The accounts receivables oracle notes part 1

Editor's Notes

• #4: Overview of Receivables in the Order to Cash Process Receivables can generate transactions from data imported using AutoInvoice from Oracle Order Management, Oracle Projects, Oracle Service, Oracle Leasing, and legacy systems. You can also create transactions manually in the Receivables application. After the transaction is completed, it is ready for transfer to General Ledger via subledger accounting. Receipts entered and remitted against a transaction are available to Cash Management to reconcile bank statements. Receipts are available for transfer to General Ledger via subledger accounting after they are entered and saved. Any open receivables are available for collection activity by Advanced Collections.
• #5: Overview of the Receivables Process Transactions are created either by importing them or by manually creating them. Transactions can be reviewed and corrected before completion. Once completed, transactions are ready to print and send to the customer for payment. Set the system option Allow Changes to Printed Transactions to allow for the correction of printed transactions. Alternatively, make corrections by issuing debit memos or credit memos (as required). Transactions sent out for payment then go through the collections process. Once collected, the receipts are entered and applied. Once completed, the subledger accounting engine transfers transaction accounting to General Ledger. Receipt accounting can be transferred to General Ledger via subledger accounting once the receipts are entered and saved. Note: Transfer to General Ledger via subledger accounting can take place at any time for completed transactions. You do not have to wait until you get a receipt, or print and send invoices.
• #7: Receivables Integration Process Inventory item information is available to Receivables for any manually created transactions, although no inventory is decremented from any transactions created or modified in Receivables. Transactions can be created by importing data from Order Management (which may include orders from the CRM Suite of products), Projects, other Oracle applications, and legacy systems. E-Business Tax calculates the tax on transactions and manages tax content for reporting purposes. The subledger accounting engine generates subledger accounting entries in Receivables and transfers these accounting entries to General Ledger. Receipts are available for bank reconciliation in Cash Management. Advanced Collections manages the collection efforts. Oracle Payments manages all automatic payment methods, including credit cards and ACH payments. Payables manages part of the refund and netting processes. Once collected, the receipts are entered and applied. The accounting for Receivables transactions can be transferred to General Ledger via subledger accounting once transactions are completed. Receipt accounting can be transferred once receipts are entered and saved.
• #8: Overview of the Transaction Process Standard transactions include Invoices, Adjustments, Credit Memos, and Debit Memos. Standard transactions can be copied in Receivables. A standard transaction follows the path of being reviewed, corrected, completed, printed, and sent to the customer. A receipt is entered against the transaction. Receivables accounting information is transferred to General Ledger via subledger accounting after the transaction is completed.
• #9: Overview of Other Invoice Operations You can use an invoice to make copies. Use invoice copies, for example, for invoices which recur with the same content over a given period of time. Invoices can be created with or without rules. Invoices with rules can be imported or manually created. The accounting rule indicates when revenue recognition should take place. The invoicing rule indicates whether to bill in advance (the first period) or to bill in arrears (the last period). You can let your customers make invoice payments in multiple installments by setting up a split payment term. When you assign a split payment term to an invoice, Receivables automatically creates the payment schedules based on the invoice date and the payment terms that you define. For example, your split payment term might specify that 40 percent of the invoice is due 30 days after the invoice date, and the remainder due 60 days after the invoice date.
• #10: Overview of Other Invoice Operations Balance Forward Billing Instead of sending a separate invoice for each transaction, you can also send one consolidated bill to a customer using balance forward billing. A balance forward bill includes all of a customer's transactions (with balance forward billing payment terms) for the billing period and any balance carried forward from the previous billing period. You can generate balance forward bills consolidated at either the customer account or site level, depending on whether you selected account or site as the bill level in the customer profile class and account profile. You can also include calculation of late charges on customer invoices and consolidated bills, according to your late charge policy.
• #11: Overview of Adjustments Adjustments are entered into the system and proceed through a validation process before being approved. Adjustments can increase or decrease the remaining balance. Each user can have a different approval limit. If the adjustment is within the approval limit, it is automatically approved. If it exceeds the approval limit, it is placed in a pending status until approved by a user with the appropriate approval limit. You can create adjustments for late charges, according to your late charge policy. If you have both overdue interest and penalty charges on an invoice, there will be one adjustment for the interest charges and another adjustment for the penalty charges. Note: If the transaction type is Interest Invoice or Debit Memo, then any overdue interest, late charges, and penalty fees appear as separate lines on the transaction. If the transaction type is Adjustment, then this adjustment appears as a line on the invoice without detailed breakdown. Manual adjustments are created against one transaction. You select the transaction you want to be adjusted. Automatic adjustments can be made against a group of transactions. You set criteria options to limit which transactions are selected by the system to be adjusted.
• #12: Overview of Credit Memos You create credit memos to reduce the balance due on a transaction. You can create standalone credit memos as well as credit memos applied to invoices. Credit memo requests can come from a customer via iReceivables, or from a collection agent via Advanced Collections. You use the Credit Transactions UI to enter, update, and review credit memos against specific invoices, debit memos, or commitments. When you credit a transaction, the subledger accounting engine creates the appropriate Receivables accounting entries and reverses any sales credit assigned to your salespeople. You can credit an entire invoice or specific invoice lines. You can also credit freight for an entire invoice or only for specific invoice lines. You can delete an incomplete credit memo if the system option Allow Invoice Deletion is set to Yes. A transaction must be complete before you can create a credit memo against it.
• #13: Overview of the AutoInvoice Process Invoice data can be sourced from a number of locations, including Order Management, Projects, Contracts, and legacy systems. When the data is brought into the interface tables, error messages are displayed in the interface exceptions table. Corrected data gets pushed into Receivables as invoices. AutoInvoice Exceptions: Errors are sent to the interface exceptions table. Errors can be corrected in the source system or directly in the interface exceptions table. Once corrected, transaction lines can be resubmitted through AutoInvoice. Note: Best practice is to correct errors in the source system of the transaction.
• #14: Overview of Receipts and Remittances Receipts can be entered in one of three ways: Manual: Which includes cash and miscellaneous receipts. QuickCash: Which includes cash and AutoLockbox. Automatic: Which includes credit cards, direct debits, and ACH bank account transfers. Remittances are a group of receipts remitted to the same bank and bank account, similar to bank deposit tickets. Receipts that are applied to an invoice or customer account can be reversed or reapplied at any time as long as they have not been purged from the system. Note: Once entered and saved, the receipt information can be transferred to General Ledger via subledger accounting. The receipts do not have to be reconciled or applied to an invoice.
• #15: Overview of Advanced Collections Use Advanced Collections to manage the entire collections process: Identify past due items by reviewing delinquency information. Review collection information by customer, account, bill to location, or specific transaction; review individual customer collection scores. Use the Collector's Work Queue to review and carry out actionable work assigned to or owned by each collections agent. This work is automatically pushed to the agent as part of the automated collections management flow. Implement your collection method—Dunning Plan or Collections Strategy—and contact the customer by sending statements and dunning letters or by making a telephone call. Record the customer contact activity. Accept payments from customers by any of these methods and applications: Oracle Payments: Credit card or electronic funds transfer. Receivables: Lockbox process. iReceivables: Customer self-service payments. Advanced Collections: Promise to pay or payments from customers. Submit payment disputes for research and approval. Submit adjustments for processing in Receivables.
• #16: Advanced Collections – Collection Methods Advanced Collections supports two collection methods: dunning plans and collections strategies. Dunning Plan – The dunning plan is the traditional method to use to notify a delinquent customer about an unpaid balance. Advanced Collections provides the ability to send dunning letters via fax, email, or printed letter. Additionally, Advanced Collections can use the customer's collections score and the oldest aged invoice to determine the content and delivery method of the dunning notice. If payment is not made within a specified period of time, Advanced Collections can automatically assign a 'dunning callback' to a collector as an action item. Collections Strategy – The collection strategy collections method supports more complex means of contacting and managing customers about their receivables situation. Collections strategies consist of one or more work items, which are actions performed by either the system (send a reminder letter) or the collector (call this customer). Work items are timed to be executed serially. Strategies are based on collections scores, in order that different strategies can be used for customers with 'good' or 'bad' value scores. Collections strategies can also be used to alert pre-delinquent customers about a pending payment. Note: Unless a deploying organization has no need to do anything more complex than simple dunning, the best practice recommendation is to use collections strategies. This allows for flexibility as the organization changes in the future.
• #17: Oracle iReceivables With Oracle iReceivables, customers can perform extensive inquiries, dispute bills, pay invoices, and review account balances. Bill disputes are automatically routed and processed, eliminating the need for intermediaries or paper-based claims management. This provides opportunities for companies to save money, reduce processing time, and improve customer service. All transactions accessible via Oracle iReceivables are protected by Oracle's standard Self-Service Web applications security. The intuitive user interface provides users with simple and effective access to Receivables data. The practical, Web-based look and feel is consistent with other Oracle Self-Service applications, and offers distinct navigation indicators and step-by-step process flow.
• #18: Oracle iReceivables Product Integration Oracle Receivables Oracle iReceivables integrates with Oracle Receivables to provide real-time account access, for review of both account information and individual transaction status and details. Oracle Trading Community Architecture (TCA) Oracle iReceivables integrates with Oracle Trading Community Architecture to provide access to customer information. TCA is a single source of truth for customer information and for avoiding customer duplication through the use of data quality management tools. Oracle Payments Oracle iReceivables integrates with Oracle Payments to enable online payment application and processing. Oracle Workflow Oracle iReceivables integrates with Oracle Workflow to provide automated credit memo and multi-print processing. Oracle Applications Framework Oracle iReceivables integrates with Oracle Applications Framework to enable personalized display of account information. Oracle Bill Presentment Architecture Oracle iReceivables integrates with Bill Presentment Architecture for customizable bill presentment templates.
• #19: Overview of Oracle iReceivables Features Anonymous User Login The Anonymous User Login feature allows external customers to log in by entering just an account number. Customers can access their customer account data without having to register for a username and password. Companies can customize this feature to take the users directly to the page they need to access the most, for example, the Account Details page or the Home page. One-Time Credit Card Payment The One-Time Credit Card Payment feature allows customers to make payments by credit card on a one-time basis. The credit card information entered by customers is immediately passed on for payment processing. After payment processing, the credit card information is masked both in the database and on the payment page. Service Charge Using this feature, companies can apply service or convenience charges to the customer payments made in Oracle iReceivables. Oracle iReceivables records the service charge as an adjustment to the invoice. If the processing of an online credit card payment incurs additional costs, companies can transfer these costs to their customers by applying service charges to the customer payments. Pay All Open Invoices With this feature, customers can pay all their open invoices at the same time. This feature expedites the payment process especially for those customers who have a limited number of bills. For example, a patient may have only two or three health care bills outstanding. The patient can just log in to Oracle iReceivables and pay all of them with one click. Multi-Pay The Multi-Pay feature allows the customer to select multiple invoices and pay all of them at once using credit card or bank account transfer. The selected invoices will be paid by one receipt and the receipt will record multiple applications to the paid invoices. Multi-Print The Multi-Print feature allows customers to select multiple invoices and print all of them at once. The print format is defined in Oracle Receivables, including PDF, HTML, text, XML, PostScript, and others. Once the print job is completed, the customers will receive an e-mail notification containing the print request ID. Customers can enter the print request ID in the Home page to retrieve the printed documents. Custom Transaction Search Using the Custom Transaction Search feature, companies can add their own custom search-by attributes for transaction search in the Account Details page. For example, a shipping company can allow its customers to search transactions by shipping attributes such as service contract number or container number, in addition to the seeded search attributes in Oracle iReceivables. Custom Customer Search With the Custom Customer Search feature, companies can add their own custom search-by attributes to search for customer accounts in the Customer Search page. The customized search attributes can be added to the Search By choice lists. External customers can use these extended attributes to search for transactions and their accounts in the Customer Search page. Display of Descriptive Flexfields This feature allows external customers to view descriptive flexfields in multiple pages in Oracle iReceivables, including the Account Details, Invoice, and Payment pages. The Account Details page displays transaction-specific descriptive flexfields. The Invoice and Payment pages display invoice line-specific descriptive flexfields. The Payment page displays receipt-specific descriptive flexfields. Display of descriptive flexfields has multiple benefits. First, companies can customize flexfields to store more transaction-specific information. Secondly, customers can view such information through flexfields displayed in Oracle iReceivables. For example, an airline company can display additional flight information associated with airline charges, such as flight number, arrival time, and departure time. This will help customers to recognize the charges more easily. As a result, the customers will pay their invoices faster. Export The Export feature allows customers to export columns from the Account Details page in comma delimited format. Customers can also export the columns Invoice, Debit Memo, Deposit, Chargeback, Credit Memo, Payment, and Credit Request pages. After exporting the data, customers will be able to open up this data in other applications, such as Microsoft Excel, to conduct further analysis of their billing information. Commitment Balance Commitment or deposit is a common business practice for many companies. A customer makes a prepayment, which is recorded as a commitment or deposit in Oracle Receivables. The customer can then draw on this commitment as a line of credit to pay for purchases. When such a purchase is made, the company creates an invoice against the commitment and the commitment balance is decremented accordingly. Oracle iReceivables allows customers to view online their commitment details, the invoices applied against their commitment, and the commitment balance. Attachment The Attachment feature allows external customers to view and create attachments in the Account Details and Invoice pages. With this feature, customers can easily view existing attachments or add new attachments online. This enriches the information available to both customers and internal staff, such as AR, collections, or customer service representatives. As a result, companies can interact with their customers in a more informed fashion. For example, let's say a customer wants to dispute an invoice because the invoice data is inconsistent with the original purchase order. In this case, the customer can attach the purchase order image to the invoice, and then make a note in the dispute page to ask the collector to review this attachment. The collector, after receiving the dispute, can review the attached purchase order and approve the dispute right away, without having to ask the customer to e-mail or fax the purchase order. This saves time for both parties and helps to resolve the dispute more quickly.