R12 Oracle General Ledger New and enhanced features

Features of General Ledger in R12:

1. Accounting Setup Manager
2. Subledger Accounting (SLA)
3. Enhanced Foreign Currency Processing by Reporting Made easy
4. Creating foreign currency recurring journals
5. Data Access to Multiple Legal Entities and Ledgers
6. Simultaneous Opening and Closing of Periods for Multiple Ledgers
7. Simultaneous Currency Translation of Multiple Ledgers
8. Financial Reporting for Multiple Ledgers
9. Cross-Ledger and Foreign Currency Allocations
10. Streamlined Automatic Posting
11. Streamlined Auto Reversal Criteria Setup Integrated Web-based
12. Journal Copy
13. Streamlined Consolidation Mappings
14. Replacement for Disabled Accounts
15. Data Access Security for Legal Entities and Ledgers
16. Management Reporting and Security
17. Prevent Reversal of Journals with Frozen Sources
18. Prevent Reversal of Unposted Journals
19. Integrated Web-based Spreadsheet Interface
20. Control Accounts
21. Security for Definitions
22. Sequence for Reporting
23. Journal Line Reconciliation
24. Enhanced Intercompany
25. Some of the GL Standard Reports converted into XML Publisher

1. 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 have to 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 Cs
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.
2. 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.

1. 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 Subledger, 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.
Heres 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.

3. 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
parents currency.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Simultaneous Currency Translation of Multiple Ledgers
You can run the Translation program for multiple ledgers simultaneously, if you are managing multiple
ledgers.
7. 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.
8. 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
9. Streamlined Automatic Posting
You can now share Auto Post Criteria sets across multiple ledgers that share the same chart of accounts
and calendar and use the Auto Post Criteria sets to post journals across multiple ledgers simultaneously.
10. Streamlined Auto Reversal Criteria Setup Integrated Web-based
Auto Reversal Criteria Sets can also be shared across ledgers to reverse journals across multiple ledgers.
This is enhanced by integrated Web-based Spreadsheet Interface.
11. 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 un-posted journals in the same manner as any manually created journals.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.

16. 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 Subledger 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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. Mass Allocation and Mass Budget Formulas
2. FSG Reports and Components
3. Accounting Calendars
4. Transaction Calendars
5. Auto Post Criteria Sets
6. Auto Reversal 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
21. Sequence for Reporting
Maintaining two sequences have been introduced, accounting and reporting sequencing.
Read my earlier post for more details:
22. 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 have made many improvements to intercompany accounting. R11is 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.
23. Enhanced Intercompany
For more details. Read this
24. Some of the GL Standard Reports converted into XML Publisher
Oracle General Ledger's Account Analysis, General Journals and Trial Balance standard reports are now
integrated with XML Publisher.