BizTech Blog

Having logged over 10-years of Oracle Applications development, specializing in interfaces, conversions, and extensions, I have learned a thing or two on how to successfully design, build, test, and implement custom application processes. I will be contributing to this blog to assist Oracle Application Developers with helpful tips, best practice techniques, and know-how on customizing and extending the Oracle EBS Suite. Hopefully, this blog will help to lessen the time you spend searching for meaningful development information on many of the application modules such as, Order Management, Receivables, Purchasing, Payables, HRMS, General Ledger, e-Business Tax and Projects.

In a previous post, I spoke of an organization that needed to create a custom BI Publisher template to accommodate their Canadian bank’s proprietary file format for EFT files in R12. What I didn’t mention was that some of the required data was stored in descriptive flexfields within Oracle. Descriptive flexfields are not included in the Oracle Payments Funds Disbursement Payment Instruction Extract data which is the standard data definition for AP funds disbursement.

As is the case with many organizations, they were concerned that they would have to modify the standard programs to accommodate their bank’s requirements. Their minds were put at ease when they learned that Oracle provided a standard API which allows organizations to add additional fields (i.e. XML Tags) to the XML extract. This standard PL/SQL package was the IBY_FD_EXTRACT_EXT_PUB.

The standard XML file that is generated by the Payment Instruction Extract is organized into 4 hierarchical groups:

1. Payment Instruction – The payment instruction group encompasses the entire file.
2. Payment – The payment group represents a payment to a specific supplier.
3. Document Payable – The document payable group represents the individual invoices that are being paid to the supplier within the payment.
4. Document Payable Line – The document payable line group represents the lines within the invoice being paid to the supplier.

As a consultant I have seen numerous organizations conduct business with banks that do not conform to the ACH CCD Cash Concentration/ Disbursement File format. Most recently I was at an organization that sends electronic funds transfer (EFT) files to a Canadian bank that required a proprietary file format for incoming EFT files. To conform to the bank’s requirements, the organization had customized the NACHA Payment Format program in 11i.

In R12, Oracle introduced the Payments module which replaces the payments functionality within Payables. The Payments module utilizes BI Publisher templates instead of Oracle Reports to generate formatted EFT files. As a result, you have to re-implement the customizations that were made to the NACHA Payment Format program in earlier releases.

Hello everyone, welcome to BizTech’s blog for Oracle Application Technologies. As an Oracle Application Developer with over 40 implementations under my belt, I have amassed a large library of white papers, tips, tricks and how to’s. My intent for this blog is to assist all Oracle Application Developers by sharing what I've learned over the last 14 years implementing Oracle.