What's a territory overlap?

When two or more territories are children of the same parent, and reference the same intersection of dimension members, then the territories overlap.

For example, a child territory with the dimension member Virginia and a child territory with the dimension member United States overlap.

An overlap is a problem if it's accidental. If it results in two salespeople mistakenly assigned the same area, the overlap causes conflicts and incorrectly assigned sales quotas. A deliberate overlap is useful for assigning additional salespeople or technical experts to the same areas also covered by the salespeople who have quotas. For example, the same area requires four salespeople with separate territories, but only one technical expert. It's a good practice to assign one of the territories the territory type of Overlay.

For more details, see the following discussion on Oracle Customer Connect: Resolving Gaps and Overlaps based on Account Territory Assignments.