Sub-Ledger Accounting: Deep Drive

Presenters: Jeannie Dobney (independent consultant) &

Alyssa Johnson (solution architect, Solution Beacon)
Introduction
Sub-Ledger Accounting (SLA) is functionality introduced by Oracle in R12 of the Oracle eBusiness
Suite. In the 3 years since then, we as a user community have been able to accumulate considerable
understanding of SLA This paper attempts to draw together some of that knowledge, highlighting
what we have learnt from the early implementations as well as indicating the availability of valuable
1
papers and presentations available for in-depth follow up.
Formally, this paper covers the following:
• What is SLA? (i.e. an introduction to its functionality and concepts)
• How does it work? (i.e. system architecture, both process and configuration aspects)
• What can we do with it? (i.e. how it can be used to meet business requirements)
• What does it mean for the end-users? (i.e. reports, inquiries, month-end process and
diagnostics)

What is Sub-Ledger Accounting?

In R12 the Set of Books concept was replaced with Ledgers; i.e. the 3 “C’s” became the 4 “C’s”:

Set of Books Ledger

Chart of Accounts Chart of Accounts
Functional Currency Functional Currency
Calendar Calendar
Accounting Convention

The Accounting Convention aspect of a Ledger is enabled by Oracle’s introduction of sub-ledger

accounting, which facilitated multiple accounting representations of a single transaction. (This very
fundamental point is absolutely key to understanding SLA: the transaction entered has now been
separated from the accounting entry created from it. This paper will underscore the implications of
that change.)
So for example it became possible to have the following:
Primary Ledger – using standard accrual as an accounting convention
Secondary Ledger - using a cash accounting convention
In this scenario when the user enters a supplier invoice into Accounts Payable, the following
accounting impacts follow:
Primary Ledger:
Dr Expense (determined by Invoice Distribution)
Cr AP Control
Secondary Ledger:
no accounting impact
To provide this new functionality, Oracle introduced sub-ledger accounting, which is:
• Both a set of accounting rules and an engine to generate the accounting transactions
• A separate product with its own schema (XLA) to which accounting transactions are posted
2
from each participating sub-ledger prior to being posted to the General Ledger .
(Although SLA is a separate product, it may be helpful to think of it as a service rather than a
3
separate Application, since it is accessed via the existing sub-ledgers).
• Participating sub-ledgers include:
Payables
Receivables
Projects

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 1
 Assets
Cash Management
Purchasing
Cost Management
Process Manufacturing
• Using a single engine to derive accounting from all these sub-ledgers, standardises the
accounting process.
• The SLA engine also supports user defined (modified) accounting conventions which allow
users to determine how the sub-ledgers derive the accounting. The screens used for this are
called the Accounting Methods Builder (AMB). Configurations created via the AMB are much
easier and transparent than equivalent modifications in previous eBS versions and are more
easily supported.
For many end-users the introduction of SLA may be almost transparent. For example for a Payables
or Assets clerk, probably the only impact will be a change in some inquiry screens. The very subtlety
of these changes, however, may present a trap, and this will be discussed further in a later section.
How it Works (Accounting Process)
The following diagram shows how the participating sub-ledgers post ‘through’ SLA to the General
4
Ledger . This actually has quite significant impacts at Month-End (which we will come to later in this
paper), however the diagram also indicates that the SLA forms a central transactional data repository
with its own reports and inquiry windows.

PA CE PO

AR AP

SLA
CM FA

GL

The process which controls the interfacing of transactions from the sub-ledgers to the SLA tables and
into GL is Creating Accounting, which is submitted from SRS.

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 2
For readers new to this process there are some additional notes about the parameters of this process
5
in the end-notes to this paper Alyssa Johnson has also covered this process in detail in her paper
Transitioning from Account Generators to the R12 Subledger Accounting Engine (slide 54 ff).

How it Works (Configuration)

The following diagram shows the elements used in the SLA architecture:

Accounting
e.g. Standard Accrual
Method

Application An Accounting Method is made up of

Application
Accounting multiple Application Accounting
Application
Accounting
Definition Definitions, one for each sub-ledger
Accounting
Definition
Definition

Each Application has a number of

Events which can generate
Accounting entries. For example
Event Classes
Payables has event classes like
invoices and payments.

Journal Header Journal Line Each event that generates a journal is

Assignments Definitions made up of components that can be
defined using rules or by entering data
into the available forms.

Journal Journal Line Account

Descriptions Types Derivation Rules
Sources are components of
transactions e.g. the supplier who
Sources submitted the invoice. Custom sources
can also be defined using PL/SQL

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 3
Refer to the PowerPoint presentation accompanying this white paper for screen shots of each of
these elements.
For more detail on SLA Architecture refer to Alyssa’s 2008 paper: Oracle EBS Release 12, Subledger
Accounting: What It Is, What It Does, How It Works, (Alyssa’s contact details are included at the end
of this paper). The GL SIG’s Introduction to SLA series also contains excellent examples which are
6
helpful in understanding both what each of these building blocks are and also how they can be used.
For consultants looking for more detail on some of the configuration ‘bells and whistles’ we also
recommend Melanie Cameron’s SLA white-paper for the Oracle Contractor’s network (cf key
references).
In the next section of the current paper we will highlight how these elements can be used as
supported configurations to achieve the accounting outcomes which may be required by your
business.
Top Tip
Through this paper we will include tips which reflect specific queries we’ve fielded over the past 3
years. Here’s the first one: How do you control whether the sub-ledgers post to GL in summary or
detail.
The Accounting SetUp Manager controls the grouping of journal headers as shown below (the
level of posting detail field)..

To access this screen, from the GL SuperUser Responsibility:

(N) Setup ~ Financials ~ Accounting Setup Manager ~ Accounting SetUps ~ Subledger
Accounting Options, and select specific sub-ledger
Use the Accounting Methods Builder (introduced in the next section) to control the summarisation
7
of journal lines.

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 4
 The 2 options work together as shown in the following table from MOS Note 876190.1.

GL Journal Entry JLT -Transfer to GL Expected behaviour

Summarization

Summarize Summary Summarized at both

(By GL Date or Period) GL_JE_HEADERS and
GL_JE_LINES

Summarize Detail Summarized at

(By GL Date or Period) GL_JE_HEADERS, detail
GL_JE_LINES

No Summarization Detail Detailed at GL_JE_HEADERS

and GL_JE_LINES

No Summarization Summary Detailed at GL_JE_HEADERS

and GL_JE_LINES

Note: The last two options cause the level of detail in the GL to be the same as in the
Subledger

Sidebar: Events
For those who are interested, this section deals in a little more detail with the “event” concept
which is an important part of SLA architecture and processing.
SLA uses events for processing transactions. An event is the recording of a change of status in
the transaction life cycle, i.e., invoice approved, payment received, period close, etc. This allows
for a clear separation between transactions and accounting representation. Events are the bridge
between transactions and journal entries.

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 5
 8
The following table explains the related terminology , (note that these event concepts are
hierarchical, i.e. event entities have event classes).

Concept Explanation Example from Oracle Projects

Event entity Event Entities allow SLA to handle the
accounting for similar business events in a
consistent manner.
Event class An Event Class represents a category of
business event for a particular transaction
type or document.
Event Type An Event Type represents a business
operation that you can perform for an Event
Class. Event Types are the most granular
level of business event which has an
accounting impact
Expenditures, Revenue and
Budgets
For Event Entity Expenditures,
Event Classes include Labor Cost;
Usage Cost; and Supplier Cost.
For Event Class Supplier Cost,
event types include Expense
Report Cost Distribution and
Supplier Cost Distribution.

Top Tip
Later in this paper we will recommend that at least some of your end-users need training in how
to use SLA Inquiry screens; some understanding of how to use ‘events’ may be helpful for this.
To identify the events in your Application you can do the following:
In a non-production instance, query back the Event Model screen (e.g. from Payables:
N > Setup ~ Accounting Setups ~ Subledger Accounting Setup ~ Accounting Methods Builder ~
Events)
Use the Event Classes button to display the event classes and types for each Event Entity.
Include this data in your end-user training notes, so that users understand how to use the Inquiry
screens to focus their query on e.g. only cancelled invoices.
For consultants interested in understanding event identifiers, we recommend Melanie Cameron’s
paper pp. 10 ff (see key references section below).

Sidebar: Transitioning from Account Generators

Alyssa has previously presented a paper on this topic (Transitioning from Account Generators to
the R12 Subledger Accounting Engine at Collaborate 09) and whilst we do not want to rehash the
same material here, there are a couple of key points worth highlighting here as well:
• Most of the sub-ledgers continue to use their existing (11i) methods to derive the accounting
which users see in Distribution windows. For example:
- Receivables still uses AutoAccounting to default invoice accounting
- Projects still uses AutoAccounting to default revenue accounting and
an Account Generator to default P2P expenditure accounting
- Assets may use an Account Generator to derive its account codes.
• In most cases SLA picks up this account code as the default source for its account derivation
rules. By default, it will simply pass this through to GL, however SLA also allows you to
modify this if you wish to. (This is very significant fundamental point and we will come back to
it later in this paper).
• In cases where you have a choice between methods (for example in Assets where the profile
option FA: Use Workflow Account Generation allows you to opt to bypass the use of the
Account Generator), we recommend you seriously consider going directly to the ‘newer’
technology i.e. SLA, (rather than investing further in a workflow based method whilst knowing
9
that workflow technology will not used in the next generation Fusion Applications).

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 6
Using SLA to Meet Specific Business Requirements
One of the key business benefits Oracle claim for SLA, is that it provides User-Configurable
10
Accounting Rules . Put simply, this means that if your site has an accounting requirement that
‘vanilla’ Oracle has not foreseen, you can meet that requirement with Application level configuration
using the SLA architecture described in the previous section. This is indeed a major benefit which will
have a direct impact on total cost of ownership.
Here are some examples of using the SLA Architecture to meet specific business requirements:
• GL users would like to be able to distinguish AR invoice journal lines which originated from
feeder systems - rather than as manual invoices in AR (and they post from AR in detail). In
11i this would have required a significant customisation, in R12 it is a simple and supported
configuration of journal line descriptions.
• An Assets client requires that disposals be charged to a specific cost centre instead of to the
balance sheet i.e. 000. In 11i this would require a Workflow developer to customise the
Account Generator; however in R12 this is a supported SLA configuration. (How to do this is
illustrated in Alyssa Johnson’s paper Transitioning from Account Generators.)
• A Receivables team wants to differentiate their Receivables balance for products vs services;
again this can be easily achieved using conditional logic via SLA.
• The GL SIG’s excellent series on SLA included a discussion of how Automatic Offsets are
11
implemented in R12 . Whilst this is standard functionality, it provides a useful template for
similar requirements e.g. a client has multiple balancing segments within an operating unit.
Their default accrual account configuration uses company 01, however the company wants to
have a separate accrual account- mirroring the balancing segment value in the expense
account. SLA supports this using the same principle used for automatic offsets.
• Metalink (a.k.a. My Oracle Support) Note 458375.1 also includes case study of similar
requirements, e.g. where the liability account is cost centre specific and the cost centre value
should match the item distribution.
• There is an example of Purchase Price Variance by product line described by Streubel and
12
Volz in their paper Cost Accounting As You Want It ─ EBS R12 Cost Accounting with SLA .
• There are a series of other excellent examples in the GL SIG’s SLA presentations; these
include rules that include conditions and other more sophisticated examples than are listed
13
above.
The examples provided above are intended to assist you in understanding the power of SLA to help
you meet your business requirements in a supportable way. We recommend that you refer to the
papers referenced above for the specifics of how this can be done.
Top Tip
The details of SLA configuration may be primarily of interest to implementers; we have not dwelt
on them here because we assume that key end-users are likely to require only a conceptual
understanding of how it works. However we recommend that if your site uses a non-standard /
user-configured sub-ledger accounting method (SLAM), users should check that this is
documented to their satisfaction as part of the implementation. Existing AIM documentation may
not be easily adapted for SLAMs, - so our recommendation is that a brief functional specification
be created listing briefly what the business requirement was that justified the custom SLAM and
how the SLA elements are used to achieve the required outcome.
Extending this recommendation to treat a user-configured SLAM as a customisation, we would
also recommend it be specifically and intensively tested during UAT to ensure that the
configuration meets the business requirements.
Note: Oracle provide a mechanism for importing and exporting Application Accounting Definitions
– to make the process of migrating a user-configured SLAM from a TEST instance to Production.
Alyssa Johnson discusses this in her paper Transitioning from Account Generators: slide 60 ff.
Some other functionality provided by SLA may also be helpful and is indicated briefly here:

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 7
 • Supporting References
This functionality allows you to ‘tag’ transactions with values which may then be used in
reporting – and for which SLA will maintain balances. For example if you do not use Oracle
Projects, you might want to report some costs by project using this functionality.
If a ‘segment’ is not required for financial accounting and reporting, (i.e. solely for
management reporting), consider capturing it purely within Subledger Accounting using this
SLA Supporting Reference feature. There is a helpful example in the GL SIG’s SLA slides
14
showing exactly how this can be set up and used for reporting. .
There is also a helpful Metalink Note providing detail on how Supporting References may be
set up and used (Note 790978.1).
• Third Party account balances
This functionality allows you to view and report account balances by customer and / or
supplier.
• Replacement Accounts
15
If these are used by your site, the values are substituted in SLA (not first in GL).

End-User Impacts
Many end-users may not notice much change when moving from 11i to R12; to an AP or AR clerk,
there may appear to be almost no impacts. We have identified the following key impacts:
• New and / or changed reports
• New and / or changed accounting inquiry windows
• Changed month-end procedures
• Changed Diagnostics procedures
The following section outlines each of these in turn.
Reports
SLA provides the following BI Publisher reports to take advantage of the centralised transaction data
store and to assist with reconciliation.
• Journal Entries Report: Listing of sub-ledger journal entries
• Account Analysis: Listing of beginning and ending balances from GL with merge of subledger
and GL details
• Open Account balances (a.k.a. Trial Balances): listing of open balances by third party
• Third Party Balances Report, balances by third party control account and third party
• Period Close Exceptions Report, listing of transactions, sub-ledger journal entries that have
not yet been posted to GL
All reports are based on ‘fat’ extracts i.e. they contain additional non-displayed data which can be
16
added via BI Publisher template modifications.
Top Tip
We would strongly recommend that user testing includes the use of reports and inquiries for
relevant business activities and especially that a full period close be completed during UAT. The
objective is to ensure that the users can obtain the data they need from the new or changed
reports. The changes may appear small, however in our experience an ‘apparently small’ change
like the replacement of the Account Analysis with Payables details 11i report with the R12
Account Analysis (with sub-ledger details) report – can cause absolute havoc during the first
month end after go-live! This is not something you want to replicate…

Inquiries
In the GL-SIG’s excellent presentation series, they covered the new SLA Inquiry pages very
thoroughly and practically– and we recommend you consider a similar approach for your end-user

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 8
 17
training . We all know that the SWAN interface is supposed to be so much more intuitive, however in
our experience users still need some assistance to be able to use the Inquiry pages, for example:
• There is now an Inquiry page titled Accounting Events, end-users probably need to have this
and the related “event” jargon translated for their Application’s context using some familiar
examples (refer to the sidebar section on p. 5 above).
• Ensure users understand how to use the Add Another field to focus a query – and then to
save personalisations. It is easy to do this once you’ve been shown how - but most end users
do need to be shown. One helpful example using their business context is normally sufficient.
• If you have chosen to use Supporting References, make sure users understand how to use
this functionality in their queries. Alternatively consider removing this page from their menu or
at least explaining that it is not relevant to them.
• If your site wants to use Third Party Balance Inquiries, this should probably also be introduced
to users in a similar manner.
• Drill Down from GL now also uses SLA pages, so your GL users will also need to understand
how to use the SLA pages.
Top Tip
• Oracle now provide the ability to enter manual sub-ledger journals via a button on the SLA
Journal Inquiry pages. This topic has sparked some concern, firstly that a data entry facility
should be accessible from an inquiry page and secondly that incorrect use of this by-default-
standard feature could lead to significant reconciliation problems at month-end. The
recommendation is to remove this sub-function from all users who do not actually need it and
18
to set clear guidelines for the acceptable use of SLA journals for those who may use it .
If you are considering using the manual SLA journal feature to represent accounting in legacy
systems, you may wish to consider the use of the API which allows you to import such
transactions into SLA rather than into the GL directly (via the GL interface).
The package is called XLA_JOURNAL_ENTRIES_PUB_PKG, with the following sub-
19
functions :
Create_Journal_Entry_Header, page 12-5
Update_Journal_Entry_Header, page 12-12
Delete_Journal_Entry, page 12-18
Create_Journal_Entry_Line, page 12-21
Update_Journal_Entry_Line, page 12-29
Delete_Journal_Entry_Line, page 12-38
Complete_Journal_Entry, page 12-42
Reverse_Journal_Entry, page 12-47

Month-End Procedures
The impact of all transactions being passed through SLA as well as the use of new and / or changed
reports and inquiry windows will impact on your month-end procedure. Oracle have provided an
excellent document on this topic (Note 961285.1 - R12: Period-End Procedures for Oracle Financials
E-Business Suite). We recommend you download and study this document during your upgrade or
implementation.
Oracle position SLA as facilitating a smoother period close and easier reconciliation (cf Note
986783.1), however, in our experience to date this is not always the users’ perception. As noted
above we strongly recommend you include a complete period close in your UAT and not
underestimate the impact of these changes.
Early releases of R12 had considerable problems reconciling AP to GL and there are quite a few
20
Metalink notes relating to this , however at the time of writing these issues seem to be largely
overcome. Possibly the best advice is to proceed with caution as SLA has been a substantial change
and some teething issues are to be expected with this scale of change.
Top Tip

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 9
 If you are using user-configured SLA rules, you should ensure that the users performing the
reconciliation understand how the system is deriving the accounting values. For example if the
user may see an Invoice Distribution displaying an account code of 01-100-7123, but an SLA rule
may be substituting a different cost centre; understandably users may call this an error unless it is
clear to them that this substitution is correct.

Diagnostics
To assist in resolving problems Oracle provide Diagnostic tools, which you may need if the Create
21
Accounting process does not complete successfully . To enable the use of these Diagnostics you:
1. Set the profile option: SLA Enable Diagnostics to Yes
(because of the performance overhead, this should only be enabled when required).
2. Submit the Create Accounting program which then also populates the diagnostic tables.
3. Submit the Transaction Objects Diagnostics concurrent request to view the diagnostic report.
4. Reset the profile option: SLA Enable Diagnostics to No
5. The System Administrator submits the Purge Transaction Objects Diagnostics concurrent
request.

Other Topics
Before closing this paper we would like to mention one further topic which the scope of this paper has
not allowed us to deal with but which you may wish to follow up through the references provided
below:
Upgrade issues
An upgrade to R12 is non-trivial.
Because of the changes introduced with SLA you will need to decide how much of your existing
transaction data should be upgraded. You should also rehearse your reconciliation strategy during
testing of your migration process.
To prepare you can read the reference manual Oracle Applications Upgrade Guide: Release 11i to
Release 12 (part # B31566-01). There are also a number of helpful documents on Metalink, e.g. Note
604893.1 - R12: FAQ for the SLA Upgrade and we would also strongly recommend talking with other
users who have upgraded to R12 to hear what they have learnt.
There is also a great deal more detail which we have not been able to cover in this paper, which we
hope the Key References section will assist you with. Specifically we have not covered the following
due to time constraints:
• Import / Export of SLAMS – useful both for migrating between instance and creating safety
copies (cf Alyssa’s Transitioning from Account Generators slides 60-61)
• API to create journal entries i.e. XLA_JOURNAL_ENTRIES_PUB_PKG (e.g. for legacy
systems) - briefly referred to above with manual reference and also refer to blog at
http://www.oraclebusinessapps.com/
• Business Flows
• Pre- and Post-Accounting Programs
• Multi-Period Accounting, mapping sets and other configuration options
• Use of Profile Options:
SLA: Accounting Methods Builder Context

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 10
Conclusion
Sub-Ledger accounting is a major architectural change introduced by Oracle in R12. It provides some
major improvements, which are very welcome but like all change, it will require time and effort to
absorb. We hope this paper helps you with that.

About the Presenters

Jeannie Dobney is an independent consultant with over a decade’s experience with the Oracle
eBusiness Suite. She is based on the Sunshine Coast on the east coast of Australia and can be
reached via email at jdobney@bigpond.com. You can download this and other papers she has
written from her web-site: www.jdobney.com
Alyssa Johnson is a solution architect from Solution Beacon. Alyssa can be contacted by email at
ajohnson@solutionbeacon.com.

Key References
At the time of writing this paper, there were already some excellent presentations available to assist
with understanding SLA. This is an overview of those we consider most valuable:
• The key resource is the SLA Implementation manual (Part # E13628-03), available from
Oracle’s web-site (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/index.html). We recommend
downloading the most recent version as this manual appears to have been improved as R12 has
matured.
• Metalink also has many helpful notes (Knowledge path: Oracle E-Business Suite > Financial
Management > Financials Common Applications > Subledger Accounting). Refer also to:
- Note 396829.1 for a listing of Oracle Subledger Accounting Documentation Resources, R12.
- Note 985539.1 - R12 SLA: Subledger Accounting Reference Articles
(similar to Note 396829.1 but at a much more detailed / lower level)
- Note 961285.1 for a detailed discussion of the R12 EBS Period Close process
- Note 604893.1 - Important information on upgrading accounting detail
- Note 793634.1 - Oracle Leasing and Finance Management SLA Guide
useful even for those not interested in those Applications
• The OAUG’s GL SIG hosted a series of 3 presentations focused on SLA early in 2010 (authored
by FMT and Oracle’s Rob Zwiebach). Refer to the Chair of the GL-SIG for availability of the
slides.
• Alyssa Johnson from Solution Beacon has also presented 2 valuable papers:
Oracle EBS Release 12 Subledger Accounting; What It Is, What It Does, How It Works (April
2008), and
Transitioning from Account Generators to the R12 Subledger Accounting Engine (Collab 09)
• Melanie Cameron’s whitepaper for the OracleContractor’s network R12 SubLedger Accounting,
this is an excellent in depth paper which will be of most interest to other consultants as it focuses
22
on configuration .
As far as possible this paper has attempted to highlight the contribution from each of these rather than
to cover the same material again.

Notes

1
Refer to the section of this paper listing Key Reference material as well as these end-notes which acknowledge
other material this paper references directly.
2
In fact (according to http://www.oracleappshub.com/release12/subledger-accounting/sub-ledger-accounting-
technical-perspective/) there are more than 2,100 objects that have been added to the E-Business Suite database
due to SLA, as can be seen by running the following query:
select object_type,count(*) from dba_objects

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 11
 where object_namelike '%XLA%'
group by object_type;
Sanjit Anand’s blog (link above) also includes a helpful diagram of the basic SLA tables and how the Create
Accounting process works.
3
Whilst strictly speaking there is no separate responsibility to access SLA, one could argue that the Cost
Management SLA responsibility disproves this…
If you are interested in accounting generated from Inventory and Receiving transactions (i.e. by Cost
Management), there are some excellent resources specifically for this.
A good starting place would be Doug Volz’ website: http://www.volzconsulting.com/resources.html - and
Herve Yu’s SLA presentation may also be helpful, it can be found at
http://discretesig.oaug.org/member/DiscreteSIG_Jun09_Costing_SLA.pdf.
Metalink Note 985539.1: R12 SLA: Subledger Accounting Reference Articles also has a section listing Metalink
notes specifically related to Cost Management.
4
For those seeking a more sophisticated understanding, we would recommend the diagram (and related text) on
p.11 of Metalink Note 793634.1 Oracle Leasing and Finance Management SLA Guide
5
Create Accounting parameters are as follows (they vary slightly by sub-ledger):

Parameter Description
Ledger / Book etc Select the Ledger, Asset Book etc for which you are posting.
Process Category You can focus the process on just one process category if you wish e.g. just
invoices from Payables or just Asset Additions from FA.
End Date Enter the final date though which you wish to process transactions e.g. the last
day of the current month.
Accounting Mode If required run the process in Draft mode simply to validate the accounting
outcomes. The process can then be re-run it in Final mode to process the sub-
ledger accounting.
Errors only Select Yes to identify only those transactions that have resulted in errors
Report Possible values are Detail, Summary or No Report
The Subledger Accounting Program Report generated at the conclusion of the
Create Accounting process, lists the following:
- Successful events and the subledger journal entries created for those events
- Errors for failed events
Summary mode provides a summary of events processed and detailed
information about their errors.
Detail mode provides details of subledger journal entries generated from the
processing of completed events and a detailed error report.
Transfer to GL This parameter is only available in Final mode, it creates a GL journal from the
accounting entries
Post in GL Selecting Yes will post the journal created by the previous step
GL Batch Name This field allows you to name your GL journal batch.
Include User Trans. Controls whether the report displays user identifiers' names and values. Defaults
identifiers to No but may be worth changing the default to Yes as this may make linking of
the journals back to the source user easier.

6
See FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 27, 2010, and
slide 17 ff of FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 20, 2010.
7
Refer also pp.32 ff of Melanie Cameron’s SLA paper for a detailed discussion of summarisation options; R12
SubLedger Accounting by Melanie Cameron; available on request from www.oraclecontractors.com

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 12
8
From Edward Charity’s OAUG conference paper From AutoAccounting/Account Generator to Subledger
Accounting in Oracle Projects (cf www.pmsc-llc.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/echarityoaug08.pdf)
9
Metalink Note 578313.1 - White Paper – Subledger Accounting Setup for Oracle Assets provides an excellent
overview of default SLA configuration for Assets, it’s a great starting point for understanding and / or
customising it.
10
Refer Metalink Note 986783.1 The Business Benefits of Oracle Subledger Accounting
11
From FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 27, 2010
12
Paper available from Doug Volz’ website: http://www.volzconsulting.com/resources.html - alternatively the
example can also be found in Herve Yu’s SLA presentation that can be found at
http://discretesig.oaug.org/member/DiscreteSIG_Jun09_Costing_SLA.pdf.
13
P. 31 ff from FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 20, 2010
14
From FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 27, 2010 (pp. 8 ff)
15
Slide 21 ff in FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG Feb 3, 2010
16
This simplified listing is from FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG Feb 3, 2010 (pp.
40 ff).
17
Slide 51 ff of FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG January 27, 2010 and slide 12 ff
from Feb 3,2010 Presentation
18
If you are interested in manual SLA journals refer also to the blog entry on this topic at
http://www.oraclebusinessapps.com/
19
Further information on the API can be found in the Financial Services Accounting Hub Implementation Guide
(you don’t have to have licensed this product to use this pkg). Reference Chapter 12: Manual Subledger Journal
Entries API
20
For example Note 758531.1 - R12 : Initial Steps to Troubleshoot Accounts Payable Trial Balance and
General Ledger Reconciliation Issues.
21
Refer to slides 49 ff of FMT & Rob Zwiebach’s Introduction to SLA for the GL SIG Feb 3, 2010
and to Metalink Note 414094.1 - Diagnostic Framework Overview for Subledger Accounting
22
R12 SubLedger Accounting byMelanie Cameron; available on request from www.oraclecontractors.com

COLLABORATE 10 — OAUG Forum SLA Deep Dive © Jeannie Dobney & Alyssa Johnson as at 7-Apr-10 Page 13