78 Understand Settlements across Environments

This chapter contains the topic:

Section 78.1, "About Settlements across Environments."

Companies in one computing environment sometimes need to create, transmit, and reconcile intercompany transactions for companies in other computing environments.

78.1 About Settlements across Environments

These environments might reside in the same computer system or they might reside in separate computer systems. The computer systems might be in the same location or across the world from each other.

For example, Company 1 needs to charge Company 2 for travel performed on behalf of Company 2.

Company	Account Description	Debit	Credit
2	Expenses	750*
1	Accounts Payable		750
1	Due from 00002 A	750
2	Due to 00001 A		750*

Note:

* Transactions that originate in the Company 00001 environment but belong to the Company 00002 environment.

The General Accounting system cannot make the intercompany settlement directly between Company 00001 and Company 00002, because they reside in different computing environments.

Intercompany settlements across environments require some special setup and processing steps, consisting of:

Setting up cross-environment intercompany settlements
Sending intercompany settlements to other environments
Receiving intercompany settlements from other environments
Reconciling cross-environment intercompany settlements

To create and process intercompany settlements across environments and the source and target companies are using different currencies, you must turn on the multiple currency function for each environment.

In addition, you must use one of the detail methods of intercompany settlements. You cannot use the hub method of intercompany settlements when you need to create and process intercompany settlements that cross environments.

Two types of environments are involved in these intercompany settlements, as follows:

Source environment, where the intercompany settlements originate. A source environment might consist of one or more source companies.
Target environment, which receives the journal entries for intercompany settlements. A target environment might consist of one or more target companies.

The following illustrates the two environments:

Figure 78-1 Source and Target Environments

Description of "Figure 78-1 Source and Target Environments"

78.1.1 What Are the Source Company Requirements?

To create data for target environments, the source company must:

Identify and maintain in the source computing environment a portion of the chart of accounts for each target company
Set up identifiers such as company number and business units

When the source company completes this setup, the General Accounting system will create journal entries for target environments as a part of normal processing. Periodically, the source company does the following:

Copies the settlement entries into a Journal Entry Transaction - Batch Input table (F0911Z1)
Sends the F0911Z1 table to the target company
Receives an Intercompany Reconciliation table from the target company
Reconciles the source data to the target data

78.1.2 What Are the Target Company Requirements?

The target company must:

Run the Initial Receiving program to accept the data sent by the source company
Run the Batch Journal Entry Processing program
Post the journal entries
Periodically send the Intercompany Reconciliation table to the source company

To protect data integrity, the target company should not change intercompany settlements that were received from another environment. Changes by the target company would result in mismatches during reconciliation. If a change is required, the source company should make the change as a new intercompany settlement.

78.1.3 What Happens with Duplicate Numbers?

The possibility exists that company or business unit numbers might be the same in more than one environment. The source environment must distinguish between companies or business units with the same number so that intercompany settlements reference the correct company or business unit.

You cannot set up two companies or business units with the same numbers in one environment. You can, however, use an alias for duplicate numbers.

For example, a source company in Environment 1 (Company 00001) sends intercompany settlements to target companies in Environments 2, 3, and 4. Each target environment has a Company 00002 defined in JD Edwards World applications.

In the source environment, you can identify only one Company 00002 in the Company Constants table (F0010) and in the address book. Therefore, Company 00001 might set up the following in the source environment:

Company 00202 for Environment 2
Company 00203 for Environment 3
Company 00204 for Environment 4

In setting up Companies 00202, 00203, and 00204, Company 00001 also enters identifiers for the target information that will be used when the source environment sends them to the target environments.

The following illustrates how a source environment might set up identifiers for companies in target environments:

Figure 78-2 Identifier Setup for Companies in Target Environments

Description of "Figure 78-2 Identifier Setup for Companies in Target Environments"

78.1.4 How Are Intercompany Settlements across Environments Reconciled?

As you process intercompany settlements in the source and target environments, the source and target systems keep track of processing by updating a Cross-Environment Status field. The source system uses this field to reconcile target system processing to source data records.