Account Generation Logic in Oracle iExpenses

This article discussed how the accounting flexfield is generated in Oracle iExpenses when employee submits his or her expense report.

For simplicity sake, let’s assume the expense report does not have any multi-currency or credit card items. And as example, let’s assume we are using a simple chart of accounts containing of three segments:

Company-Cost Center-Account

Our employee belongs to company 100, and cost center 1000. Oracle iExpenses follows these steps to generate his account during the expense report entry:

Step 1: The Default Expense Account Defined in employee’s HR assignment:

100-1000-55555

Step 2: Employee enters the Expense Report Header. If he does not override the Cost Center, iExpenses proceeds to Step 3. If he does override the Cost Center (e.g. 2000), Oracle iExpenses builds an initial accounting combination of his Default Expense Account with his new Override Department.

100-2000-55555

The Feature: If this initial combination is invalid, employee will be able to proceed with the expense report entry but the report submission will fail without notifying the employee and regardless what the employee enters below!

Step 3: Employee enters expense line with an expense type (e.g. Airfare=50050) and no project. The system generates the expense line accounting flexfield. If project and task are entered, the system proceeds to Step 5:

100-2000-50050

Step 4: If Expense Allocations functionality is enabled, employee can change the above expense distribution for each line (e.g. 200-2222). If the above expense combination is invalid and the employee does not update it, the expense report submission will fail.

200-2222-50050

Step 5: Project and Task were entered at the expense line level: iExpenses will engage the Account Generator, and will follow its rules to update the initial combination, and build the new one. For example, let’s say the Company is derived from Project Organization (Seattle=100), Department from Override Department above (2000), and Account from Expense Type (Airfare). The resulting accounting combination will look as follows:

200-2000-50050