Journal Entries

hunt005

Oracle General Ledger supports a variety of easy-to-learn and easy-to-use journal entry methods. Depending on your accounting needs, you can easily create allocation, recurring, reversing, statistical, skeleton or manual journal entries.

Oracle General Ledger supports a wide variety of journal entries
Business Needs
With Oracle General Ledger you can:
•        Enter, update and validate journal entries on-line
•        Enter foreign currency, intercompany and statistical journal entries (headcount, production units, sales units, and so on)  
•        Review adjusting entries before posting
•        Create reversing journal entries automatically, and post the reversals to the same or future accounting period
•        Create recurring journals which eliminate the need to enter the same journal entries every accounting period
•        Quickly create recurring journal entries by copying existing formulas, rather than starting from scratch
•        Create journal entries allocating revenues and expenses across any department, division, etc. using a simple allocation formula
•        Import and validate accounting data from any Oracle or non-Oracle application
•        Automatically assign sequence numbers to your journal entries to provide an audit trail
•        Enter prior period and prior year journal entries so you can record adjustments in the correct accounting period
•        Control posting of all journal entries
•        If you choose, post out-of-balance journal entries with automatic balancing to your suspense accounts
•        Post intercompany entries with automatic balancing to your intercompany accounts
•        Check, reserve or unreserve funds for your journal entries if you use budgetary control. And, view the results of your funds check or reservation on-line
Major Features
On-line Entry
You can quickly enter journal entries on-line using Oracle’s powerful journal workbench. Oracle General Ledger’s on-line validation process immediately verifies account combinations, batch totals and journal totals during journal entry, enabling accountants to quickly correct any data entered before running a batch process.  This benefit increases productivity and staff efficiency as it prevents repeated data correction cycles common to systems which validate data during the batch process.
Customizable Journal Presentation
Oracle General Ledger’s intuitive Journal Workbench employs Folder technology, benefiting users who set up an unlimited number of templates displaying journal details in the format best addressing their informational needs.
The Journal Workbench provides a direct path to the combined journal entry and inquiry screen from which complete journals, including header and detail lines, are edited, reviewed, reversed and posted.  The journal entry screen displays full header information and unlimited detail lines while maintaining running balances for entered amounts.  Both the journal entry and inquiry screens are queriable on all fields, providing maximum flexibility in retrieving data.
Unrestricted Journal Reversal
With the unequaled manageability of Oracle General Ledger’s Journal Reversal process, accountants reverse journals when and how they wish.  There is no date restriction, as journals may be reversed at any time.  Any journal may be reversed, including reversing journals.
A variety of easy methods exist for reversing a journal entry:  You can reverse a journal entry or even an entire batch during the journal entry process.  Alternatively, you can generate multiple reversing journals for any open or postable periods from the Generate Reversals form.  Oracle offers two types of reversals: Change Sign which simply converts original journal amounts to negative numbers, and Switch Debit/Credit which cleanly switches the debit and credit columns of the reversed journal. Reverse journals that were entered into General Ledger before you ran the MRC Transactions Upgrade Utilities. All pre-existing journal entries become initialized balances in each of your reporting sets of books after you run the General Ledger Reporting Balance Initialization Utility successfully. Subsequently, when you reverse a pre-existing journal in your primary set of books, a corresponding reversing journal entry will be created in your reporting sets of books, even though the original journal entry does not reside in your reporting sets of books.
Integrated Spreadsheet Journal Entry
Oracle General Ledger’s GL Desktop Integrator (GLDI) Journal Wizard combines Oracle’s exceptional journalling capabilities with extensive spreadsheet functionalities, enabling Finance departments to leverage accounting professionals’ spreadsheet knowledge and increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Recurring Journal Entries
You can easily define recurring journal entries for each accounting period. Use recurring journal entries to create statistical entries, skeleton entries and accruals. You can even define recurring journal entries with formulas for complex accruals and allocations. Recurring journal formulas allow individual calculations to be performed on each journal line and provide automatic formula validation in which segment values are immediately checked to ensure accurate results. Finally, you can create recurring journal entries quickly by copying existing formulas, then modifying your copied recurring journals.
Taxable Journals
Oracle General Ledger automatically creates tax journal lines for your taxable journal entries.  When you enter a manual journal, you choose whether it should be taxed.  Oracle General Ledger calculates tax amounts using the tax codes you set up in Oracle Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable.
Statistics
You can enter non-financial information such as headcount, production units or sales units, the same way you enter financial information. You can even define statistical units of measure, such as bushels or barrels, which are associated with specific natural accounts. Use this information in allocations, budgeting and financial reporting.
Intercompany Journal Entries
Create intercompany journal entries to record transactions between your accounting entities. Oracle General Ledger keeps your accounting records in balance for each company or balancing segment by automatically creating offsetting entries to your intercompany clearing accounts.
Due To / Due From Intercompany Balancing

To aid the intercompany reconciliation process, intercompany balancing now allows you to automatically  group intercompany balances by trading partner. You can balance intercompany journals based on multiple  parameters, including Journal Source, Journal Category, and Balancing Segment Value. For each combination of parameters, specify a unique intercompany account or template which General Ledger uses to automatically balance intercompany journal entries. Based on rules you define, General Ledger inserts additional journal lines to offset journal lines that cross balancing segments. Your intercompany accounting
rules may also include different accounts based on whether the balancing amount should be posted to a Credit (Due To) or Debit (Due From) account. At the journal source and category level, you can choose a default hub" company against which all trading partners balance. You can also specify whether Intercompany journals balancing is performed at a summarized level for each trading partner, or at a journal line level.

Foreign Currency Journal Entries
You can create journal entries in any currency. Oracle General Ledger automatically converts foreign currency amounts into your functional currency using the appropriate exchange rate. And, Oracle General Ledger saves your journal entry in both currencies so you can maintain an audit trail for your foreign currency transactions. You can also revalue a foreign currency journal entry by requesting revaluation. Oracle General Ledger revalues and translates your account balances in accordance with FASB 8 (U.S.) and FASB 52 (U.S.).
MassAllocations
You can easily allocate revenues and expenses across any cost center, department, or division using a simple formula. For example, you can allocate rental expense to each department based on square feet used. Oracle General Ledger validates your allocation formula before you run it and reports any errors.
Journal Import
You can create journal entries by importing accounting data from Oracle or non-Oracle applications. Journal Import lets you quickly integrate Oracle General Ledger with any non-Oracle application, such as accounts receivable, accounts payable and fixed assets systems. Update or post your imported journal entries just as you would any other journal entry. Journal Import also allows you to import descriptive information (descriptive flexfields), sequence numbers and journal references along with your accounting data.

Oracle General Ledger lets you import transactions from feeder systems
Parallel Processing
Oracle General Ledger lets you run Posting, Consolidation and Journal Import in parallel.  You can also run several copies of Journal Import for the same source or for different sources concurrently.
Journal Entry Posting
You can control posting of journal entries in Oracle General Ledger. Post any or all of your journal entries or cancel a journal entry batch that you selected for posting. And, if you choose to allow the posting of out-of-balance journal entries, Oracle General Ledger automatically balances these journal entries against your suspense accounts.
Sequential Numbering
You can sequentially number your journal entries as you enter them. You can choose to number the journal entries yourself or let Oracle General Ledger automatically generate sequence numbers.  You can report on journal entries by sequence numbers for improved auditability.

Automatic Journal Reversal

Automatically reverse journals by journal category, by choosing a reversal method (Switch Debit/Credit or Change Sign) for each category. Select the rules for General Ledger to use to determine the effective date or period of the reversal. General Ledger maximizes journal reversal automation with several options:It can generate reversals when a new period is opened. Allows a manual launch of separate reversal programs that find and generate all journals marked for reversal for a specific period, including any that were manually selected. It can automatically post any reversal journal, including those reversals which were not automatically generated. Automatic reversal is provided for journals in both standard and average daily balance sets of books.

Automatic Journal Scheduling

Automatically generate journals for recurring journals, allocations/massbudgets, step-down allocation sets, and parallel allocation sets. Schedule and submit the generation process once or for each period. For periodic submissions, the period and date parameters are incremented based on user-defined re-submission
intervals, using the standard calendar or the fiscal calendar for your set of books. This feature is integrated with Oracle Workflow, which monitors each journal batch through each process, including journal batch validation, generation, and posting. You can tailor allocation procedures to meet your specific business requirements. Assign contact person(s) to monitor the entire process or a different contact person for each allocation journal included in your set. Workflow notifies the contact as each journal is successfully processed or if an error occurs — either in a web or e-mail notification, or using an Oracle Applications notification form. If an error occurs, Workflow can roll back the results of all the previously completed allocation steps, so you can start the process from the beginning after correcting the error. Or, it can discontinue processing when the error is located. Parallel Allocation Sets Distinct from step-down allocations because each allocation journal is independent of the other in a set. The AutoAllocation Workbench groups any MassAllocation, MassBudget, Recurring Journals, or Project Allocation journals to run simultaneously. Once you have finished creating an allocation set, you can submit it immediately or schedule it to run on a specific date and time.

Intercompany Segment Qualifier

There are four types of qualifiers: Balancing Segment, Natural Account Segment, Cost Center Segment, and the new Intercompany Segment. The intercompany segment shares the same value set as the balancing segment and is used in the account combination General Ledger creates to balance intercompany journals. By including an intercompany segment in the accounting flexfield, you can track the trading companies involved in an intercompany transaction. Every time an intercompany transaction is generated, the intercompany segment is automatically populated with the balancing segment of the trading partner. When you post intercompany journal entries, General Ledger creates balancing journal lines using the appropriate intercompany accounts for the source, category, balancing segment, and type It also considers the intercompany segment and clearing company, if applicable.