New Features in Oracle Projects Release 11
In Release 11, Oracle Projects provides the following new features:
- Integration with Other Oracle Applications
- Integration with non-Oracle Applications
New Windows
Review Transactions Window
The Review Transactions window enables you to query and update transactions that were rejected during Transaction Import. You can query transactions by transaction source or expenditure batch name, and Oracle Projects displays details of the matching transactions. After you make corrections, you can resubmit the Transaction Import process from the Review Transactions window.
You can also use this window to enter new transactions into the interface table for testing purposes.
See: Resolving Import Exceptions.
Billing Cycles Window
Use the Billing Cycles window to specify the billing cycle name, type, value, effective dates, and a description of the billing cycle. You define billing cycles to fulfill your business needs, and then assign a billing cycle to each project. The billing cycle uses your billing definition to derive the next billing date for the project.
See: Enhanced Billing Cycle.
Mass Update Batches Window
Use the Mass Update Batches window to change the organization of multiple projects and tasks. The Mass Update window performs the following functions:
- Creates a batch of projects and/or tasks for which you want to update the owning organization.
- Initiates a process that updates the organization on all the projects and tasks specified in the batch. You can specify whether you want to mark expenditure items for cost and revenue recalculation if you use the project or task organization in your AutoAccounting rules.
You can also run the update as a concurrent program by submitting a request to run the PRC: Process Mass Update Batches process.
This window was added to support the organization flexibility and reorganization support feature.
See: Mass Update Batches and Organization Flexibility and Reorganization Support.
PTE Employee Assignment to Operating Unit Window
If you intend to use Oracle Personal Time and Expense and have implemented multi-organization support in Oracle Projects, use the PTE Employee Assignment to Operating Unit window to populate and maintain the assignment of each employee to an operating unit in the PA_PTE_MORG_EMP_TAB table. The values in this table determine the operating unit in which the employee's time and expenses are collected. You must perform this step before users can submit PTE expenditures.
See: Setting Up PTE for Multi-Organization Support.
Dimensions Window
Use the Dimensions Window to enable or disable the standard dimensions predefined by Oracle Projects for Oracle Applications Data Warehouse integration. After you enable or disable a dimension, choose Regenerate Views to recreate the views used for the interface table collection process.
This window was added to support Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack.
See: Disabling a Standard Dimension and Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack.
New Reports
Project Subledger Audit Reports
The Project Subledger Audit Reports print cost distribution lines related to projects. The reports enable you to drill down from a GL account balance in the trial balance to the individual project-related transactions. The Project Subledger Audit Reports include the following reports:
- Project Subledger Summary
- Project Subledger Detail by Project
- Project Subledger Detail by Expenditure Type
See: Project Subledger Audit Reports.
Summarization Period Exception Report
This feature was included in Oracle Projects Release 10SC Production 16.1 and is documented in Release 11.
When you change the current reporting period, Oracle Projects displays a warning message indicating if the change would affect the summary amounts reported on any projects. This report lists projects that will be affected by a change in the reporting period for which project summary amounts should be created, updated, or refreshed.
See: Summarization Period Exceptions and Setting the PA Reporting Period.
Integration with Other Oracle Applications
Oracle Payables Account Generation Enhancements
Oracle Payables now uses the workflow-based Account Generator instead of FlexBuilder to generate the GL accounts for project-related transactions.
In addition, Oracle Payables passes the descriptive flexfield values from the invoice header and the invoice distributions to the Account Generator. You can use these values in your account generation rules.
See: Using the Account Generator in Oracle Projects.
Oracle Manufacturing Integration
Oracle Projects integrates with Oracle Manufacturing to provide Oracle Project Manufacturing, a solution for companies that manufacture products using projects or contracts.
You set up the work breakdown structure (WBS) for a manufacturing project in Oracle Projects. All manufacturing costs are tracked by project and task in your manufacturing system and then imported to Oracle Projects.
See: Project Manufacturing.
Oracle Inventory Integration
You can now issue inventory transactions (issues and receipts) from Oracle Inventory to projects in Oracle Projects. You can order and receive items into inventory before assigning them to a project. You can then assign them to a project as they are taken out of inventory.
See: Inventory Integration.
Oracle Workflow Integration
Oracle Projects includes Oracle Workflow functionality. You can enable workflow for the following activities:
- Changing a project's status
- Submitting or baselining a budget
You decide which projects or budgets need to be routed through Oracle Workflow, set up the approval chain, and define the business rules that must be met before the transaction can be approved.
You can initiate project and budget approval in an external system via Activity Management Gateway (AMG) or via the standard Oracle Projects windows. You can customize project and budget approval workflow rules using client extensions.
See: Project Status Change Workflow and Budget Workflow.
Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack
Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack provides out-of-the-box integration with Oracle Applications Data Warehouse. This integration enables you to perform multidimensional analysis of project information across projects and organizations. The following features are provided:
- Predefined standard dimensions (Project, Resource, Expenditure Type, Service Type, Time, Owner Organization, Expenditure Organization, Set of Books, Budget Type)
- Capability to define multiple hierarchies on dimensions
- Flexibility to disable a standard dimension or measure
- Collection views that can easily be modified to filter data
- Custom columns to collect additional information
- Client extensions to pull additional fact table information
See: Overview of Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack.
Integration with non-Oracle Applications
Oracle Project Connect (for Microsoft Project)
Oracle Project Connect provides integration with Microsoft Project using the Activity Management Gateway. This integration enables you to share information between the Oracle Projects and Microsoft Project. You can perform the following activities using this integration:
- Develop and maintain your project plan using Microsoft Project and then transfer plan data to Oracle Projects based on Oracle Projects templates and overrides. You can later revise a submitted plan in Microsoft Project and transfer the changes to Oracle Projects.
- Send resource assignment quantities as budget quantities and calculate raw cost and burdened cost in Oracle Projects using budget client extensions.
- Receive actuals from Oracle Projects to Microsoft Project for status reporting.
(This feature is also available with Oracle Projects Release 10SC Production 16.1.)
See: Integration with Microsoft Project and Oracle Project Connect User's Guide (for Microsoft Project).
Other Enhancements
Project Status Controls
You can now better control the status of each project during its life cycle.
When you define a project status, you specify which functions in Oracle Projects are allowed for that status. You can control the following functions:
- Include in Status Reports
When you change the project status of a project, Oracle Projects uses project verification rules to enforce company-specific business rules that must be met before the change is allowed. With each status change, you can also initiate workflow.
See: Project Statuses, Project Verification Extension and Workflow Integration.
Project and Budget Verification Rules
Before you change the status of a project or a budget, Oracle Projects uses verification rule client extensions to confirm that required conditions have been met. For budgets, Oracle Projects applies different verification rules depending on whether the budget is being submitted or baselined. You can customize the extensions to apply verification rules specific to your company's business.
See: Project Verification Extension and Budget Verification Extension.
Organization Flexibility and Reorganization Support
Oracle Projects provides the flexibility to accommodate company reorganizations. You can change your original organization hierarchy and optionally place effective dates on multiple versions of the hierarchy. Oracle Projects also supports changes to project and task organizations after transactions have been entered for the project or task.
Oracle Projects now uses new organization classifications, along with organization hierarchies, to specify which organizations are allowed to:
- Manage projects and tasks (Project Organization Hierarchy)
- Incur expenditures (Expenditure Organization Hierarchy)
You also specify the default reporting hierarchy, and the organization hierarchy to be used for burdening. In prior releases, Oracle Projects used a single organization hierarchy. An organization type was used to specify the functions that an organization could perform.
See: Organizations in Oracle Projects or Mass Update Batches or Case Study: Organization Change in Fremont Corporation.
Multiple Expenditure Type Classes Per Expenditure Type
You can assign multiple expenditure type classes (previously called "system linkages") to each expenditure type. In previous releases, you assigned only one expenditure type class to each expenditure type.
This feature allows you to use a single expenditure type to classify as many different costs as you require. For example, an expenditure with the expenditure type Materials can have the expenditure type class Supplier Invoice if it originated in Oracle Payables, and the expenditure type class Inventory if it originated in Oracle Inventory. This example is illustrated below:
Materials
| Oracle Payables
| Supplier Invoice
|
Materials
| Oracle Inventory
| Inventory
|
With this enhancement, it is no longer necessary to create separate expenditure types for expenditures that have different origins (and possibly different accounting), but which should otherwise be grouped together for costing, budgeting, or summarization purposes.
See: Expenditure Types.
New Expenditure Type Classes
Collecting miscellaneous costs in Oracle Projects has been simplified with the addition of the following new expenditure type classes:
- Miscellaneous Transaction
Miscellaneous transactions track miscellaneous project costs. This expenditure type class is similar to the Usages expenditure type class, but does not require a non-labor resource or a non-labor resource organization. When you use the Miscellaneous Transaction expenditure type class to collect miscellaneous costs, you do not need to define any non-labor resources or non-labor resource organizations.
Burden transactions track burden costs that are calculated in an external system or that are calculated on a project set up to track burden costs as separate, summarized burden transactions. Such costs are created as separate expenditure items that have burdened cost amounts, but have quantities and raw costs of zero. You can interface these costs to Oracle General Ledger and treat them as you would any other transaction in Oracle Projects that you can adjust and capitalize, and for which you can accrue revenue and generate invoices.
Work In Process transactions track manufacturing resource costs that are interfaced from Oracle Manufacturing for Project Manufacturing integration. You can also use this expenditure type class when you import other manufacturing costs via Transaction Import.
Inventory transactions track manufacturing material costs that are interfaced from Oracle Manufacturing and inventory issues and receipts from Oracle Inventory. You can also use this expenditure type class when you import other manufacturing costs via Transaction Import.
You can collect costs with these expenditure type classes via Transaction Import or pre-approved batch entry. If you integrate Oracle Projects with Oracle Manufacturing or Oracle Inventory, use the function security feature to prevent users from entering pre-approved expenditures with an expenditure type class of Work in Process and Inventory.
Oracle Projects provides AutoAccounting functions for each of these expenditure type classes to enable you to define appropriate rules for the cost and revenue accounts.
See: Expenditure Type Classes.
Enhanced Transaction Import
The Transaction Import enhancements enable you to import a broader range of transactions that are processed in external systems or converted from legacy systems. The enhancements include the following options, which you can control by transaction source:
- Allow the import of burdened costs along with raw costs. You cannot audit these burdened costs by burden cost component or change them in Oracle Projects.
- Allow the import of raw costs already posted to Oracle General Ledger from an external system. Oracle Projects will not interface these costs to Oracle General Ledger. If the costs have already been accounted for in an external system, you must specify the debit and credit accounts when importing into Oracle Projects.
- Allow duplicate original system reference values.
- Allow adjustments on imported items in Oracle Projects. Such adjustments include any change that could result in a new GL account or cost amount, including transfers between projects, splits, cost recalculations, and billable reclassifications. You can optionally disallow adjustments if, for example, you will import adjustments from the external system.
In addition, you can query and update transactions that were rejected during the Transaction Import process using the Review Transactions window. After you make corrections, you can resubmit the process from this window.
See: Using Transaction Import and Resolving Import Exceptions.
Expenditure Enhancements
Oracle Projects now allows you to perform the following actions to expenditures:
- Reverse an expenditure batch. You can now reverse an entire pre-approved expenditure batch, using the new Reverse button in the Expenditure Batches window.
- Enter unmatched negative transactions. You can now enter unmatched negative transactions using the Expenditure Batches windows. You can set an option that prevents Oracle Projects from searching for corresponding existing transactions when you enter transactions with negative quantities.
- Split quantity, raw cost, or burdened cost amounts. You can now split a transaction's quantity, raw cost, or burdened cost amount, depending on which of these amounts equals zero.
Burden Cost Accounting and Display Options
Oracle Projects now provides the ability to post burden amounts by burden cost code, such as fringe or overhead, to separate GL accounts. Burden cost components are summarized into separate expenditure items using the new Burden Transactions expenditure type class.
You can choose to store burden cost amounts as:
- Total burdened cost on the expenditure item (only this option was available in previous releases)
- Separate, summarized expenditure items
You specify which method to use by project type.
See: Accounting for Burden Costs by Burden Cost Component.
Enhanced Billing Cycle
You can configure your billing cycle to comply with your company's billing practices. You can set up multiple billing cycle codes, and then select the appropriate billing cycle for each project. You can define billing cycles that last a set number of days, bill on a set day of the month, bill on the first Monday of the month, and so on.
Oracle Projects provides a new billing cycle client extension that you can use to derive the next billing date for a project based on a variety of factors, including day of the month, day of the week, and a user-defined billing cycle duration. See: Billing Cycle Extension.
See: Billing Cycles.
Cost-to-Cost Revenue Accrual: Change Budget Type
You can now specify which cost budget type you want to use as input to the cost-to-cost revenue calculation. For example, you may want to use the forecast cost budget instead of the approved cost budget. You specify the cost budget type for cost-to-cost revenue calculation when you define the cost-to-cost billing extension.
See: Billing Extensions and Revenue Generation Process.
Percent Complete Revenue Accrual and Invoice Generation
You can enter the percent complete value that will drive the revenue accrual or draft invoice calculation. You can enter percent complete values manually in Oracle Projects or interface them from project management systems. Oracle Projects supports percent complete revenue and invoicing at the funding level. You use the billing extension to implement this feature.
See: Revenue Accrual and Invoice Generation Based on Percent Complete.
Cost Accrual in Revenue Generation
With Cost Accrual, you charge all costs to a cost WIP account and accrue costs when you generate revenue. Oracle Projects provides a case study to illustrate how to implement this feature.
See: Revenue-Based Cost Accrual.
Changes to Billing Extensions
The following changes have been made to the Billing Extensions:
- When you set up a billing extensions, you can now define which cost and/or revenue budget type to use as input.
- When creating an automatic event via billing extensions, you can store audit amounts in new audit columns in the event table.
- To conform to Oracle Applications API coding standards, the package pb_public has been renamed pa_billing_pub.
- The public procedure get_budget_amount has been modified to accept budget type code information, so that the billing extension can determine which budget type to use. If a budget type code is not passed to the get_budget_amount procedure, the budget type defaults from the billing extension setup table.
- The public procedures get_budget_amount, insert_event, and insert_message have been modified to accept additional parameters.
- The Generate Draft Revenue and Generate Draft Invoice processes have been modified to add new calling places.
See: Billing Extensions.
Automatic Invoice Approve/Release Extension
Use this extension to include automatic approval and invoice release in the Generate Draft Invoice process.
See: Automatic Invoice Approve/Release Extension.
AR Transaction Type Extension
Use this extension to determine the AR transaction type when you run the Transfer Invoices to Oracle Receivables process.
See: AR Transaction Type Extension.
Multiple Reporting Currencies
The Multiple Reporting Currencies (MRC) feature allows you to report and maintain accounting records at the transaction level in more than one functional currency. You can define one or more reporting sets of books in addition to your primary set of books. In your reporting sets of books, you maintain records in a functional currency other than your primary functional currency. You can set up as many reporting sets of books as you need, and associate them with a primary set of books.
Typically, you use MRC in the following situations:
- You operate in a country with an unstable currency and you need to concurrently report your business in a hard currency.
- Your company is multinational, and you need to report financial information in a common functional currency other than that of the transaction or your primary functional currency.
- You operate in a country that is part of the European Monetary Union (EMU), and you want to concurrently report in Euro in preparation for the single European currency.
Oracle Projects supports MRC for all accounted amounts in:
Oracle Projects provides two additional responsibilities related to MRC. If you log into Oracle Projects using either of these responsibilities, you will not have access to all of the standard Oracle Projects windows, functions, reports, and processes. In addition, you must perform certain actions separately in your primary and reporting currencies.
See: Multiple Reporting Currencies in Oracle Applications.
Ability to Set the PA Reporting Period to a Prior Period
This feature was included in Oracle Projects Release 10SC Production 16.1 and is documented in Release 11.
You can set the PA reporting period to a period earlier than the current PA reporting period. You should do this carefully and typically only if you have incorrectly advanced the reporting period. Setting the PA reporting to a prior period may result in a large volume of additional processing if the change requires you to refresh the project summary amounts for most of your projects.
When you set the PA reporting period to an earlier period, the system checks to see if any projects have been summarized through a PA period later than the new PA reporting period. If so, Oracle Projects displays a message indicating that you need to run the Refresh Project Summary Amounts process. You have the option to cancel or proceed with the change.
See: Setting the PA Reporting Period and Summarization Period Exceptions.
Multi-Byte Support
Oracle Projects now supports multi-byte character sets to support implementation in foreign languages.
Descriptive Flexfields on Setup Entities
Oracle Projects had added descriptive flexfields to many setup entities to facilitate the configuration of your implementation data for reporting and AutoAccounting. You can use these descriptive flexfield attributes to store values used in AutoAccounting instead of maintaining lookup sets for the entries. These entities include:
- Expenditure types (available in Production 16.1)
- Non-labor resource organizations
New AutoAccounting Parameters
Oracle Projects has added a new parameter for expenditure ID to the following AutoAccounting functions:
- Burden Cost Revenue Account
- Expense Report Revenue Account
- Inventory Revenue Account
- Labor Revenue Borrowed Account
- Labor Revenue Lent Account
- Miscellaneous Transaction Revenue Account
- Revenue and Invoice Accounts
- Supplier Invoice Revenue Account
- Usage Revenue Borrowed Account
- Usage Revenue Lent Account
- Work in Process Revenue Account
Oracle Projects has added a new parameter for event number to the following AutoAccounting function:
You can use the new event parameters to read various attributes about an event by defining an AutoAccounting SQL rule using the following example:
SELECT ...
FROM pa_events e
WHERE e.project_id=:1
AND nvl(e.task_id,-1)=nvl(:2,-1)
AND e.event_num=:3
The example above uses the following rule parameters:
1. Project ID
2. Event Task ID
3. Event Number
Miscellaneous Enhancements
- Enhanced GL Audit Reports. Oracle Projects has added the following parameters to the GL Cost and Revenue Interface Audit Reports:
- Event Option Removed from Project Setup. The Events option has been removed from the list of options in the Projects window. You must now enter events using the Events window.
- Employee Billing Titles Use the Title Field. Oracle Projects now uses the Title field in the employee assignments for employee billing titles. This is used in place of the first descriptive flexfield attribute on the employee assignment.
If you have set up employee billing titles using the first descriptive flexfield, you must move these values to the Title field. The Oracle Applications Upgrade Manual includes a post-upgrade step to perform this change.
- Overtime Calculation Program Written in Oracle Reports and PL/SQL. Oracle Projects has converted the Overtime Calculation program from Oracle RPT to Oracle Reports and PL/SQL. If you used the Overtime Calculation program, you must move your custom logic to PL/SQL. The Oracle Applications Upgrade Manual includes a post-upgrade step to perform this change.