This chapter covers the following topics:
You can import existing contracts from external systems into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management using Oracle's open interface tables functionality. This process requires that you upload your contract information into Oracle's five open interface tables, using any standard import utility, such as SQL*Loader, at which time you can import information from those tables into the Leasing and Finance Management tables based on user-defined parameters.
The Oracle open interface tables used to import contracts are:
OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE
OKL_LINES_INTERFACE
OKL_TERMS_INTERFACE
OKL_PAYMENTS_INTERFACE
OKL_PARTY_ROLES_INTERFACE
Note: You must include the legacy contract number for all data you are uploading to the open interface tables. This number must be stored in the "CONTRACT_NUMBER_OLD" column of each of the five tables and serves as the primary key. You can add a new contract number in the "CONTRACT_NUMBER" column of the OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE, or if you leave it blank, Oracle Leasing and Finance Management creates a new one during the import process.
After you have uploaded your data to these tables, you can import multiple contracts with one submission, or you can import individual contracts one at a time. In the case of multiple contract importing, you can determine which contracts to import by referencing a batch number, by effective dates, or by customer name.
Two main features of this import functionality are the ability to import the contract into a predetermined contract status, such as Booked or Complete, automatically, and the ability to reference a contract template to provide additional contract information for imported contracts.
In both cases, values must be entered into specific columns in the OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE table to enable the contract import function. There are several contract statuses that you can import a contract with, including new, passed, complete, and booked. Oracle Leasing and Finance Management's import function reads the status value that you enter in the "IMPORT_REQUEST_STAGE" column, and processes the contract through to that stage. Depending upon the status, this process may include running validation checks against the contract, generating streams and yields, activating an approval process, creating journal entries, and booking the contract.
Importing a contract with an import status of Complete, or Booked is a two-step import process because these statuses require stream generation through a third-party lease price modeling software. Basically, all imported contracts carry a import status of NEW when they are imported. For contracts that carry the NEW or PASSED contract status after they are imported into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management, the import status changes to INTERFACED.
For contracts requiring stream generation, when they are imported and sent into the pricing engine for stream generation they receive an import status of Interfaced. After streams are generated, the import process picks the contract up again, runs the necessary processes, and assigns an import status of Final if the process is successfully completed.
To reference a template contract, you must input the template contract number in the "TEMPLATE_NUMBER" column of the OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE table. This feature allows you to copy contract header and terms and conditions from a template onto an imported contract. This reference populates only those fields that do not already have information from the original legacy contract.
The following two processes are covered in this section:
Import Contracts into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management
Track Contract Import Request Status
For more information on using Oracle open interface tables, see the Oracle Financials Open Interfaces Reference manual.
After you have uploaded all your legacy data to the Oracle open interface tables, you can begin importing the contracts into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management. You can import contracts in a number of ways, such as referencing a batch number, by start and end dates, by contract number, or by customer.
Contract Open Interface supports the creation of a contract with multiple tax books on the asset. For this, line records need to be created in the OKL_LINES_INTERFACE table with the same asset number and corporate book information for each asset tax book.
Two main features of this import functionality are the ability to import the contract automatically into a predetermined contract status, such as Booked or Complete, and to reference a contract template to provide additional contract information for imported contracts.
You must upload the contract data that you want to import into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management into the Oracle open interface tables.
Perform the following steps in the Schedule Request page:
Select Lease Contract Open Interface as the program name.
Select the operating unit.
Note: The list of values includes operating units assigned to the MO: Security profile.
Note: The selected operating unit restricts the valid list of values in applicable fields.
Click Next to add parameters.
If you are importing contracts by a batch, enter the batch number in the Batch field.
If you intend to import contracts by batch, you must include the batch number in the correct column in the OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE table for each contract you want to include in the batch.
Alternatively, if you want to import a specific contract, enter the legacy contract number in the Contract Number field.
This contract number must be in the "CONTRACT_NUMBER_OLD" column for the contract in the OKL_HEADER_INTERFACE table.
If you are importing contracts containing a particular start date, enter the dates Contract Start Date From and optionally Contract Start Date To for the contracts you want to import.
If you want to import only contracts that start on a particular day, enter the same date for both Contract Start Date From and Contract Start Date To.
If you leave the Contract Start Date To field blank, then you have chosen to import all contracts that begin on or after the date Contract Start Date From.
If you want to import contracts for a particular customer only, then select the name of the customer whose contracts you want to import.
Click Next to add applicable details.
Click Submit to run this import request.
Clicking Submit runs the Contract Import (Lease Contract Open Interface) concurrent program. A request ID appears after you click Submit. You can use this reference number to track the progress of your request, so it is recommended you record it for later use.
Optional
You can track the progress of your contract import request through the View option using the concurrent program request function. In order to perform this task, you must know the Request ID of your contract import request at the time you submitted the request.
This functionality allows you to:
Track the progress of two-step contract imports (for statuses such as Completed, Activated, and Booked).
Ensure that all the contracts in a specific request have successfully uploaded to Oracle Leasing and Finance Management.
By viewing your concurrent program request, you can see the results of the various import steps, including validation checks, stream generation and final booking. You can also view the total number of contracts that are successfully uploaded during the request. If there are any errors against any of the contracts that you are importing during this process, you can review them using the "View Output" option. You can then make any necessary changes to the data in the interface tables that might have generated an error.
If an error occurs during import, the import status shows Error as the status. Only those contracts that generate an error do not import properly. The View Output file records the number of successfully imported contracts.
You must run the Lease Contract Open Interface concurrent program
Perform the following steps in the Requests page:
Select the applicable view option in the View field.
Click the Details icon for the request that you want to view in the Requests Summary table.
The Request details page opens displaying relevant details about the request including status, phase, requester, and priority.
Click the View Log button to see the results of the request.
This log displays information about all the contracts that you imported into Oracle Leasing and Finance Management, the number of contracts successfully uploaded, and details on the processes performed on each of the contracts. If there is an error in the request, you can search for the error message on this form to see which (if any) contracts are affected.