Configuring Accounts Payable in Oracle 11i

I have tried to put in the basic setup required to set up Accounts Payable in Oracle 11i in this article.

I will limit the article to only AP setup, assuming basic setup of other dependent modules like General Ledger and Oracle Purchasing is already done. I have knowingly avoided the setup of some features of Oracle Payables like Automatic Payment, Withholding Tax, Credit Card, Procurement Card, Expense Report, Invoice Approval etc. Some of my previous articles speak on some of these topics like Procurement Card and Setting up Invoice Approval. Only some of the very basic setup that one needs to make Payables up and running is mentioned in this article.

1. Define your Responsibilities and attach your custom Menus to it in System Administrator.

2. Setup your Descriptive Flexfields (Invoice header and line, Supplier and Supplier Site, etc) depending on the requirement.

3. If you want to enter foreign currency transactions, define additional rate types, and enter your daily rates in General Ledger module.

4. Define your accounting period types and accounting calendar periods in General Ledger.

5. Define a set of books in General Ledger. Then, specify a set of books name and assign it a calendar, functional currency, and a chart of accounts structure.

6. Assign Document Sequence in System Administrator responsibility. This is necessary if you wish to have an unique sequence number attached to each invoice, credit/debit memo that you create. Navigation: System Administrator > Application > Document > Assign

7. Set up your System Profile options IN system Administrator responsibility. I am listing down some of the more important Profile options that we usually fill in.

MO: Default Operating Unit

MO: Distributed Environment

MO: Operating Unit

MO: Security Profile

AP: Use Invoice Batch Controls

GL Set of Books Name

HR:User Type

Sequential Numbering

Tax: Allow Override of Tax Code

HR:Business Group

HR: Security Profile

8. Select your Set of Books in Accounts Payable. Navigation: Setup > Set of Books > Choose

9. Define the Payable Lookups like 'TAX TYPE', 'SOURCE' (Invoice source types, if you are importing invoices using AP Open interface from various systems), AWT Certificate and AWT Rate Types, etc.

10. Define your Purchasing Lookups like 'PAY GROUP', VENDOR TYPE', etc.

11. Define distribution sets. You can use a distribution set to automatically enter distributions for an invoice. If you use Multiple Organization Support, perform this step for each organization. You can assign a default Distribution Set to a supplier site so Payables will use it for every invoice you enter for that supplier site.

12. Setup Employees. If Oracle HRMS is already installed, use this to setup Employees, else you can use Payables module to setup employees. Navigation: Payables> Employees> Enter Employees. Ensure that the correct email address is provided, so that Oracle Workflow and Alert messages can reach to targeted person automatically.

13. Setup Country. Select the Address Style that you wish to use.

14. Setup Locations.

15. Check that Inventory Organization is defined in Oracle Inventory or Oracle Purchasing module.

16. Next very important step is to set up the Financial Options (Setup > Options > Financials).

Define your following accounts: Liability, Prepayment, Future Dated Payment, Discount-taken, PO Rate variance Gain/Loss, Expenses Clearing and Miscellaneous.

Define the Supplier Numbering i.e. should you use Manual numbering or Automatic numbering of Suppliers. Also this number could be Alphanumeric or a pure Number. In case of automatic numbering, you have to specify the starting number.

Also, we define the default Supplier Payment Terms and Payment Method. Please note that we also define the same at Supplier/Supplier Site which overrides the default setup here. However, while creating the invoice we can override the Payment Terms and Payment Method defined earlier in Financial Options, Supplier/Supplier Site and this is only considered during payment.

We also, define the default Ship-to location, Bill-to location, Inventory organization, Encumbrance, Default Tax code, tax calculation rounding rules and HR Business Group and Employee numbering method (Automatic/Manual).

17. Setting up Payable Options (Setup > Options > Payables): First define your Primary Accounting Method. Usually this is Accrual type. If you want to use combined basis accounting, select Accrual as your primary accounting method, and Cash as your secondary accounting method. If you do not want to use a secondary accounting method, select ‘None’ as the secondary accounting method. I am mentioning the most common settings used in most of the organizations.

Set in “Transfer to GL’ tab,

Transfer to GL

In Detail		Yes
Summarize By Accounting Date		No
Summarize by accounting Period		No
Submit Journal Import		Yes
Transfer Reporting SOB		No
Override Submission Program		Yes
Submit journal import		Yes

Payment Accounting

Account for Payment		When Payment is issues–Yes When payment Clears -Yes
Account for Gain/Loss		When Payment is issues–Yes When payment Clears -Yes
Calculate Gain/Loss		For each Invoice
Future Dated Payment		From payment Document

Currency

Use this region to enable multiple currencies in Oracle Payables and define currency defaults for your foreign currency invoices and payments.

Use Multiple Currencies		Yes
Require Exchange Rate Entry		Yes
Calculate user exchange rate		No
Exchange Rate Type		Corporate
GL Accounts: realized Gain		Enter the Account for Realized Gain
GL Accounts: realized Gain		Enter the Account for Realized Loss
Rounding		Enter the Account for Rounding Errors

Invoice

Main
Use Invoice Approval Workflow		Yes (If you do not want to use this, set this as No)
Allow Force approval		Yes (If ‘Use Invoice Approval Workflow’ is ‘No’ then this is not selected)
Require Validation Before approval		Yes
Use Batch Controls		Yes
Confirm Date as Invoice number		No
Allow Online Approval		Yes
Allow Adjustments to Paid Invoices		No
Recalculate Schedule Payments		Yes
Allow Document Category Override		Yes
Automatically Create Freight Distribution		No
Freight Account		No

Withholding Tax (Retention Money)

Use Withholding Tax		No (Set as Yes if you use Withholding tax)
Allow manual Withholding		No
Tax Group		No
Apply Withholding Tax		Never
Withholding Amount Basis (checkbox)
Include Discount Amount		N/A
Include Tax Amount		N/A
Create Withholding Invoice		Never

If you are using Withholding tax then set ‘Use Withholding Tax” as ‘Yes’, and ‘Create Withholding Tax’ either during Invoice creation or during making a payment. However, to setup Withholding tax you need to create your Tax Authority as a Supplier, and set up Withholding tax codes accordingly. Associate the defined withholding tax codes to the suppliers from whom you would like to withhold tax.

18. Setting up AP Accounting Period (Payables > Setup > Calendar >AP Accounting Periods)

Use this form to define Period Status which Oracle Payable periods as Never Opened, Future, Open, Closed, and Permanently Closed. The values default from GL Set ups.

18. Setting up AP Aging Period (Payables>Setup>Calendar>Aging Periods)

Use this form to define the aging periods you want to use for your Invoice Aging Report

E.g. of Aging Period

Column Order	Days: From	Days: To	Column Headings: First	Column Heading: Second
1	1	30	Due < 30 days	Overdue
2	31	60	Due <o 60 days	Overdue
3	61	90	Due < 90 days	Overdue
4	91	180	Due < 6 Months	Overdue

18. Setting up Document Sequencing (System admin > Application > Document > Define)

Define document sequences for Standard Invoices, Debit/Credit Memo, PO Default, Mixed, Quick match & Vendor Prepayment

18. Defining Document Categories (System admin > Application > Document > Categories)

A document category defines what type of transactions you will be 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.

18. Assigning Document Categories (System admin > Application > Document > Assign)

Use this form to assign your defined document sequences

In this article i have not elaborated on many of the settings like Withholding Tax, Expense Report, Credit Card, Invoice Approval, etc which I have not delved into. Hopefully in subsequent articles i will blog on some of these ones in detail.

Business case on using Withholding Tax

Business Case:
A large Television broadcasting and production company had the following concern. They take the services of large number of TV artists who are employed for a very short period of time. While making a payment to them the company has to deduct taxes and pay them. They want to know the best way of handling this situation using Oracle Payables. Also, as the number of artist’s runs into thousands, they want to know the best way to maintain their bank account and address details for making electronic/check payment.
Solution Steps:
Step1: Setup Withholding tax as per the law. You may/may not create withholding invoices by setting up your payables option 'Create Withholding invoice" accordingly.
Step2: Setup each artist as a supplier and associate the Withholding tax the supplier. However, if we intend to pay them electronically we have to setup supplier bank account for each of the supplier. Once the artist leaves the services of the company, one can easily end date the supplier created. The supplier ID created can be used as a unique number to refer the artist. In case the artist comes back to render his/her services again, only thing that needs to be done is remove the end date to re-activate the supplier.
Step3: Raise invoices for each artist (supplier) and pay them. The invoice automatically calculates the Withholding amount and while making the payment we pay only the balance amount.
Step4: At period end run the "Withholding Tax by Tax Authority" report and pay the tax authority the amount collected in the period.

Sample Accounts Receivable Questionnaire

There has been a lot of requests to post sample questions for other financials modules also. Here i am posting a small sample of questions on Oracle Receivables.
1. Provide an overview of AR invoice processing.
2. Provide an overview of AR cash receipt processing.
3. How do you adjust receivables?
4. Do you receive deposits and/or prepayments?
5. Explain Customer Creation and Maintenance Process. Provide samples of customer master records with Payment Terms.
6. Do you track and record relationships between customers e.g. franchises, subsidiaries etc.?
7. Do you create reciprocal customer relationships whenever you create a relationship between customers for tracking purposes?
8. Do you have multiple "remit to’s"?How are multiple "remit to’s" determined for each customer?
9. What credit information is tracked for each customer?
10. How do you group your customers for credit limits, credit checks?
11. Do you do miscellaneous invoicing? Please explain with examples.
12. Do you send customers statements? If so please describe the process and highlight any exceptions.
13. How are the revenue, receivable, freight and tax accounts configured for each invoice type?14. Explain Debit Memo & Credit Memo Process.
15. Do you bill customers in a foreign currency?How many invoice types do you have? Provide invoice samples. (Credit Memo, Debit Memo etc.)
16. How do you number your invoices?
17. Where are the invoices printed? How many printers and where are they? Pre-printed forms?
18. How do you calculate your tax charges? What are the rates? Explain Tax Structure.
19. Do you validate the tax rate against a Customer’s Ship To address when preparing invoices? If so please describe how.
20. Do you charge finance charges? If so - how do you charge finance charges?
21. Explain your dunning and Collection Process. Please provide dunning statement formats.
22. Do collectors actively call customers on delinquent items?
23. What sort of buckets do you use for cash requirements forecasting? (i.e. 30, 60, 90...)
24. Do you write off receivable? Is there a specific dollar amount or time frame used by your Company for write-offs?
25. Do you have Chargeback? Explain.
26. Explain Revenue Recognition Process and explain the scenarious.
27. Explain Bills Receivable?
28. Do you associate Revenue to Sales Person.
29. How is Sales Territory Information for tracking purposes derived? (i.e. customer, salesperson etc.)
30. How do your customers generally pay invoices? single check—single invoice/single check—multiple invoices/multiple checks—multiple invoicesProvide list of Banks and Purpose?
31. Explain Payment Process?
32. Are you using Automatic Receipts? Explain?
33. Explain Remittance Process?
34. Explain your Auto Lock Box Proces if you have enabled it?
35. What types of payments are received and input? (i.e. check, cash etc.)
36. Explain Receipt Reconcilliation Process?
37. What reports do you currently generate for Invoicing, Sales and Revenue tracking? Provide samples including frequency and distribution.