The below example explains a few of the important terms and
concepts used in the Oracle E-Business Suite.
This would be a good starting point for the beginners to better
understand the concepts behind Oracle Applications.
Say SkRao is the owner of a wholesale fruit shop. He buys various
fruits like apples, oranges, mangos and grapes etc from farmers directly and
sells them to retail shop owners and also to the direct customers.
The farmers are referred to as VENDORS/SUPPLIERS in Oracle
Applications. Harry keeps track of all his vendors’ information like addresses,
bank account and the amount he owes to them for the fruits that he bought etc,
in a book named Oracle PAYABLE.
SkRao gets an order from a retail shop owner of Fruit Mart, for a
shipment of 11 bags of apples, 25 bags of oranges and 32 kgs of grapes. In
Oracle Apps, bags and kgs are referred to as UOM (unit of measure), Fruit Mart
is called CUSTOMER and the order is referred to as SALES ORDER. Harry maintains
a book called ORDER MANAGEMENT where he writes down all the details of the
SALES ORDERS that he gets from his customers.
Say the fruits have been shipped to the customer Fruit Mart. Harry
now sends him the details like cost of each bag/fruit, the total amount that
the customer has to pay etc on a piece of paper which is called INVOICE /
TRANSACTION.
Once the INVOICE has been sent over, the customer then validates
this against the actual quantity of fruits that he received and will process
the payments accordingly. The invoice amount could be paid as a single amount
or could be paid in installments.
SkRao’s customer, Fruit Mart pays him in installments (partial
payments).
So SkRao has to make a note of the details like date received,
amount received, amount remaining, amount received for what
goods/shipments/invoice etc, when SkRao receives the payments.
This detail is called RECEIPT, which will be compared to the
invoice by SkRao to find how much Fruit Mart has paid to him and how much has
to be paid yet. This information is maintained in a book named RECEIVABLES to
keep track of all the customers, their addresses (to ship the items), what and
how much he has shipped to his customers and the amount his customers owe
him etc.
SkRao’s fruit business has begun to improve and has attracted more
and more customers. As a result, SkRao decided to buy a cold storage unit where
he could stock more fruits.
In Apps, this cold storage unit is known as WAREHOUSE and all the
fruits are referred to as INVENTORY. Due to increase in customers, SkRao needs
to hire more people to help him out in his business without any hiccups.
These workers are called EMPLOYEES. At the end of every month,
Harry pays the salary for all his employees through Checks. These checks are
nothing but PAYROLL in Apps.
At the end of every month, SkRao prepares a balance sheet in a
book called GENERAL LEDGER to determine how much profit/loss he got and keeps
track of the money going out and going in.
As the business grows, it becomes impossible to record everything
on a paper. To make everybody’s life easier, we have very good tools in the
market, which help the business men to keep track of everything.
One such tool is Oracle E-Business Suite.
Oracle Applications is not a single application, but is a
collection of integrated applications. Each application
is referred to as a module and has it own functionality trying to
serve a business purpose.
Few of the modules are Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Accounts
Receivables, Inventory, Order Management, Human Resources, General Ledger,
and Fixed Assets etc.
Here is a high level business use of various modules:
· Oracle Purchasing handles all
the requisitions and purchase orders to the vendors.
· Oracle Accounts Payable handles
all the payments to the vendors.
· Oracle Inventory deals
with the items you maintain in stock, warehouse etc.
· Order Management helps you
collect all the information that your customers order.
· Oracle Receivables help you
collect the money for the orders that are delivered to the customers.
· Oracle Human
Resources helps maintain the Employee information, helps run paychecks etc.
· Oracle General Ledger receives
information from all the different transaction modules or sub ledgers and
summarizes them in order to help you create profit and loss statements, reports
for paying Taxes etc.
For Example:
when you pay your employees that payment is reported back to
General Ledgers as cost i.e money going out, when you purchase inventory items
and the information is transferred to GL as money going out and so is the case
when you pay your vendors. Similarly when you receive items into your
inventory, it is transferred to GL as money coming in, when your customer sends
payment, it is transferred to GL as money coming in. So all the different
transaction modules report to GL (General Ledger) as either “money going in”
or “money going out”, the net result will tell you if you are making a
profit or loss.
All the equipment, shops, warehouses, computers can be termed as
ASSETS and they are managed by Oracle Fixed Assets.
There is a lot more in Oracle applications. This is the very basic
explanation just to give an idea of the flow in ERP for the beginners.
1. Invoice
2. Receipt
3. Customer
4. Vendor
5. Buyer
6. Supplier
7. Purchase Order
8. Requisition
9. ACH: Account Clearance House
10. Sales Order
11. Pack Slip
12. Pick Slip
13. Drop Ship
14. Back Order
15. ASN: Advance Shipping Notice
16. ASBN: Advance Shipping Billing Notice
17. ATP: Available to Promise
18. Lot/Serial Number
19. DFF: Descriptive Flex Fields
20. KFF: Key Flex Fields
21. Value Sets
22. Organization
23. Business Unit
24. Multi Org
25. Folders
26. WHO Columns
27. Oracle Reports
28. Oracle Form
29. Workflow Builder
30. Toad
31. SQL Developer
32. SQL Navigator
33. Discoverer Reports
34. XML/BI Publisher
35. ADI: Application Desktop Integrator
36. Winscp
37. Putty
