Understanding Pending Item Entry

This topic provides an overview of pending item entry and discusses:

  • Billing interfaces.

  • PeopleSoft Purchasing and PeopleSoft Order Management interfaces.

  • Online pending item entry.

  • Overdue charges groups.

  • Accounting entry creation.

  • PeopleSoft Project Costing integration.

You enter pending items into the system in one of two ways:

  • Import them using an interface.

  • Enter them manually.

After pending items are entered in the system, use the Receivables Update Application Engine process (ARUPDATE) to post them. The process creates the items, generates accounting entries, updates item activity, and updates the customer balance. If errors occur during posting, the process does not post the pending items, and you use the pending item error correction pages to correct the errors.

Note: In a production environment, you can create accounting entries online before running the Receivables Update process to verify that your setup creates the correct accounting entries.

PeopleSoft Receivables distinguishes between items (posted receivables) and pending items (information that has been entered into or created by the system but has not yet been posted).

PeopleSoft Receivables follows the standard of bundling pending items into groups rather than handling them individually. In other systems, a group of pending items is sometimes called a batch. To avoid confusion, the term group is used in the PeopleSoft system, and the term background refers to offline processes. To each group of pending items, the system assigns a group ID that remains with the group even after it is posted. The system processes pending items in groups. Keep track of the group ID throughout the cycle so that you have it when you want to view progress or check the status of a pending item.

You enter most pending items using a billing interface. Although external pending item entry occurs in the background, the information that appears on the online pages enables you to understand how the process works.

The procedure that you use to bring in pending items must include background processing and populating database tables.

When you enter pending items through a billing interface, the system edits external groups and identifies errors when you run the Receivables Update process.

If you use PeopleSoft Billing, you use the Load AR Pending Items Application Engine process (BILDAR01) to integrate these items into PeopleSoft Receivables. If you use a third-party billing system, you must develop an interface to populate the pending item tables.

While developing and testing the interface, you may find that some errors appear consistently throughout an entire group. If you encounter a data problem, you can delete the group, adjust the interface process, interface the group again, and run the Receivables Update process again to check for errors. If the error results from your setup, you can adjust your control tables and set the group for posting again.

After the pending items are in the system, you can view or adjust information as needed. The pages that you use to fix errors in external pending item groups are the same as the pages used to enter pending items online.

If you create claims for vendor rebates in PeopleSoft Purchasing or claimbacks in PeopleSoft Order Management, use the Claim Settlement Process for AR process (PO_CLMSTL_AR) to interface the items to PeopleSoft Receivables after you approve the claims on the claims management workbench. The items enter PeopleSoft Receivables as an external group.

Vendor rebates occur when your organization is a buyer and the seller owes you money for the rebate. A rebate claim becomes a debit in PeopleSoft Receivables and a reversal rebate claim becomes a credit. Reversal claims have the same item ID as the original claim.

Claimbacks occur when your organization has an agreement with the manufacturer or supplier that is based on an order being shipped to the consumer by a contractor. For example, you purchase a door from a manufacturer for 100.00 EUR, and you need to sell it to a contractor for 90.00 EUR because the manufacturer also sells doors directly to the contractor for 90.00 EUR. The 10.00 EUR difference is the amount for the claimback that you send to the manufacturer.

The Claim Settlement Process for AR process updates the pending item tables with the item information and the distribution lines. PeopleSoft Purchasing and PeopleSoft Order Management define the ChartField values for the user-defined distribution line. They use the receivables (AR) distribution code assigned to the receivables business unit that is associated with the rebate agreement or the claimback contract to determine the ChartFields for the AR line.

When you run the Receivables Update process, it checks for errors, creates the item, and posts the item distribution lines. When you run the Journal Generator process (FS_JGEN), the process generates the journals for the distribution lines.

If errors occur, use the pages for external pending item groups to correct them. While developing and testing the interface, you may find some errors that appear consistently throughout an entire group. If you encounter a data problem, you can delete the group, adjust the interface process, interface the group again, and run the Receivables Update process again to check for errors. If the error results from your setup, you can adjust your control tables and set the group for posting again.

Vendor rebate claims use the vendor rebate (R) group type and claimbacks use the claimback (C) group type. The item ID is the same as the claim ID in PeopleSoft Purchasing or PeopleSoft Order Management.

You apply payments to the rebate claim and claimback items using the payment worksheet. However, after you post the payment group by running the Receivables Update process, you must run the AR Rebate Notification process (AR_REBATE) to interface the payment information or any other change to the balance of a claim item to the Claims Incoming Payment staging table (VRBT_CLAIM_PMTI). This enables users to reconcile the payments with the original claims using the claims management workbench. If you receive a reversal claim, the Receivables Update process automatically offsets the original claim, because they both have the same item ID.

Note: PeopleSoft Receivables does not generate value-added tax (VAT) distribution lines for the claim items that you interface from PeopleSoft Purchasing and PeopleSoft Order Management using the Claim Settlement Process for AR process. For claim items that require VAT distribution lines, you create two entries when you apply a payment or draft to the items on the payment or draft worksheet, or when you offset a claim item on the maintenance worksheet: one for the base item amount and one for the VAT amount. Because you must enter the VAT information manually when you apply a payment, you cannot use Payment Predictor to apply payments for claim items. When you run the Rebate Notification process, it sends the base and VAT amount to the Claims Management Workbench. When you run the Claim Settlement process for AP Application Engine process (PO_CLMSTL_AP) on the claims management workbench, the system uses this information to generate the base and VAT distribution lines when it creates adjustment vouchers or claimback vouchers.

When you enter pending items online, you enter control information, provide pending item information, select payment terms and personnel references, enter VAT information if necessary, create accounting entries if needed, and select an action for the group.

The system validates the data and displays an error message if the data fails one or more system edits. The system prevents two types of user errors:

  • Entering information that is invalid.

  • Leaving a required field blank.

An overdue charges group contains system-generated pending items that represent overdue charges for customers whose payments are late. If you generate overdue charges, the system creates a new group with pending items. You run the Receivables Update process to edit and post the pending items.

If you create overdue charges in an external system, you can also include the pending items in a group type that you define or within a billing group. This type of pending item has an entry type that is mapped to the IT-01 system function.

You can create pending item accounting entries online or during background processing when the Receivables Update process runs. When you run Receivables Update to post pending item groups, the Pending Group Generator Application Engine process (AR_PGG_SERV) creates accounting entries if they are not present. Normally, you run the Receivables Update process to create accounting entries. But if you must review them, create them online.

Note: To create entries for all pending items in the group, use the Group Action page.

The system creates accounting entries based on the templates that you defined during setup. If your setup includes inheritance options, the inheritance options that you selected override the defaults in the templates.

Accounting entries follow the formats defined for item entry types on the Accounting Template page. Each type of transaction—credit memo, debit memo, invoice, and so on—has its own template. The accounting templates can define all transaction accounting entries or only one side of the accounting entries (that is, only the debit side or only the credit side). If a template defines only one side, the system cannot create balanced accounting entries. You must create the accounting entries online and supply the lines needed to make the entries balance. If your templates contain multiple user-defined lines and you create entries online, you can manually allocate the amount of the item across the accounting lines. If you create entries during background processing, the accounting lines cannot be balanced, and you must use the error correction pages to manually allocate the amount across the accounting lines.

If you enabled ChartField combination editing for the business unit on the Receivables Options - General 2 page, the system edits for errors. You cannot post the accounting entries until you fix the error if you selected Recycle in the ChartField Editing group box.

For Create a Debit Memo (IT-01) and Create Credit Memo (IT-02) pending items created online or interfaced from another system, you can modify the ChartField combination for the receivables (AR) line and the user-defined line on the Accounting Entries page for the pending item group. For Overdue Charges (FC-01) items, you can modify only the user-defined line.

See Setting Up Item Entry Types.

Accounting Entries for VAT

For each item in PeopleSoft Receivables, VAT information is stored on VAT lines. The system usually generates one VAT accounting entry for each VAT line on the pending item. If ChartField combinations are the same across multiple accounting entries, the system generates one VAT accounting entry with the amounts summarized.

You establish the VAT ChartField combination at the tax code level on the Value Added Tax Code - Accounting Information page. PeopleSoft Receivables has VAT accounts for each type of VAT liability—an intermediate account and a final account. Within a tax code you can have a different ChartField combination for intermediate VAT and final VAT. You can also define different ChartField combinations for VAT output for discounts and credit adjustments to output VAT.

The term declaration point refers to the time when you report VAT to the tax authorities—at invoice time, at delivery, at the time of payment, or at the accounting date of the transaction. For a declaration point of invoice, delivery, or accounting date, the system creates entries to final VAT during pending item entry. For a declaration point of payment, the system creates entries to intermediate VAT during pending item entry. The default value for the declaration point is determined by values defined in the VAT Defaults Setup page. The system uses the following values, with the shown override capabilities, to determine the default value for the declaration point:

  • VAT entity.

  • PeopleSoft Receivables business unit options (overrides VAT entity).

  • Customer (overrides PeopleSoft Receivables business unit options).

  • Customer location (overrides customer).

Items that come into PeopleSoft Receivables from PeopleSoft Billing are already distributed to PeopleSoft Project Costing.

In PeopleSoft Project Costing, you can enter projects information about receivable items. The projects information enables you to use PeopleSoft Project Costing to track outstanding revenue and to maintain financial control over a project.

When you create the accounting entry templates for items using the Item Entry Type - Accounting Template and Auto Entry Type - Accounting Template pages, you can identify the PeopleSoft Project Costing ChartField values that you want in accounting entries that PeopleSoft Receivables generates. You can override these values on the Accounting Entries page if you create accounting entries online before you post items. The PeopleSoft Project Costing ChartFields are:

  • Project ID

  • Project Costing business unit

  • Activity

  • Source Type

  • Category

  • Subcategory

Note: You can associate different project ChartField combinations with different entry reasons. If you have a lot of project ChartField combinations, Oracle recommends that you leave the project ChartFields on the accounting templates blank and generate the accounting entries online so that you can enter the appropriate ChartFields.

When you post an item in PeopleSoft Receivables, the system marks the item as ready to distribute to PeopleSoft Project Costing. It does this by setting the PC_DISTRIB_STATUS field in the Item Activity table (PS_ITEM_ACTIVITY) to N (none).

When you run the Revenue Adjustments Application Engine process (PC_AR_TO_PC) in PeopleSoft Project Costing, the process copies this information from PeopleSoft Receivables into PeopleSoft Project Costing and updates the Item Activity table to D (done).

When you create an adjustment item, such as Create a New Debit (MT-04) or a Prepayment (WS-04) using a payment or maintenance worksheet, the Automatic Maintenance process (AR_AUTOMNT), or the Payment Predictor Application Engine process (ARPREDCT), you must create the accounting entries online to enter the project ChartField values unless you are using the default ChartField values in the automatic entry accounting template. If you enter the ChartField values online and you want to use the project ChartField values for the original item, access the AR Billing Inquiry page for the item and click the Bill Header - Project Info link. This enables you to view the project ChartFields on the bill header in PeopleSoft Billlng.

If you unpost an item, the process sets the PeopleSoft Project Costing distribution status field for the new rows to N (not distributed).