Oracle Fusion General Ledger

Journal Approvals
Vinay Prabhu
Nov 12, 2015

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Safe Harbor Statement
The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for
information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a
commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon
in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or
functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Agenda
• Introduction
• Journal Approval Workflow
• Journal Approval Rules Design
• Demo
• Q&A
• Appendix

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Introduction

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Oracle General Ledger Journal Approval
 Configure approval rules based on multiple attributes including ledger,
batch, header, or line level
 Use organizational hierarchies to route approval requests
 Approve via email or online
 Approval notifications list key attributes for each journal to speed the approval
process

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Journal Approval Workflow

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Enable Journal Approvals on two pages
Specify Ledger Options page

Manage Journal Sources page

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How Journal Approval is Initiated - Requestor
The approval process starts when
1. A journal batch requiring approval is submitted for posting from
• Create/Edit Journals page
• Manage Journals page
• ADFDI spreadsheet (Post automatically option)
• Automatic Posting
The batch is automatically routed for posting if approved.

2. Request Approval action from the Batch Actions menu

is clicked on the Create/Edit Journals page.

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Review Approval Requests – Approvers
Choose the option that works for you:
1. Review approval requests in your email

2. Select the Notifications icon on the

Global Header for a list of approval
requests and other notifications

3. Navigate to the Requiring My Approval tab

for a list of approval requests
(Navigator > General Accounting > General Accounting
Dashboard)

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Journal Approval Rules Design

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Step 1 - Access Approval Rule Designer
• From Functional Setup Manager (FSM): task Manage Journal Approval Rules
• BPM Worklist page opens, click Task Configuration and then FinGlJournalApproval task.
• The General tab of the rule designer opens.

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Step 2 - Access Assignee/Participant Tree in Rule Designer
• Select the Assignees tab of the rule designer
• The participant tree will display
• Tree consists of 17 Participants (nodes)
arranged in a fixed order. You may
typically use only 1 or 2 of them.
• Each node is a container of a rule set.
It is either ignored or yields approvers.

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Step 3 - Configure Approval Rules
• Click triangle to show rule details
• Each rule represents in what
condition a journal batch
needs to be approved by
whom
• IF condition evaluates journal
batch based on batch,
journal, or line level
attributes
• THEN component determines
who the approval should be
routed to

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Step 3.1 - Determine Approval Condition

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Step 3.2 - Configure Approval Routing
List Builders / Routing Types
– Supervisory: Move up the primary supervisory hierarchy*,
starting at the requester or at a given approver, and generates
a chain that has a fixed number of approvers in it.
– Job Level: Moves up the supervisory hierarchy*, starting at a
given user and continuing until an approver with a sufficient
job level* is found.
– Position: Moves up the position hierarchy*, starting at a given
approver's position and continuing until a position with a
sufficient level is found.
– Approval Group: Includes predefined approver groups in the
approver list. Approval Groups needs to be configured from
BPM work list application.
– Resource: Select a particular user or role as the approver

*Setup in HCM

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Step 4 - Complete Rule Set
• Add more rules to the rule set as needed

Important: The rules in a rule set should

be collectively exhaustive.
Example: If one Rule checks for the
Condition Journal Category is equal to
‘Adjustment’, another Rule should check
for the Condition Journal Category is not
equal to ‘Adjustment’. This is to ensure
that the approval rules evaluation does
not fail when the Rule Set does not
provide an when the Journal Category is
Rule Set Rule Set No rule not ‘Adjustment’.
coverage for
Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 1 Rule 2 some batches
All journal Batches All journal Batches

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Step 5 – Deploy the Rules
• Deploy the rules using the Commit Task button.
On deployment, subsequent approvals will be
based on the modified rules.
• Save without deploying if rules are not final using
the Save button.
• If there are any errors in the saved rules, revert to
previously deployed rules using the Reset button.

Note: If required, configure other options available under the Deadlines, Notifications,
Configuration, and other tabs before deployment.

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Rule Evaluation Flow
Participant has 1
Ruleset
has 1 or more
Rules
(node on the tree)
when not
has 1 or more satisfied,
move to
next Rule
Move to the
next Action when satisfied lead to an Conditions
Participant (in the THEN part) (in the IF part)
to find
approvers

Ignores this Participant and moves

uses calls to the next one to find approvers
List Builder either Ignore Function

Auto approves
either
Return list of
approvers

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Approval Request Routing – Between Participants
Approvers from different Participants (nodes) get notifications in a sequence
based on where the Participant is located on the Participant Tree.
For Example, approvers returned from Participant 1 and Participant 2 below
will get the notifications in parallel. Once they have approved, the approvers
from Participant 3 will receive the notification.

1 2

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Approval Request Routing – Within a Participant
Once the list of approvers is constructed within a Participant using the List
Builder there are two decisions variables:
- In what order should the approval requests be sent to these approvers
- How many of the approvers need to respond before we can move to the approvers
from the next Participant.
The ‘Type’ of the Participant in which the rule is defined determines the
answers to above two questions.
Participant Type Routing Voting Regime To Summarize:
Serial Sequential Consensus - Routing between different Participants is controlled
by the pre-arranged order in which they appear on
Parallel Parallel Consensus the tree.
Single Parallel First Responder Wins - Routing within a Participant is controlled by the
Type of that participant.
FYI Parallel NA

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Participant Tree Routing Sequence- Summarized
No. Between Participant Routing Sequence Participant* Within Participant Voting Regime
Routing
1 1 Supervisory_JournalApprovalRuleSet Sequential Consensus
2 1 ApprovalGroup_JournalApprovalRuleSet Sequential Consensus
3 1 JobLevel_JournalApprovalRuleSet Sequential Consensus
4 1 Position_JournalApprovalRuleSet Sequential Consensus
5 1 ParallelTypeParticipantOneInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel Consensus
6 1 ParallelTypeParticipantTwoInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel Consensus
7 1 SingleTypeParticipantOneInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel First Responder Wins
8 1 SingleTypeParticipantTwoInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel First Responder Wins
9 1 FyiTypeParticipantOneInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel -
10 1 FyiTypeParticipantTwoInParallelModeRuleSet Parallel -
11 2 ParallelTypeParticipantOneInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel Consensus
12 3 SingleTypeParticipantOneInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel First Responder Wins
13 4 FyiTypeParticipantOneInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel -
14 5 ParallelTypeParticipantTwoInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel Consensus
15 6 SerialTypeParticipantTwoInSequentialModeRuleSet Sequential Consensus
16 7 SingleTypeParticipantTwoInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel First Responder Wins
17 8 FyiTypeParticipantTwoInSequentialModeRuleSet Parallel -
* Any list builder can be configured in any of the Participants
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Demo

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Case Study
Vision Corporation has the following requirements for the approval of
manual journals created in General Ledger.
– Any batch of ‘Vision Operations (USA)’ ledger with a maximum journal amount
between 500 and 10,000 shall require approval by the supervisor of the submitter.
– Any batch of ‘Vision Operations (USA)’ ledger with a maximum journal amount
greater than 10,000 shall require two levels of supervisory approval.
– Any batch of ‘Vision Operations (USA)’ ledger with maximum journal amount less
than 500 should be automatically approved.

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Q&A

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Customer Connect Discussion Topic
A discussion topic for Journal Approvals has been created on Customer Connect where
you may post any queries you have.
http://appsconnect.custhelp.com/posts/468c8538de

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Appendix

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Other Task Options
Configuration tab: Provides options to
- allow approvers to add others to the
approvers list
- complete workflow immediately when any
one approver Rejects the batch
- mandate comments for Approve or Reject
actions
- prevent multiple notifications being sent to
the same user for approval of the same
batch

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Other Task Options (cont.)
Notifications tab:
- Configure which users get notifications when
certain events occur in the approval workflow.
- Set up reminders to be sent before task
expiration or after task assignment.

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Other Task Options (cont.)
Deadlines tab: Choose to either Escalate, Expire, or Renew an approval task
after a certain duration has elapsed

Note: It is recommended that you accept the

defaults on the General, Data and Access tabs.
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Create Approval Groups
• Navigate to the Administration work area in BPM
Worklist. Click the Approval Groups button.
• Click Create Static Approval Group on the top left

• Click the icon on the page to add members

• Search and add users

• Save the changes

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Flexfield Based Approval Rules
• Rules which are based on the account combination or a particular segment
in the account combination on the journal lines.

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Other Rule Variations
• Substitution Rules: Can be
used to conditionally
change an approver with
another

• Modification Rules: Only

works with Job Level list
builder. Can be used to
conditionally add more
approvers or stop at a
particular job level

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Attributes Available for Journal Approval Rules Conditions
• MaxJournalLineAmount: Lists the largest amount present in entered dr, entered cr,
accounted dr and accounted dr across all the lines i.e. the largest amount on a single
line irrespective of the currency.
• MaxJournalAmount: Lists the largest amount present in entered dr, entered cr,
accounted dr and accounted dr across all the Journals irrespective of the currency
• JournalBatchLedger: Lists the ledger details for each ledger used in the journals of the
batch
• SubmittedPeriod: Lists the period details for the period tied to today’s date ie the date
the batch was submitted for approval
• Account: Details for each account combination used in the lines.

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End User Vacation Rules Setup in BPM Worklist
All end users can setup vacation rules for approval tasks in BPM.
– Access the Preferences section

– Setup the vacation period rule

Note: All approval tasks assigned to a user are also visible on the Home page accessed from the menu above.

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Actions Available on Online Notifications
• Approve – If there are more approvers then task is routed to them. Batch is approved only when the last approver takes this
action.
• Reject – Journal Batch is rejected if one of the approvers takes this action.
• Request Information – Sends the task back to submitter who has to add comments before resubmitting
• Reassign – approvers can redirect the task to other users. Subsequent approval will be routed based on re-assignees hierarchy.
• Delegate – another option which appears when Reassign is clicked. Approver can nominate another user to act on their behalf.
Subsequent approval will be routed still be based on the original assignees hierarchy.
• Ad Hoc Route – Add other participants to the approvers list.
• Escalate – Sends the approval to the next level manager.
• Release – Releases the task for action by other approvers. This action appears when there are parallel approvers and one of them
has clicked on the Claim action.
• Suspend – Action cannot be taken on the approval task once suspended. Resume action appears when the notification is accessed
subsequently. This has to be clicked to make the notification actionable again.
• Withdraw – Approval task is completed without a final Approve or Reject decision.
• Skip Current Assignment – Current approver can skip taking action on the request. Other approvers can still act on this task.
• Save – Will save any Comments or Attachments added on the notification.

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Security
• Relevant Privilege/Job Role assigned to Financial Application Administrator Job Role
– Business Process Engineering Human Taskflow Administration: This role grants a user the privilege to perform
administrative actions in the workflow functionality via the worklist UI. A user in this role will be able to view all
tasks in the system, recover errored (incorrectly assigned) tasks, create approval groups and edit task
configuration / rules DT@RT UI (both AMX functionality) This is a business administrator type role. This role is
granted to SOA Admin.
– General Accounting Functional Administration -> Manage Journal Approval Rules

• Relevant Privilege/Job Role assigned to Financial Integration Specialist Job Role

– General Accounting Functional Administration -> Manage Journal Approval Rules

• Relevant Privilege/Job Role assigned to Financial Supply Chain Manufacturing

Application Administrator Job Role
– General Accounting Functional Administration -> Manage Journal Approval Rules

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Approvals Management Extension - Architecture
Technology used for approvals in Oracle Fusion.
You can create a SOA composite application that
includes BPEL process, business rule, and human
task service components. These components are
complementary technologies. BPEL processes
focus on the orchestration of systems, services,
and people. Business rules focus on decision
making and policies. Human tasks enable you to
model a workflow that describes the tasks for
users or groups to perform as part of an end-to-
end business process flow.
AMX provides the following additional features:
- Attributes derived from ADF view object in
transactional applications
- The ability to retrieve various job, position,
and supervisory hierarchies from HR systems
using hierarchy provider plug-ins.
- The ability to define rules for controlling
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/doc.1111/e15176/soa_app_mg approval lists and hierarchy configurations
mt_svc_bpmpd.htm#BPMPD1073

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Technology Components
• BPEL: BPEL is the standard for assembling a set of discrete services into an end-to-end process flow, radically reducing the cost and
complexity of process integration initiatives. BPEL is an XML-based language for enabling task sharing across multiple enterprises
using a combination of Web services. BPEL is based on the XML schema, simple object access protocol (SOAP), and Web services
description language (WSDL). BPEL provides enterprises with an industry standard for business process orchestration and execution.
• Human Workflow: Human Workflow component is responsible for managing the lifecycle of human tasks, including creation,
assignment, expiration, deadlines, and notifications, as well as its presentation to end users. It supports sophisticated dynamic task
routing leveraging declarative patterns and tight integration with business rules.
• Mediator: Oracle Mediator provides a lightweight framework to mediate between various components within a composite
application. Oracle Mediator facilitates integration between events and services, where service invocations and events can be mixed
and matched. You can use an Oracle Mediator service component to consume a business event or receive a service invocation.
• Business Events: Business events are one-way, fire and forget, asynchronous way of sending a notification of a business
occurrence.
• Oracle Business Rules: Oracle Business Rules enable dynamic decisions at runtime allowing users to automate policies while
separating rule logic from underlying application code. This allows more agile rule maintenance and empowers business analysts
with the ability to modify rule logic without programmer assistance and without interrupting business processes.

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Other Resources
• YouTube Video- Creating a Journal Approval Rule

• Oracle Support Note on Fusion Journal Approvals

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