Out of Range

If you currently find your Oracle Applications employing hundreds of roll up groups and cross validation rules to appropriate data to the right places for reporting and maintenance purposes, it may be time to consider restructuring your Chart of Accounts (COA) to utilize the practicality, efficiency, and agility of putting your values into ranges for each segment. Using logical ranges for the values within each segment gives meaning to an individual value or group of values based simply on its number. For example, if you have a project segment set up in your accounting flexfield, you may have all projects with values 55000 - 56000 represent a particular type of project (ie waste reclamation projects), then you would know by simply seeing the number 55440 that the project (called Great Lakes Research) is a water reclamation project. But ranges have even more practical uses when it comes to maintenance and reporting, allowing you to streamline your operational performance and increase efficiency. If your values are in logical ranges, reporting on specific types of values becomes as simple as setting up ranges for different business functions. Grouping values into ranges allows for:

1. Fewer summary and rollup accounts
   
2. Easier allocation formulas
   
3. A reduction in the need for cross-validation rules
   
4. Security rules that are easier to enforce
   
5. Easier reporting
   
6. Less maintenance
   

The bottom line is that using ranges simplifies reporting, makes any rules-based process simpler and more efficient, reduces maintenance of having to create and maintain multiple rules to include or exclude values, and increases operational efficiencies as a result. In addition, setting up a COA to use ranges dramatically simplifies any changes that must be made to the COA in the future. Rather than adding a new value to the end of a COA (which would most likely be out of range, requiring adding additional rules to enforce security or cross validation, or additional lines in reports), new values can be added to existing ranges to maintain streamlined reporting and performance. Rather than updating a cross-validation or security rule each time a new value is added to the COA, users can be sure that values entered into their logical ranges will be included in the already existing rule structures. This requires planning for the future of your business and creating large enough ranges to accompany many years of complex business changes for each segment value. If you don’t think that your current number of digits leaves you with enough room for growth and expansion, consider using a few extra digits in each segment so that your ranges can represent broad categories. You could end up saving millions of dollars in the long run.

A few tips for creating a COA using logical ranges include:

1. Group like things together to create “categories” within the range for each segment. This is important for all segment values, not just the account segment. For example, you might have a location segment. Your highest category might be North America. Under North America, you might have countries of US, Canada, and Mexico. The category of US might have sub categories of Northeast, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, and so on. There might be specific states as the next category, cities, and even districts within a city with all values in each category ranged so that rollups and maintenance are easy.

2. Keep one type of data in one segment. It is more difficult to write a rule for a segment that includes multiple types of information.

3. Keep dependencies among segments consistent. You are really looking at the entire code combination to record your financials. For example, if you have a region segment, then there is no need to have region as part of the description for another segment value or to have a sub category of values for a specific region. For example, if you have a region called Southeast in your region segment, then it is not necessary to have a Southeast Revenue Account.

4. Leave room for growth. Even if you only have a few values now, anticipate that the number of values within each range will grow over time.

Range rules apply to segments and values in other flexfields in addition to the accounting flexfield. Setting up flexfields give Oracle Applications users a great deal of flexibility, but require a great deal of planning to execute efficiently and streamline operations.

Want to share this article? Download this article (PDF)