General Ledger Distribution Considerations

Be sure to consider general ledger distribution as you determine how many business units you need. Before establishing payables business units, you must establish general ledger business units. If you use only Oracle's PeopleSoft financial applications, generally the PeopleSoft Payables business units are the same as the PeopleSoft General Ledger business units. You set up the general ledger first and then set up PeopleSoft Payables to mirror the general ledger. If you use a different general ledger system, then you cannot use business units. In that case, you must carefully consider how to distribute from PeopleSoft Payables to the general ledger.

Once you create your business units, you associate the payables business units with the general ledger business units. The association does not need be one-to-one; you can consolidate multiple payables business units in one general ledger business unit. However, you cannot associate a single payables business unit with multiple general ledger business units. That is, you cannot have one payables business unit that distributes to multiple general ledger business units (with the exception of interunit accounting entries). This diagram illustrates this concept.