Integration of Commitment Control with Third-Party Applications

This section discusses loading budgets from third-party applications.

Commitment Control enables you to receive budget entries and budget checks source transactions from third-party applications.

If you formulate budgets in a third-party application, you can interface the budget information to General Ledger and maintain the budget information directly in the Commitment Control ledger. You must first set up Commitment Control ledger groups and budget definitions for the budget journals.

There are two methods to import budgets to Commitment Control from third-party applications:

  • Use the Commitment Control Budget Update Enterprise Integration Point to receive Commitment Control journals and update budgets.

  • Use the Commitment Control Budget Journal Flat File Import process to import budget data directly from flat files.

Using the Commitment Control Budget Update IP

To use this IP, you must activate the COMMIT_CNTRL_BUDGET_UPDATE application message and it's related integration objects. Please see General Ledger "Integrating and Transferring Information Among Applications" for more details.

The IP receives Commitment Control journals into the PS_KK_BUDGET_HDR and PS_KK_BUDGET_LN tables and automatically runs the Commitment Control Posting process (FS_BP).

Prepare your budget data from the third party system as budget journals and send them to Commitment Control as asynchronous messages using this IP. Just as with any application messages, you can monitor the messaging flow using the Integration Broker Message Monitor, and verify the budget journal posting process from the Process Monitor.

Using a Flat File to Update Budgets

If your external system is not capable of generating application messages to PeopleSoft, you can prepare your budget data in flat files and import the data using the Commitment Control Budget Journal Flat File Import process.

Commitment Control enables you to receive source transactions from a third-party application and to budget check them and update the control budget amount for the transactions using the Budget Processor. You use the Budget Check Transaction IP to subscribe to transaction data received from third-party application and to publish the results back to the originating application.

The Budget Check Transaction IP updates the PS_COMCNTL_TRN_HDR and PS_COMCNTL_TRN_LN tables with the transaction data. It also updates the KK_GEN_TRN_AET table and then uses this information to run the Budget Processor automatically. The Budget Processor checks these transactions as it would any other source transactions and does the following:

  • Updates the budget amount for valid transactions, including transactions with warning exceptions.

  • Generates error exceptions for transactions that fail budget checking.

The IP then publishes a message back to the third-party application to indicate whether the transaction failed or passed budget checking. The third-party application can use the information in the message to restrict or allow further processing of the transaction.

You can view the third-party transaction on the Generic Transaction Entry page. You can override either the entire third-party transaction or individual budgets from the Generic Transaction exceptions component. Alternatively, you can change the source transaction in the third-party application and publish the message again.

If the third-party application re-sends the same transaction, the Budget Processor replaces the original activity log entries with new entries that reflect the new information and updates the budget as long as the new document has the same ID numbers.

If you use the Budget Check Transaction IP, you can use workflow notification to send email to users of the third-party system when there are error and warning exceptions. The notification process can also send email to users when the available amount in the budget reaches a certain percentage. These users must have a PeopleSoft user profile.

As with any application messages, you can monitor the message publish and subscription using the Integration Broker Message Monitor. You can also verify the budget processor processing details from the Process Monitor.

Setup for Budget-Checking Third-Party Transactions

To use the Budget Check Transaction IP, you must activate the COMMIT_CNTRL_TRAN_CHECK_UPDATE application message and its related integration objects. Please see General Ledger "Integrating and Transferring Information Among Applications" for more details.

You have two options when Commitment Control receives a flat file from a third-party system:

  • Insert a middleware layer that converts the file to a message so that Commitment Control can subscribe to the message.

  • Convert the file to a message using PeopleTools.

    In this case, define a File Object using Application Designer to map the field columns in your file to the fields in the record. You can then run the Inbound Flat File utility to convert the file into a message.

If you use Journal Generator (FS_JGEN) to process a third-party transaction that has already been budget-checked using the Budget Check Transaction IP, you should select Skip Commitment Control in GL on the Accounting Entry Definition page for third-party accounting entries so that the Journal Edit process does not budget-check these accounting entries again.

If a third-party transaction references a PeopleSoft transaction (for example a third-party voucher transaction references a PeopleSoft purchase order transaction), you may need to configure the delivered source transaction definition and the corresponding tables that Oracle provides for third-party integration to ensure that the Budget Processor liquidates all pre-encumbrances and encumbrances.

Budget Checking Third-Party Journals Without Using the Budget Check Transaction IP

You can also budget-check third-party transactions at the journal level without using the Budget Check Transaction IP. Use the Journal Generator (FS_JGEN) and the standard third-party generic accounting entry table to create General Ledger journals from your accounting entries. Deselect the Skip Commitment Control in GL check box on the Accounting Entry Definition page for the definition that you use for third-party transactions, so that General Ledger budget checks the journals before you post them.

You can either call the Budget Processor when you run Journal Generator by selecting Budget Check on the Journal Generator Request page, call Budget Processor when you run Journal Edit, or you can run it separately by running the Budget Processor from the Budget Check Journals page in General Ledger.