In Release 12 SLA, the account that goes to GL is built by SLA rules using the hundreds of transaction attributes provided by the product teams, so  does the accounting flexfield (AFF) on the transaction doesn’t matter any more?

On the surface the AFF seems no longer important, or atleast not as important as it use to be, however with some retraining of the user of what AFF on the transaction means, it can be a way to capture non accounting related information that doesn’t already exist.

Sound like a Descriptive Flexfield to you? Yes, it is but the difference is the AFF is more prominent on the UI, its available in searches and standard reports.  

Wow that’s great you say, small (big) caveat, the AFF is still the AFF, ie the structure and values are shared by the Chart of Accounts. You can get around this by creating segment security rules to overload the value problem.  Other issue that I mentioned above, having people understand when the AFF is really the AFF or when the AFF is a structure to hold additional transaction attributes.

The SLAMs shipped by development were to replicate and preserve R11i handling of accounting.  There is no need to use these seeded SLAMs.  The whole purpose of SLA is to have a flexible rules engine, that YOU can choose what accounting is created or must be created for your legislative requirements.

Some examples:

1) Encumbrance Accural  – does not contain any rules to create accounting for Fixed Assets

Create your own custom SLAM by copying Encumbrance Accural and then adding the standard Fixed Assets Standard Accural AAD.  You do not need to worry about customization in this case as you are still using all the standard rules shipped by Oracle.

2) Encumbrance Accrual contains rules in Accounts Receivables for the multi-fund receivables which I don’t need

Create your own SLAM and replace the multi-fund AR rules with the standard accrual ones which goes to a single receivables account.

So finally made it to the blogging world, this blog will mainly talk about R12 Oracle Financials Architecture, but some of the broader ideas will be relevant for other releases as well.  The posts will be issues that keep coming up from customers and coworkers. 

I also hope that I will have guest bloggers, those who don’t want the “burden” of their own blog but want to post ideas/issues once in awhile. 

Welcome!