Oracle Fusion Applications Financials Implementation Guide

Validations are rules that ensure that transactions are valid before they are printed or submitted electronically to payment systems. You use validations to ensure that disbursement transactions, such as invoices, payments, and payment files meet specific conditions before they can be paid. You can assign validations to payment methods and payment formats. A validation can be executed at the document payable, payment, or payment file level.

In payment processing, it is critical that payment files sent to payment systems and financial institutions are valid and correctly formatted. If this is not done, the payment process is slowed, which results in additional time and cost due to problem resolution. Oracle Fusion Payments helps you achieve straight-through processing by ensuring that payment-related details are valid. To assign validations, you can choose from the following options:

The following table shows the objects you can validate and when validations are executed for the applicable setup.

Assigning Validations

You assign a validation to whichever object drives the requirement for validation. For example, if the proprietary format your bank uses requires that you limit the number of characters in a specific field, then you can assign that validation directly to the bank format. By doing this, you ensure that the validation is enforced only when applicable. However, if you wish to enforce a general validation that is not specific to the payment method or format, you can consider timing in your decision between assigning it to the payment method or to the format.

Payments always validates as early as possible for a given object and setup. Document payable validations that are associated with payment methods are enforced earlier in the process than those associated with formats. If you want validation failures to be handled by the same person who is entering the invoice, you can opt to associate the validation with the payment method. This is ideal for business processes where each person has full ownership of the items entered. However, if you want focused invoice entry, while validation failures are handled centrally by a specialist or a more knowledgeable user, you can opt to associate the validation with the format. This is ideal for some shared service centers.

Creating User-Defined Validations

A user-defined validation explicitly specifies the object to which the validation applies:

User-defined validations are basic validations that correspond to simple operations. These validations can be used as components, or building blocks, to build more complex validations. They enable you to validate, for example, the following conditions:

Choosing From a Predefined Library of Validations

Payments provides a library of predefined validations. You can associate these predefined validations with any payment method or payment file format you create. Many of the payment formats provided by Oracle have predefined validations associated with them by default.

Predefined validations are groups of individual validations that go together for a specific purpose. Many of the predefined validations that you can associate with payment formats are country-specific. Predefined validations cannot be modified, although some have parameters you can set to define specific values.

Formats: Explained

In Oracle Fusion Payments, formatting is the placement of data in a file by using a template, or format, that contains prescribed formatting attributes, such as data location, font type, and font size. Financial institutions, payment systems, and countries have specific electronic formatting requirements for payment files and settlement batches. Each format in Payments corresponds to one Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (Oracle BI Publisher) template. Payments uses Oracle BI Publisher templates to format funds capture and funds disbursement transactions according to the formatting requirements of specific financial institutions and payment systems.

The purpose of setting up formats is to associate them with Oracle BI Publisher templates to correctly format funds capture and disbursement transactions and to enable you to easily manage the formats. You can use existing Oracle BI Publisher templates or modify them with minimal effort by using a standard text editor, such as Microsoft Word. For example, when a payment system or financial institution requires a change to its payment file format, the change can be made quickly by modifying the appropriate Oracle BI Publisher template.

Payments has given special consideration to the complexity of creating fixed position and delimited formats. Oracle BI Publisher's eText feature is used for these format types. eText allows the format layout to be presented in an understandable tabular structure.

Formats are associated with specific Oracle BI Publisher templates in the Create Format page and can also be assigned payment validation sets, whether predefined or user-defined, to validate transactions that use that format. Multiple types of formats can be used for a single payment system. Examples of format types include disbursement payment file formats and funds capture settlement formats.

Object	Payment Method-Driven Validations are Enforced When...	Payment File Format-Driven Validations are Enforced When...
Document Payable	The invoice is saved in the source product. The invoice installment is selected for payment.	The invoice installment is selected for payment.
Payment	The payment is created by building related documents payable together.	The payment is created by building related documents payable together.
Payment File	Not applicable.	The payment file is created.

Note

Before you can set up formats, you must set up the corresponding templates in Oracle BI Publisher.

Transmission Protocol: Explained

A transmission protocol is a convention used by computers to communicate with each other across a network. To transmit data such as a payment file or settlement batch from Oracle Fusion Payments to an external payment system, the implementer must define the transmission protocols that the payment system is capable of receiving.

Payments offers industry-standard transmission protocols, such as FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and AS2, predefined. They are comprised of the following:

While the transmission protocol defines which parameters are expected in the communication, the transmission configuration defines what value will be supplied for each parameter, for a given payment system. A specific transmission configuration and a specific payment system are associated with each other within the funds capture process profile for funds capture or within the payment process profile for disbursement.

Transmission Configuration: Explained

A transmission configuration defines a value for each parameter in a transmission protocol. The values in a transmission configuration are specific to one payment system or financial institution.

For example, a transmission protocol may require parameters, a Socket IP Address, and a Socket Port Number. Your payment system that accepts that protocol will give you the values that it expects to receive for those parameters. Those values are set up in the Socket IP Address and Socket Port Number fields in the transmission configuration. The transmission configuration is then assigned to the payment system within the funds capture process profile for funds capture or within the payment process profile for disbursement.

You can set up transmission configurations in the Create Transmission Configuration page to enable electronic connectivity with payment systems by specifying parameter values.

Payment System: Explained

A payment system is an external organization that provides financial settlement services. The payment system can be the bank at which your company has its bank accounts or it can be a third-party processor or gateway that connects companies and financial networks. Deploying companies typically choose payment systems to process their funds capture settlements and, sometimes, their electronic disbursement payment files. Payment systems are not required for printed disbursement payments, but may be required for related services, such as positive pay or other reporting.

The purpose of setting up payment systems is to define the external organizations that Oracle Fusion Payments collaborates with to process your funds capture and disbursement transactions.

When creating a payment system on the Create Payment System page, you perform the following actions:

Payment System Account: Explained

A payment system account is the representation of the relationship between the payment system and your company. It is an account identifier comprised of payment system-provided values for parameters that the payment system requires for each transaction or settlement batch. Specific values for settings are stored in the payment system account, which includes deploying company identifiers. If your company has multiple relationships with a payment system, then there will be multiple payment system accounts.

Internal Payees

You can set up routing rules that are assigned to an internal payee, which specify which payment system account a transaction will be transmitted to, based on the values of various attributes of that transaction. If you do not need granular routing rules for determining which payment system account is the right one for a transaction, or if you want a fallback value should none of the routing rules apply, you can set up one default payment system account on each internal payee for each payment method.

Funds Capture Process Profiles

The funds capture process profile tells Oracle Fusion Payments how to process a funds capture transaction, including how to communicate with the payment system. A funds capture process profile is specific to one payment system and its payment system accounts. For each payment system account that is enabled on the funds capture process profile, you select up to three transmission configurations, one each for authorization, settlement, and acknowledgment. The payment system tells Payments where to send the transaction, the payment system account tells Payments how to identify itself to the payment system, and the transmission configurations tell Payments how to transmit the transaction to the payment system.

Payment Process Profiles

The payment process profile tells Payments how to process a disbursement transaction, including, in the case where a payment file or positive pay file will be electronically transmitted, how to communicate with the payment system. When electronic transmission is required, a payment process profile is specific to one payment system and its payment system accounts. For each payment system account that is enabled on the payment process profile, you select a transmission configuration. The payment system tells Payments where to send the payment file or positive pay file, the payment system account tells Payments how to identify itself to the payment system, and the transmission configuration tells Payments how to transmit the file to the payment system.

FAQs for Configure Payment System Connectivity

What's a format type?

A format type is a categorization that indicates what a format is used for by Oracle Fusion Payments.

Payments offers an extensive library of payment formats of various format types. However, not all format types have predefined formats. When you create a new format, you assign it a format type, so that Payments knows where the format is intended to be used.

26 Configure Payment System Connectivity

Validations: Critical Choices