and posted automatically based on your selection.
Standard Recurring Journal Entries: Standard recurring journal entries use the same accounts and
amounts each period.
In Oracle Fusion use the ADFdi Journal Entry Feature to address the requirement of Standard
Recurring Journal Entries. You can download the spreadsheet template once and create standard
journal entry as per your requirement. Every period you can submit the batch. The recurring
journal batch is created and posted automatically based on your selection.
Recurring Journal Formula Entries: Formula entries use formulas to calculate journal amounts that
vary from period to period.
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In Oracle Fusion you can define the formula recurring journals using the Allocation Manager and
the formula component in it.
This white paper discusses and demonstrates recurring journals and how to define, generate, and
schedule formula recurring journals. You can schedule recurring journals to be created automatically
every period using the following features:
• Run-Time Prompt Variable
• Define Formula Rule
Assumptions
• The chart of accounts includes segments for company, department, account, sub-account, and
product.
• Account 1210 is the trade receivables account.
• The PTD period activity in account 1210 is 100,000 USD.
Goal
The goal is to create every month an allowance for bad debt based on 5% of the PTD period activity
in the trade receivables account.
• Account 7730 is the bad debt expense account. Use account 1260 for the allowance for bad debt
account.
• A formula rule needs to be defined to generate the following journal entry for period Apr-15 and
for each month after Apr-15.
• DR 01.000.7730.0000.000 5,000 USD
• CR 01.000.1260.0000.000 5,000 USD
Configuration
To create a formula rule to achieve the above goal, execute the following steps:
1. Navigate to Journals work area > Tasks.
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2. Click Create Allocation Rules. When the Allocation Manager opens in a new browser window, a
balances cube is highlighted based on the current data access set selected in the Journals work
area.
3. Expand the cube.
4. Select db, right click on the row, and select New.
5. Enter a rule name.
6. Click OK. The Rule Designer opens in a new tab.
7. Under New Objects, click, hold, and drag the Point of View object. Place it between the Begin
and End nodes in the Rule Designer.
8. Enter a caption.
9. Enter a variable dimension value.
10. Click in the Value field for Accounting Period.
11. Click Actions.
12. Select Variable.
13. Under Category, select Database.
14. Click Accounting_Period.
15. Click OK.
16. Enter the other member dimension values.
17. Click in the Value field for another dimension.
18. Click the Actions icon.
19. Select Member.
20. Select a member.
21. Click on the blue select arrow pointing right.
22. Click OK.
23. Repeat for all dimensions to include in the Point of View.
Note: In this scenario, the fixed dimension values are:
• Department = 000
• Sub-Account = 0000
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• Currency = USD
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Figure 2. Define Offset and Formula Members
30. Click the formula field icon.
31. Select Member.
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Figure 4. Define Formula Members
33. Repeat for the other formula member values.
34. Click OK after all formula members are selected.
Note: In this scenario, the following dimension values are selected and mandatory for the source in
a formula component.
• Scenario = Actual
• Balance Amount = Period Activity
• Amount Type = PTD
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Figure 5. Define Formula Members (continued)
35. Multiply the formula expression by .05.
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Run-Time Prompt Variable
Before defining a rule, the user can define a run-time prompt (RTP) variable. An RTP variable is an
optional component of a rule. When the user generates an allocation based on a rule with an RTP
variable, the user is prompted at run-time to specify a dimension member for which an RTP has been
defined to use in the allocation calculation. An example of an RTP variable is Accounting_Period that
prompts the user to specify what period to use in the allocation calculation. An RTP variable can be
created once and added to multiple rules.
To create an RTP variable, execute the following steps:
1. Navigate to Journals work area > Tasks.
2. Click Create Allocation Rules.
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Figure 2. Allocation Manager
4. Expand the cube.
5. Select db, right click on the row, and select New. The Variable Designer opens in a new tab.
Name Accounting_Period
Type Member
Dimension AccountingPeriod
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Default Apr-11
Value
RTP <checked>
Rule Set
Rule Sets can be created by combining two or more related rules so that they are launched sequentially.
To create a rule set, execute the following steps:
3. Once the Allocation Manager opens in a new browser window, expand to Rule Sets under the
highlighted cube, highlight the row, right click on the row, and select New from the menu.
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4. Enter the rule set name and click on OK button.
5. The Ruleset Designer opens in a new tab. Expand to the db under the cube for which the rule set
will be created, expand the rules, and drag desired rules under the rule set.
6. Click on the row for the rule set, click on the Variables tab, and check on Merge Variables.
Note: Merge Variables means that common variables among all of the rules in the rule set are merged
so that the user only has to select the run-time prompt value once when submitting the Generate
Allocations process.
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8. Click on the Validate and Deploy icon.
Generate Allocation
To generate allocation journal entries for the above case studies, perform the following steps:
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Figure 5. Generate Allocation Parameters
5. Uncheck the Post Allocations checkbox if you are not automatically posting the generated
allocations.
6. Click Submit.
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Figure 6. Generate Allocation Processes
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Environment Strategy: Production, Test, Copyright © 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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January 2016 prior written permission.
Author: Abhijit Dhakephalkar Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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