Oracle Financials Strategy

I chuckled the first time a customer asked me, "Do I have to take SLA?" because it seemed like she was equating Subledger Accounting (SLA) with bad-tasting medicine. In fact, we like to think of SLA more as a new miracle drug.  I can understand why some people might initially be scared of SLA because it's new, and like many other drugs, not widely accepted as a cure.

SLA is the new Financials module that centralizes accounting for the entire E-Business suite (and yes, you have to take it, to get your accounting).  Customers have never had such flexibility of configuring their accounting rules before, let alone ensuring their foreign accounting offices are following their corporate accounting policy.  Once a customer grasps the business benefits of SLA, their eyes usually light up and they start asking more optimistic questions, "I have IAD, can you backport it?"

If you're just starting to learn about IAD and this new drug, SLA, you should start by reviewing the Business Benefits of Oracle Subledger Accounting whitepaper.

For those who are ready to undergo a trial treatment program, get a hold of a Release12 EBS installation and take a look at the accounting rules that EBS delivers out of the box.  These rules are configured to perform accounting exactly the same way as in Release 11i EBS (to ensure no adverse side effects), so the rules should look familiar.  If your R12 EBS installation has upgraded data or the Vision demo data in it, just go to the setup for a ledger like Vision Corporation and select the Open Subledger Accounting Method button.  That will take you to the setup pages to view the journal definitions and accounting rules for that ledger.

When you're ready to start longterm treatment and define your own accounting rules, don't try to reinvent the wheel - simply make a copy of the accounting rules delivered out of the box, and make changes to this copy.  Copying rules is fully supported and highly encouraged.  And keep the SLA implementation guide handy for more detailed instruction.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that SEC had a roundtable discussion on December 13th debating whether the domestic issuers in US should also be permitted to use IFRS in lieu of US GAAP � The SEC recently approved rule amendments permitting foreign private issuers in US to use IFRS standards instead of US GAAP. 

In his recent speech on Feb 8^th,2008, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has promised �an updated roadmap that lays out a schedule, and appropriate milestones on which the schedule will be conditioned, for continuing the progress that the United States is making in moving to accept IFRS in this country.�

IFRS standards are mandated or permitted in over 100 countries across the world. So, this seems a logical next-step in adoption of global accounting standards in US � I know a lot of multinational Oracle customers are currently reporting in US GAAP and IFRS today � and, am aware of the challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis. This move, if and when it happens, might go to alleviate the overhead associated with reporting in two differing standards.

The perspective expressed in this blog entry is not of Oracle nor its Management, nor of all it�s developers that stand to gain by the way of fixing the bugs associated with differing Accounting standards.