AUTO ACCOUNTING IN PROJECTS HOW WE MOVED FROM IT TO SLA

MURTHY MAMIDANNA
Lead ERP Architect
CARTUS
INTRODUCTION:
Until E-Business Suite Release 12 was introduced, AutoAccounting was the way to configure accounting rules for
Project Accounting. While AutoAccounting in Projects was by far the most flexible subledger accounting (SLA)
setup within the financial modules, it came with limitations. Notable among the limitations is inability to derive
multiple Asset accounts such as Receivables account or UBR account for a given journal. With the introduction of
Subledger Accounting in Release 12 lot more flexibility has been added to account for transactions in Project
Accounting. In this case study we will go over how we used the power of Subledger Accounting to 1. move from
AutoAccounting rules to Subledger Accounting 2. Achieve more complex accounting requirements such as use of
different Unbilled Receivable Account based on transaction level attributes.

UNDERSTANDING AUTO ACCOUNTING:

AutoAccounting in Projects is a configurable setup with three main components of setup. Those components are 1.
Lookup Sets 2.Accounting Rules 3.Assign Accounting Rules to Accounting events. AutoAccounting rules are setup to
derive a single accounting segment value for a particular accounting event. For example Segment1 of Supplier
Invoice cost account. An AutoAccounting rule can derive a segment value in one of the following ways (See Figure
1),
1. By means of a constant value
2. A SQL Query returning a value
3. A transaction attribute from the transaction
4. Any of the 3 above providing an input value to a lookup set which has mapping to a segment value.

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Figure 1
This arrangement provides certain flexibility in deriving Account Segments. At our implementation we have setup
AutoAccounting rules to derive segment values for the following accounting events.
Misc Cost
Supplier Cost
Event Revenue
Misc Cost Revenue
Supplier Invoice Revenue
Receivables Account
Unbilled Receivables
Unearned Revenue
There are host of transaction attributes that are displayed for use in the derivation of a segment value. However,
the only transaction attributes that can be used are those that are at the same detail level as the transaction or at
a lower of detail level. So for example to derive Unbilled Receivables account one can use Project Number or
Project Type or Organization ID etc., This is because the journal line of Unbilled Receivables is a sum of all the
detail lines from the opposite side of the journal which may have different task numbers, expenditure types and so
on.

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MIGRATING FROM AUTOACCOUNTING TO SLA

Subledger Accounting provides a flexible configure rules to derive accounting in Subledgers. It is much more
flexible compared to AutoAccounting in Projects. It will help to understand the components of configuration in
SLA. Figure 2 demonstrates the configuration components of Subledger Accounting and hierarchy between those
components.

Figure 2.
Although there is not a straightforward mapping between AutoAccounting setups in Projects and SLA, we can
roughly map the configurations as shown in Figure 3 below.
AutoAccounting Lookup Set

SLA Mapping Set

AutoAccounting Rules

SLA Account Derivation Rules

Assign AutoAccounting Rules

SLA Journal Lines Definitions

We used following approach to migrate from AutoAccounting Rules to SLA. We were able to migrate most of the
AutoAccounting Rules using this approach.

Lookup Sets: Lookup Sets and Mapping Sets in SLA are largely similar, except for mapping set comes with few
extra bells and whistles. The input values of a mapping set can be setup to be validated with a value set or a
lookup. Another feature of mapping set is we can provide a default value to use if no mapping is found for a
particular input.
If the mapping scheme is going to remain similar, which was the case in our implementation, we can export the
lookups sets from the from File Export menu. We then use this file to format it for use by application such as
dataload.
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Once we loaded the data into one environment, we can use the Oracle migration tool FNDLOAD to migrate data
from one environment to another. FNDLOAD is an Oracle tool used to migrate Oracle setups such as Concurrent
programs, Value sets etc., from one environment to another. More information on FNDLOAD can be found in
System Administrators guide.

AutoAccounting Rules: AutoAccounting Rules loosely map to Account Derivation Rules. Account Derivation
rules can take input from a PL/SQL function (which is setup using a Custom Source) and lookup for an accounting
segment value from the mapping set. So, if you have SQL as a source in AutoAccounting Rules, at the minimum
they need to be converted to PL/SQL functions.
We have to examine each of AutoAccounting Rule and then structure a new Account Derivation rule using
AutoAccounting Rule as a basis. Since Account Derivation Rules in SLA are much more flexible there is room for
adding complexity in creating the Account Derivation rule. We will discuss later in this paper about how we
achieved one such requirement.

Assign AutoAccounting Rules: This process is akin to assigning Account Derivation rules to Journal Lines
Definition. A Journal line definition in SLA is used to define how accounting for a single Journal Line is derived. As in
AutoAccounting, Journal Line is associated with a particular event type, for example Unbilled Receivable.
Once we build Account Derivation rule, defining journal line definition is a one-to-one process, i.e., you would
assign the Account Derivation rules to the same Accounting Event Types as you had AutoAccounting Rules assigned
to.

Deriving UBR/UER using Transaction Level Attributes:

In AutoAccounting UBR (UnBilled Receivable) and UER (UnEarned Revenue) Journal line was always summarized as
one Journal Line against multiple expenditure or event journal lines on the opposite side of the Journal. This
prevented us from using a transaction level attribute such as Expenditure type, Task or Event Type to derive UBR
or UER account. In SLA we can setup a Journal Line Definition to post either in Summary or Detail (See Figure 3).

Figure 3.
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This setup will create one UBR line for every corresponding transaction journal line on the opposite side. This will
allow us to be able to derive UBR differently using the transaction level attribute.
We can then create an Account Derivation Rule that derives the account by using either a standard source or a
custom source along with a mapping set. Whether we need to use a custom source along with mapping set or
custom source or standard source in isolation will depend on the actual requirements to derive the UBR Account.
As illustrated in Figure2 above, the building blocks for Account Derivation rule are Sources (Custom or Standard)
and Mapping Set.

CONCLUSION:
An analysis of current autoaccounting rules in your environment along with an understanding of what SLA can
offer will make migration from AutoAccounting rules to SLA an easy task. When compared to AutoAccounting, SLA
offers much more flexibility in setting up rules for accounting. There are also very good resources on Oracle
support site that help in better understanding of SLA. See Note IDs 790945.1, 797115.1. In addition by enabling
Diagnostics in SLA (Profile option SLA: Enable Diagnostics) debugging an accounting issue is a breeze.

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