Oracle GL New Feature Accounting Setup Manager

Accounting Setup Manager
The ledger is a basic concept in Release 12. The ledger replaces the 11i concept of a set of books. It represents an accounting representation for one or more legal entities or for a business need such as consolidation or management reporting. Companies can now clearly and efficiently model its legal entities and their accounting representations in Release 12. This seems to be a major area in getting success of the shared service center and single instance initiatives where many or all legal entities of an enterprise are accounted for in a single instance, and data, setup, and processing must be effectively secured but also possibly shared.
Now, legal Entities can be mapped to entire Ledgers or if you account for more than one legal entity within a ledger, you can map a legal entity to balancing segments within a ledger.
While a set of books is defined by 3 C’s,

1. chart of accounts
2. functional currency
3. accounting calendar,

The addition in this list the ledger is defined by a 4th C: the accounting method,
This 4th C allows you to assign and manage a specific accounting method for each ledger. Therefore, when a legal entity is subject to multiple reporting requirements, separate ledgers can be used to record the accounting information.
Accounting Setup Manager is a new feature that allows you to set up your common financial setup components from a central location.
What is Accounting Setup Manager
Accounting Setup Manager is a new feature that streamlines the setup and implementation of Oracle Financial Applications. The Accounting Setup Manager will facilitate the setup required for simultaneous accounting for multiple reporting requirements.
With the Accounting Setup Manager, you can perform and maintain the following common setup components from a central location:

• Legal Entities
• Ledgers, primary and secondary
• Operating Units, which are assigned to primary ledgers
• Reporting Currencies, which is an enhanced feature
• Subledger Accounting Options. This is where you define the accounting methods for each legal entity subledger transaction and associate them to the ledger where the accounting will be stored.
• Intercompany Accounts and Balancing Rules
• Accounting and Reporting Sequencing
• Both Intercompany and Sequencing

Will discuss some more granular details in some other post.
Subledger Accounting (SLA)
As discussed in couple of earlier post GL is integrated with SLA to enable a unified process to account for subledger transactions and post data to GL, and to provide a consistent view when drilling down from GL to subledger transactions. You can read here.

Enhanced Foreign Currency Processing by Reporting Made easy
GL has added new features and enhanced existing features to support foreign currency processing , they are mainly as:

• In R12, MRC feature is enhanced with a feature call Reporting Currencies. That mean it will now support multiple currency representations of data from any source, including external systems, Oracle or non-Oracle subledgers, and Oracle General Ledger journals and balances.
• The second one is in reporting to view balances view balances that were entered in your ledger currency separate from those balances that were entered and converted to the ledger currency.The change in R12 is that balances entered in the ledger currency are maintained separately from balances converted to the ledger currency for use in Reporting and Analysis.

Here’s an example. Assume we have a ledger and the ledger currency is USD.
I enter and post two journals; one in 1,000 US Dollars, and another in 500 British Pounds that gets converted to 1200 US Dollars.
In Release 11i, I can review the 500 GBP and the 1200 USD that results from converting the 500 GBP, and the total 2200 USD which is the USD balance in the Cash Account. The $2200 is the sum of the $1000 entered in USD and the $1200 converted from the 500 British Pounds. However, I view that a 1000 USD were entered directly in USD.
In Release 12, I can view the 1000 USD by performing an account inquiry on the Cash account for balances entered only in the ledger currency. The amounts entered in foreign currencies that were converted to the ledger currency will not be included in the balance. Of course, if I want to retrieve all balances in USD, both the entered as well and the converted, I can still do that in Release 12.


Creating foreign currency recurring journals
In Release 11i, you could define recurring journals using the functional currency or STAT currency.
Now in Release 12, you can create recurring journals using foreign currencies. This is particularly useful if you need to create foreign currency journals that are recurring in nature. For example, assume a subsidiary that uses a different currency from its parent borrows money from the parent. The subsidiary can now generate a recurring entry to record monthly interest payable to the parent company in the parent’s currency.
Data Access to Multiple Legal Entities and Ledgers
You no longer have to constantly switch responsibilities in order to access the data in a different ledger. You can access multiple ledgers from a single responsibility as long as all ledgers share the same chart of accounts and calendar.
Simultaneous Opening and Closing of Periods for Multiple Ledgers
You no longer have to open and close periods for each ledger separately. You can now open and close periods across multiple ledgers simultaneously by submitting Open and Close Periods programs from the Submit Request form.
Simultaneous Currency Translation of Multiple Ledgers
You can run the Translation program for multiple ledgers simultaneously, if you are managing multiple ledgers.
Financial Reporting for Multiple Ledgers
Now with this feature you can run Financial Statement Generator (FSG) reports for multiple ledgers simultaneously. This is useful if you manage multiple ledgers and want to run a balance sheet or income statement report for all of your ledgers at the same time.
Cross-Ledger and Foreign Currency Allocations
You are able to allocate financial data from one or more ledgers to a different target ledger. This enables you to perform cross-ledger allocations, which is useful for purposes such as allocating corporate or regional expenses to local subsidiaries when each entity has its own ledger
Streamlined Automatic Posting
You can now share AutoPost Criteria sets across multiple ledgers that share the same chart of accounts and calendar and use the AutoPost Criteria sets to post journals across multiple ledgers simultaneously.
Streamlined AutoReversal Criteria Setup Integrated Web-based
AutoReversal Criteria Sets can also be shared across ledgers to reverse journals across multiple ledgers. This is enhanced by integrated Web-based Spreadsheet Interface.
Journal Copy
Now we can now copy entire journal batches. You can copy journal batches with any status. The system will create a new journal batch containing the same journal entries.You may also change the batch name, period, and/or effective date while copying the journal batch. After copying the journal batch, you may modify the unposted journals in the same manner as any manually created journals.
Streamlined Consolidation Mappings
You are able to define Chart of Accounts Mappings (formerly known as Consolidation Mappings) between two charts of accounts. Therefore, if you have multiple Consolidation Definitions for parent and subsidiary ledgers that share the same chart of accounts pair, and their mapping rules are the same, you only have to define a single Chart of Accounts Mapping.
The enhancement in R12 allows you to define mappings between charts of accounts instead of between sets of books, so that they can be shared across multiple Consolidation Definitions.
Therefore, if you have multiple Consolidation Definitions for parent and subsidiary ledgers that share the same chart of accounts pair, and their mapping rules are the same, you only have to define a single Chart of Accounts Mapping.
You can also secure access to chart of accounts mappings using definition access set security. This allows you to secure which users can view, modify, and/or use chart of account mappings in consolidation definitions.
Replacement for Disabled Accounts
Normally when an account is disabled, you can prevent transactions that include the account from erroring during journal import by defining a replacement account for the disabled account. Journal import replaces the disabled account with the replacement account and continue the journal import process if the replacement account is valid. This improves processing efficiency by preventing the journal import process from erroring and enabling the successful creation of the journal with minimal user intervention when an account has been disabled.
Data Access Security for Legal Entities and Ledgers
In R12, since you can access multiple legal entities and ledgers when you log into Oracle General Ledger using a single responsibility, Oracle General Ledger provides you with flexible ways to secure your data by legal entity, ledger, or even balancing segment values or management segment values. You are able to control whether a user can only view data, or whether they can also enter and modify data for a legal entity, ledger, balancing segment value or management segment value.
Management Reporting and Security
This can be best understood as:You can designate any segment (except the natural account segment) of your chart of accounts to be your management segment and use Oracle GL security model to secure the management segment for reporting and entry of management adjustments.
Prevent Reversal of Journals with Frozen Sources
You can no longer reverse journals from frozen sources defined in the journal sources form.
If the journal is created from a frozen source, the journal cannot be modified even if the source is subsequently unfrozen in the future.
This provides streamlined data reconciliation with subsystems. Not being able to reverse journals that originated in subledgers will ensure that the account balances will always tie out with General Ledger. If you need to reverse a subledger journal, then you should do so in Subledger Accounting or the subledger application.
Prevent Reversal of Unposted Journals
You also can no longer reverse unposted journals. This ensures data integrity and better auditability. In the past when we allowed you to reverse unposted journals, there was a risk that the original journal could be deleted so you could end up reversing something that didn't exist. Now, all reversals can be tied back to the original posted journal.
Integrated Web-based Spreadsheet Interface
Through the integration with Web ADI, users can now leverage spreadsheet functionality in Oracle General Ledger via a web-based interface. The spreadsheet interface can be conveniently launched from a GL responsibility.
Using the Journal Wizard, we can leverage spreadsheet functionality to create actual, budget, or encumbrance journals. You can take advantage of spreadsheet data entry shortcuts such as copying and pasting or dragging and dropping ranges of cells, or even using formulas to calculate journal line amounts. You can then upload your journals to Oracle General Ledger. Before uploading, you can save and distribute your journal worksheets for approval.
We can also import data from text files into spreadsheets, where it can be further modified before uploading to Oracle. This functionality is useful when migrating data from legacy systems, or from any source that can produce delimited files.
Using the Budget Wizard, you can download budget amounts to a spreadsheet, modify the amounts, and then upload them back. You can also choose to download the actual amounts to compare it with the budget amount. Budget Wizard also allows you to plot graphs and do a graphical comparison on the amounts. Budget Wizard also provides budget notes. You can add descriptions to accounts and amounts in your budget and explain your budget within the budget worksheet, avoiding the clutter of external documentation.
Control Accounts
You are able to control data entry to an account by ensuring it only contains data from a specified journal source and to prevent users from entering data for the account either in other journal sources or manually within general ledger.
Security for Definitions
You can secure your setup and definitions by granting specific privileges to users to view, modify, and/or execute a definition. This enables you to control which of your users can view a definition, but not modify or execute it, or execute a definition without modifying it, or vice versa.
Following is a list of definitions that have this security available for:

1. MassAllocation and MassBudget Formulas
2. FSG Reports and Components
3. Accounting Calendars
4. Transaction Calendars
5. AutoPost Criteria Sets
6. AuoReversal Criteria Sets
7. Budget Organizations
8. Chart of Accounts Mappings
9. Consolidation Definitions
10. Consolidation Sets
11. Elimination Sets
12. Ledger Sets
13. Recurring Journals and Budget Formulas
14. Rate Types
15. Revaluations

Sequence for Reporting
Maintaining two sequences have been introduced, accounting and reporting sequencing.
Journal Line Reconciliation
Journal Line Reconciliation enables you to reconcile journal lines that should net to zero, such as suspense accounts, or payroll and tax payable accounts for countries, such as Norway, Germany, or France.
In R12, we’ve made many improvements to intercompany accounting. R11i’s Global Intercompany System (GIS) has been replaced with an exciting new product called Advanced Global Intercompany System (AGIS). We also extended intercompany balancing support to include encumbrance journals.