Segment Labels
Segment labels identify certain segments in your chart of accounts structure and assign special functionality to those segments. Best practice is to assign each segment label one time within the chart of accounts structure.
Here are the segment labels that are available to use with the chart of accounts.
Balancing
Ensures that all journals balance for each balancing segment value or combination of multiple balancing segment values. You can secure access to your primary balancing segment values only with data access sets. The General Ledger application automatically calculates and creates balancing lines as required in journal entries. For example, recognizing an entity's receivable and the other entity's payable. The three balancing segment labels are primary, second, and third balancing. The primary balancing segment label is required.
Cost Center
Represents the smallest segment of an organization for which costs are collected and reported. Facilitates grouping of natural accounts by functional cost types, accommodating tracking of specific business expenses across natural accounts. As cost centers combine expenses and headcount data into costs, they're useful for detailed analysis and reporting. Cost centers are optional, but required for:
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Tracking depreciation, additions, and other transactions in Oracle Fusion Assets.
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Storing expense approval limits in Oracle Fusion Expense.
Natural Account
Determines the account type (asset, liability, expense, revenue, or equity), whether posting is allowed, and other information specific to the segment value. The natural account segment is mapped to the Financial Category dimension in the balances cube to enable ad hoc reporting and transactional dashboards. This functionality uses Oracle Fusion Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to analyze and drill into expense and revenue transactions. The natural account segment label is required.
Intercompany
Optionally, assign the segment to be used in intercompany balancing functionality. You can't use the primary balancing or natural account segments as the intercompany segment. You can assign the same values to both the primary balancing and intercompany value sets. You can also assign the same value set to the primary balancing segment and the intercompany segment. The sharing of the value set or values:
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Enables clear visibility of the due to and due from relationships inherent in intercompany accounting across the entire organization.
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Saves maintenance and ensure completeness.
However, sharing value sets can cause problems when applying segment value security rules because the rules applied to both segments. The rules can restrict access to certain values which may complicate entering intercompany entries. For example, you might have access to company 01 at the balancing segment level but not company 02. As a result, you can't enter an intercompany entry for transactions between 01 and 02.