Oracle EBS: Document Sequencing

Document Sequencing:

Ah, the document sequencing, the audit thingy. What is the purpose of giving a sequence to the transactions or the documents that you create? Well it has been a practice to assign the number to anything which occurs more than once, by numbering them you can identify the order of its generation. It acts like a chain and if a number goes missing, the link is broken and you can see that there was a deletion or removal of the transaction. Sequence numbering can also be seen in our business processes like organization assign employee number or employee code to their employees in order to identify them. Our vehicles have registration numbers. Even the database have a number primary key for the records it holds. BUT that is just to uniquely identify them. Here the purpose of sequencing is to maintain the Audit Trial of the transaction or as Oracle says in its documentation, to maintain the completeness of the transaction.

How?

System generates its own number in a sequence. Like first transaction will have 1 and then second will have 2 and so on and so forth but there are scenarios where more than one person is working on same category and the method of sequence is Automatic then it might have a sequence, I haven’t seen it as yet but it is.

It is very simple to generate a unique Voucher Number, for a document created in EBS modules. The document, also called Categories, can be viewed in the Sequence Assignment window, this window can be found at System Administrator or General Ledger module, provided you have the rights for Defining and Assigning Document Sequence. But before you do, make sure that the profile option Sequential Numbering is set to either Partially Used or Always Used. Personally I haven’t seen much difference in both of options because if you use Always Use, the system won’t let you move forward if there is no sequence assigned to the category and if you use Partially again the system won’t let you move forward.

Any question so far? I don’t think there should be otherwise I have given my email address in the end, you are more than welcome to contact me with your concerns.

Moving forward…

There are two steps for Document Sequencing:

1. Define
2. Assign

I use General Ledger responsibility for defining and assigning the Sequence but most of the people I know use the System Administrator responsibility. Its your choice which one to use. I am writing about the General Ledger method.

Let’s do the first step: DEFINE
Navigation: GL>Setup>Financials>Sequence>Document>Define

The Document Sequence form will open.

1. Enter the Name of the Sequence. For Example XYZ_JV_SEQ_2009. It is 30 character field, so you can have a naming convention that will help you identify the sequence along with period and category.

2. Select the Application for which the document belongs to. For example General Ledger, Payables, Cash Management etc.

3. Enter the Effective From Date. This date is very tricky as you have to be very careful while selecting it. You must first the renewing period of your sequence. If you renew your sequence every year then the From Date will be the beginning of the year, like 01-Jul-2009. It all depends on the organization’s policy.

4. Enter the Effective To Date. This will be the end of the year if you are following a yearly sequence renewal.

5. Select the Type of number generation. In R12.0.4 there are three options

• Automatic: The number will be generated automatically, but might not be gapless if there are more than one user working on same document category
• Manual: The user has to manually enter the document number
• Gapless:The sequence will be gap less even when there are more user working on the same category, but it requires memory as the application will reserve the sequence number and will not generate it until the document is successfully committed.

6. Check Message if you want a popup displaying the number being assigned to the document. This is useful when the user is tagging application number to the hard copy of the document.

7. Enter the Initial Value of the sequence that you want. Usually its 1 but you might want to have it like 20090000001. The maximum you can enter is 28 characters till 1000000000000000000000000000.

8. Save the Record

This is done. You have defined the Sequence. Now you have Assign the sequence to the document category

Let’s do the second step: ASSIGN

Navigation: GL>Setup>Financials>Sequence>Document>Assign

There are two tabs in this form: Document and Assignment

Document Tab: You select the information related to the document.

Assignment Tab: You select the information related to the sequence assignment of that document.

1. Enter the Application name for which you want to assign the sequence, it should be same as selected in the Definition of sequence

2. Select the document Category for which the sequence is being assigned. These categories depend on the application selected.

3. Select the Ledger. I don’t think this need any clarification

4. Select the Method. This is another interesting feature. It not the method of sequence generation but the method of document generation. For example, when you enter a journal voucher, it is a Manual method of document generation, but when you reverse the journal voucher, it is generated automatically. There are three options available here:

• Null: This is selected by default. If the category is generated both manually and automatically.

• Automatic: The document is generated automatically. If you will select this option then manual document will not have document assignment and the system will give error.

• Manual : The document is generated manually.

5. Enter the Start Date. It should be same as the Define Sequence Effective from date.

6. Enter the End Date.

7. Select the Sequence for the document. The defined document sequence should be listed there if the Start date matches the effective from date.

8. Save the Record.

That’s about it. But remember this sequencing steps applies to General Ledger, Payables and other application whose document categories are seeded.

If you have any questions or need some clarification on this topic or any other financial topic

That’s all. Take care. Happy implementing.