AR: Interview Question by Avinash

1. What is TCA? Tables?

A) Trading Community Architecture. It is a centralized repository of business entities such as Partners, Customers, and Organizations etc. It is a new framework developed in Oracle 11i.

HZ_PARTIES: The HZ_PARTIES table stores basic information about parties that can be shared with any relationship that the party might establish with another party. Although a record in the HZ_PARTIES table represents a unique party, multiple parties can have the same name. The parties can be one of four types:

Organization   for example, Oracle Corporation
Person            for example, Jane Doe
Group              for example, World Wide Web Consortium
Relationship    for example, Jane Doe at Oracle Corporation.

HZ_LOCATIONS: The HZ_LOCATIONS table stores information about a delivery or postal address such as building number, street address, postal code, and directions to a location. This table provides physical location information about parties (organizations and people) and customer accounts.

HZ_PARTY_SITES: The HZ_PARTY_SITES table links a party (see HZ_PARTIES) and a location (see HZ_LOCATIONS) and stores location-specific party information. One party can optionally have one or more party sites. One location can optionally be used by one or more parties. This party site can then be used for multiple customer accounts within the same party.

HZ_CUST_ACCT_SITES_ALL

HZ_CUST_SITE_USES_ALL

HZ_CUST_CONTACT_POINTS etc.

2. What are Base Tables or Interface Tables for Customer Conversions, Autolockbox, Auto Invoice?

A) Customer Conversion:

Interface Tables       : RA_CUSTOMERS_INTERFACE_ALL, RA_CUSTOMER_PROFILES_INT_ALL,

RA_CONTACT_PHONES_INT_ALL,

RA_CUSTOMER_BANKS_INT_ALL,

RA_CUST_PAY_METHOD_INT_ALL

    Base Tables             : RA_CUSTOMERS, RA_ADDRESSES, RA_SITE_USES_ALL,

                                    RA_CUSTOMER_PROFILES_ALL, RA_PHONES etc

B) Auto Invoice:

    Interface Tables       : RA_INTERFACE_LINES_ALL, RA_INTERFACE_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL

RA_INTERFACE_SALESCREDITS_ALL, RA_INTERFACE_ERRORS_ALL

    Base Tables             : RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL, RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_LINES_ALL,

RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST_ALL, RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_SALESREPS_ALL, RA_CUST_TRX_TYPES_ALL

C) AutoLockBox:

    Interface Tables       : AR_PAYMENTS_INTERFACE_ALL (POPULATED BY IMPORT PROCESS)

    Interim tables                       : AR_INTERIM_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL (All  Populated by Submit Validation)

           : AR_INTERIM_CASH_RCPT_LINES_ALL,

            AR_INTERIM_POSTING

    Base Tables             : AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL, AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL,

                                       AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL ( All Populated by post quick cash)

3. What are the tables in which Invoices/transactions information is stored?

A) RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL, The RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL table stores invoice, debit memo, commitment, bills receivable, and credit memo header information. Each row in this table includes general invoice information such as customer, transaction type, and printing instructions.

RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_LINES_ALL, The RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_LINES_ALL table stores information about invoice, debit memo, credit memo, bills receivable, and commitment lines (LINE, FREIGHT and TAX).

RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_SALESREPS_ALL, The RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_SALESREPS_ALL table stores sales credit assignments for invoice lines. If Receivables bases your invoice distributions on sales credits, a mapping exists between the sales credit assignments in this table with the RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST_ALL table.

The RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST_ALL table stores the accounting records for revenue, unearned revenue, and unbilled receivables for each invoice or credit memo line. Oracle Receivables creates one row for each accounting distribution, and at least one accounting distribution must exist for each invoice or credit memo line. Each row in this table includes the General Ledger account and the amount of the accounting entry.

The RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_SALESREPS_ALL table stores sales credit assignments for invoice lines. If Receivables bases your invoice distributions on sales credits, a mapping exists between the sales credit assignments in this table with the RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST_ALL table.

4. What are the tables In which Receipt information is stored?

A)

AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL, The AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL table stores all transactions except adjustments and miscellaneous cash receipts. Oracle Receivables updates this table when activity occurs against an invoice, debit memo, chargeback, credit memo, on-account credit, or receipt.

Transaction classes determine if a transaction relates to either the RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL table or the AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL table. Using the CUSTOMER_TRX_ID foreign key column, the AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL table joins to the RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL table for non-payment transaction entries, such as the creation of credit memos, debit memos, invoices, chargebacks, or deposits. Using the CASH_RECEIPT_ID foreign key column, the AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL table joins to the AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL table for invoice-related payment transactions.

AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL, The AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL table stores one record for each receipt that you enter. Oracle Receivables concurrently creates records in the AR_CASH_RECEIPT_HISTORY_ALL, AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL, and AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL tables for invoice-related receipts. For receipts that are not related to invoices, such as miscellaneous receipts, Receivables creates records in the AR_MISC_CASH_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL table instead of the AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL table.

AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL, The AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL table stores one record for each receipt that you enter. Oracle Receivables concurrently creates records in the AR_CASH_RECEIPT_HISTORY_ALL, AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL, and AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL tables for invoice-related receipts. For receipts that are not related to invoices, such as miscellaneous receipts, Receivables creates records in the AR_MISC_CASH_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL table instead of the AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS_ALL table. Cash receipts proceed through the confirmation, remittance, and clearance steps. Each step creates rows in the AR_CASH_RECEIPT_HISTORY table.

5. What are the tables in which Accounts information is stored?

RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST_ALL

6. What are the different statuses for Receipts?

A)  Unidentified – Lack of Customer Information

      Unapplied – Lack of Transaction/Invoice specific information (Ex- Invoice Number)

      Applied – When all the required information is provided.

      On-Account, Non-Sufficient Funds, Stop Payment, and Reversed receipt.

7. What Customization that you have done for Autolockbox?

8. What is Autolockbox?

A) Auto lockbox is a service that commercial banks offer corporate customers to enable them to out source their account receivable payment processing. Auto lockbox can also be used to transfer receivables from previous accounting systems into current receivables. It eliminates manual data entry by automatically processing receipts that are sent directly to banks. It involves three steps

• Import (Formats data from bank file and populates the Interface Table),
• Validation(Validates the data and then Populates data into Interim Tables),
• Post Quick Cash(Applies Receipts and updates Balances in BaseTables).

9. What is Transmission Format?

A) Transmission Format specifies how data in the lockbox bank file should be organized such that it can be successfully imported into receivables interface tables. Example, Default, Convert, Cross Currency, Zengen are some of the standard formats provided by oracle.

10. What is Auto Invoice?

A) Autoinvoice is a tool used to import and validate transaction data from other financial systems and create invoices, debit-memos, credit memos, and on account credits in Oracle receivables. Using Custom Feeder programs transaction data is imported into the autoinvoice interface tables.

Autoinvoice interface program then selects data from interface tables and creates transactions in receivables (Populates receivable base tables) . Transactions with invalid information are rejected by receivables and are stored in RA_INTERFACE_ERRORS_ALL interface table.

11. What are the Mandatory Interface Tables in Auto Invoice?

RA_INTERFACE_LINES_ALL, RA_INTERFACE_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL

RA_INTERFACE_SALESCREDITS_ALL.

12. What are the Set up required for Custom Conversion, Autolockbox and Auto Invoice?

A) Autoinvoice program Needs AutoAccounting to be defined prior to its execution.

13. What is AutoAccounting?

A) By defining AutoAccounting we specify how the receivables should determine the general ledger accounts for transactions manually entered or imported using Autoinvoice. Receivables automatically creates default accounts(Accounting Flex field values) for revenue, tax, freight, financial charge, unbilled receivable, and unearned revenue accounts using the AutoAccounting information.

14. What are Autocash rules?

A) Autocash rules are used to determine how to apply the receipts to the customers outstanding debit items. Autocash Rule Sets are used to determine the sequence of Autocash rules that Post Quickcash uses to update the customers account balances.

15. What are Grouping Rules? (Used by Autoinvoice)

A) Grouping rules specify the attributes that must be identical for lines to appear on the same transaction. After the grouping rules are defined autoinvoice uses them to group revenues and credit transactions into invoices debit memos, and credit memos.

16. What are Line Ordering Rules? (Used by Autoinvoice)

A) Line ordering rules are used to order transaction lines when grouping the transactions into invoices, debit memos and credit memos by autoinvoice program. For instance if transactions are being imported from oracle order management , and an invoice line ordering rule for sales_order _line is created then the invoice lists the lines in the same order of lines in sales order.

17. In which table you can see the amount due of a customer?

A) AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULES_ALL

18. How do you tie Credit Memo to the Invoice?

At table level, In RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL, If you entered a credit memo, the PREVIOUS_CUSTOMER_TRX_ID column stores the customer transaction ID of the invoice that you credited. In the case of on-account credits, which are not related to any invoice when the credits are created, the PREVIOUS_CUSTOMER_TRX_ID column is null.

19. What are the available Key Flex Fields in Oracle Receivables?

A) Sales Tax Location Flex field, It’s used for sales tax calculations.

Territory Flex field is used for capturing address information.

20. What are Transaction types? Types of Transactions in AR?

A) Transaction types are used to define accounting for different transactions such as Debit Memo, Credit Memo, On-Account Credits, Charge Backs, Commitments and invoices.

21. What is AutoAssociating?

22. What are the issues you faced in AutoInvoice and Autolockbox?