Geography Name Referencing Process — TCA in R12

Geography Name Referencing Process – TCA in R12

1.  What is the purpose of Geography Name Referencing Process?

The purpose of Geography Name Referencing process is to validate address elements in location tables, such as HZ_LOCATIONS and HR_LOCATIONS_ALL, against geographies in the Master Reference Geography Hierarchy. For each address, or location record, the program identifies which master reference geography an address element maps to, if any. Oracle E-Business Tax uses this mapping information for business-specific purposes such as tax calculation.

Geography Name Referencing is based on Geography Hierarchy validations data and setup.

2.  What are the parameters that are needed to Run Geography Name Referencing program?

Program Parameters are:

• Location Table Name: Select the table with the address records that you want to process, either HZ_LOCATIONS or HR_LOCATIONS.
• Run Type: Specify to process all records, only records that previously resulted in error, or only new records that this program has never processed. The choice for all records can take considerable time to process.  There is an upgrade parameter to use if EBTax is installed at the time of upgrade.   Once the choice of all or upgrade has processed, typically only the New and Error parameter is chosen.
• Address Usage: Specify to run the program for either the tax or geography validation usage, or both. The program provides results that correspond to address elements and geography types with the selected usage.
• Country: Enter the country to process addresses for.
• Location ID From and Location ID To: Enter a range of location IDs to identify the addresses to process.
• Start Date and End Date: Enter a date range to process only addresses that are active within this range.

Typical program parameters when running GNR for the first time are:

a) Geography Name Referencing:
Location table name: HZ_LOCATIONS
Run type: ALL
Usage:     GEOGRAPHY
Country:   UNITED STATES
rest of the parameters are NULL

b)Geography Name Referencing:
Location table name: HZ_LOCATIONS
Run type: ALL
Usage:    TAX
Country:  UNITED STATES
rest of the parameters are NULL

c)Geography Name Referencing:
Location table name: HR_LOCATIONS_ALL
Run type: ALL
Usage:    TAX
Country:  UNITED STATES
rest of the parameters are NULL

The tax setup must be complete before running the GNR for Run Type: Tax. Run type of Geography is not valid for HR_LOCATIONS_ALL.
The GNR is not run for any country in which you have not put the details of the geography structure in the Geography Hierarchy table.
Typically the only countries with details in Geography Hierarchy are those that charge LOCATION based tax such as the UNITED STATES.
The Geography Name Referencing Program is not run for Latin American Localization Countries.

Once the concurrent program has completed the log file and output report should be reviewed.  These will report records that are successful or errored.

3.  What are the pre-requisites for running Geography Name Referencing Process?

Prerequisites

For the countries that you run Geography Name Referencing for:

• Define the Geography Hierarchy country structure.
• Define geographies for each geography type in the country structure.
• Map geography types in the country structure to location table attributes, and specify geography usage.

Set these profile options:

• HZ: Batch Size for committing records in Geography Name Referencing process
• HZ: Number of workers for a given Geography Name Referencing request

4.  How Does Geography Name Referencing process work?

Example: The table below describes the validation mapping of the United States country structure to the HZ_LOCATIONS table, for the North America address style.

Geography Type	Maps to Attribute	Tax Validation	Geography Validation
Country	COUNTRY	Yes	Yes
State	STATE	Yes	Yes
County	COUNTY	Yes	No
City	CITY	Yes	Yes
Postal Code	POSTAL_CODE	No	Yes

Example: The table below shows address elements and what field it is stored in HZ_LOCATIONS:

HZ_LOCATIONS Column	Address Element Value
ADDRESS1	500 Oracle Parkway
CITY	Redwood City
COUNTY	Santa Clara
STATE
POSTAL_CODE	94065
COUNTRY	United States

 

The Geography Name Referencing process runs on the HZ_LOCATIONS table and processes this address as follows:

1. Checks for the address style associated with this address, for this example, the North America address style. The program can use the corresponding validation mapping setup from Geography Hierarchy for the next step.
2. Compares each address element, or HZ_LOCATIONS attribute, that is mapped to a geography type in the US country structure, against the corresponding master reference geography defined in Geography Hierarchy. This table describes the results of this comparison for each element in the above address.

Geography Type	HZ_LOCATIONS Column	Address Element Value	Master Reference Geography	Result
Country	COUNTRY	US	United States	Address element is validated and mapped to the master reference geography, because the address value is a defined code or alternate name.
State	STATE		CA	Based on the other entered address elements, the program can extrapolate and map to CA as the state if CA is the only possible value. For example, there are no other states with the San Mateo county and Redwood City combination.
County	COUNTY	Santa Clara	San Mateo	Address element is not valid and therefore not mapped to the master reference geography. Mapping status is Error.
				However, if the program can find a unique correct value, as with the state, then the address element is corrected and mapped accordingly.
City	CITY	Redwood City	Redwood City	Address element is validated and mapped to the master reference geography.
Postal Code	POSTAL_CODE	94065		The master reference geography value is not available, so the mapping status is Error.

3. Provides the results for this and all other processed addresses in the concurrent program log. The log specifies mapping status and explains why records receive the Error status.

 

As indicated in the Geography Hierarchy validation mapping, the Country, State, County, and City geography types are used for tax validation. For any address, tax is calculated based on the master reference geographies that each address element is mapped to, as a result of Geography Name Referencing. For the address in this example, if the State and County address elements cannot be mapped, then tax validation and calculation cannot occur for State and County tax, but can for Country and City tax because those address elements are validated and mapped.

Ref: 1400778.1