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Warning: The Accounting Flexfield has several special requirements and limitations for its definition. Follow these recommendations carefully, since an incorrectly-defined Accounting Flexfield will adversely affect your chart of accounts, and application features such as Mass Allocations.

   To define your account structure:

1. Define your Accounting Flexfield value sets using the Define Value Set form. General Ledger does not support the use of predefined value sets with the Accounting Flexfield.

• You must specify a format type of Char for the segment value format type. If you want to use numbers, choose Char and allow alphanumerics. The Accounting Flexfield does not support format types other than Char.

Attention: The Accounting Flexfield does not support value set format types other than Char (the Accounting Flexfield uses special "T" values for summary templates).

• We recommend that you set Right-justify Zero-fill Numbers to Yes for value sets you use with the Accounting Flexfield.

• Value sets for the Accounting Flexfield must be independent, table, or dependent-type value sets. Do not use value sets with a validation type of None, Pair, or Special for the Accounting Flexfield.

• Do not specify a hidden ID column for any value set used with the Accounting Flexfield.

• You should not use a WHERE clause and/or ORDER BY clause for a table validated value set you intend to use with the Accounting Flexfield.

• We recommend that you allow parent values for segments in your Accounting Flexfield. Parent values are used to create summary accounts and to increase the productivity of General Ledger.

2. Set the Allow Dynamic Inserts option. If you want to allow adding new accounts automatically as you enter them in transactions, including when you define a set of books, set this option set to Yes. To require users to define all accounts manually, set this option to No.

Attention: If you are defining an Accounting Flexfield for Oracle Projects, you must define your segments with the Allow Dynamic Inserts option set to Yes. Refer to the Oracle Projects User's Guide for further suggestions on using the Accounting Flexfield with Oracle Projects.

3. Define your Accounting Flexfield segments. You can define up to 30 segments for your account structure. You must define at least two segments for your account structure, one for the balancing segment and one for the natural account segment (the two required flexfield qualifiers).

• When specifying the column you want to use for your Accounting Flexfield segment, do not use any columns other than those named SEGMENT1 through SEGMENT30. Since the names of these columns are embedded in the Oracle Applications products, using other columns may adversely affect your application features such as summarization.

• Enter the segment number for this segment. The Accounting Flexfield requires consecutive segment numbers beginning with 1 (such as 1, 2, 3, ...).

• Only Oracle General Ledger applications use the Indexed field for the Optimization feature. Enter Yes if you want the database column in the combinations table used to store this key segment to have a single-column index. You should create indexes on segments you expect to have many distinct values (instead of just a few distinct values).

• You must enter a value set in the Value Set field for each segment of the Accounting Flexfield. Value sets for the Accounting Flexfield must be independent, table, or dependent-type value sets. Do not use value sets with a validation type of None for the Accounting Flexfield.

• You must check the Required check box for each segment.

• We recommend that you set the Description Size for each of your Accounting Flexfield segments to 30 or less so that your flexfield pop-up window does not scroll horizontally.

• You must check the Display check box for each segment.

• The segment you use as a balancing segment must be an independent segment (it cannot use a dependent value set).

4. Define your flexfield qualifiers for your Accounting Flexfield. Oracle Applications use flexfield qualifiers to identify certain segments in your Accounting Flexfield. You specify your flexfield qualifier values in the Qualifiers zone of the Define Key Flexfield Segments form.

• If you are using globalization features, you may have additional segment qualifiers, such as "Reconciliation," which are created in post-installation steps. See: Oracle Applications Localizations Post-Install Manual.

5. Define the natural account segment. A natural account segment contains values representing account types, such as cash, accounts receivable, product revenue and salary expense. Enter Yes or No to indicate whether the segment you are defining is your natural account segment. You define only one natural account segment in your account.

6. Define the balancing segment. General Ledger uses your balancing segment to ensure that all journals balance for each value of your balancing segment. General Ledger also use your balancing segment to ensure that entries that impact more than one balancing segment use the appropriate intercompany or interfund accounting.

Indicate whether the segment you are defining is a balancing segment. You can define only one balancing segment for an account. The segment you use as a balancing segment must be an independent segment (it cannot use a dependent value set). Most users of General Ledger designate company/organization or fund as their balancing segment.

7. Define the Cost Center segment. Cost centers indicate functional areas of your organization, such as Accounting, Facilities, Shipping, and so on. Enter Yes or No to indicate whether the segment you are defining is a Cost Center segment.

Oracle Assets and Oracle Projects require you to qualify a segment as cost center in your account.

8. Define dependent segments to create context-sensitive segments. Context-sensitive segment values can have one meaning when combined with a particular segment value, and have a different meaning when combined with a different segment value.

You can define more than one dependent segment for an independent segment. You can also define more than one independent segment to have different dependent segments. You cannot, however, define a dependent segment for any segment with validation type other than Independent nor have multiple levels of dependency for the same segment.

9. Define your Accounting Flexfield segment values. Be sure to enter parent, rollup group and level information, and hierarchy details, if appropriate, for your segment values. Be sure you do not assign overlapping ranges of child values to the same parent value. You use rollup groups to create summary accounts.

Decide your segment hierarchy before you create parent and child segment values. You cannot change a child value to a parent at a later time.

10. Enter Accounting Flexfield segment value qualifiers. Segment value qualifiers hold extra information about individual Accounting Flexfield segment values.

11. Define cross-validation rules to control the combinations of values you use to create accounts. Refer to the Designing Your Cross-Validation Rules essay for suggestions on designing your Accounting Flexfield cross-validation rules.

12. Define Flexfield security rules to restrict entry and query access for specific segment values or ranges of segment values by responsibility for accounts. Security rules restrict query access to segment values for Account Inquiries, Funds Available inquiries, and Summary Account Inquiries. When you restrict access, you cannot query any combination that contains a secure value.

See Also

Defining Accounts

Defining Summary Accounts

Designing Your Accounting Flexfield

Determining Your Account Needs

Designing Your Account Segments

Defining Accounting Flexfield Segment Qualifiers

Defining Value Sets

Defining Key Flexfield Segments

Cross-Validation Rules