Hi All,

I was performing configurations for Receivables module in order to test few complex business scenario's ..
during which had few question's about "Auto Accounting"
configuration that is being done ....This configuration is available in 11i and R12, did not undergo any change till
date during the version upgrades .....
The question's I had was,
why at all we need to make Auto Accounting configuration ....?
Why can't I skip this configuration ....?
Why such a configuration is not available in Payables or Fixed Assets or Cash Management ?
At the outset these questions might look very silly, since it was projected to us, that Auto Accounting is a
mandatory configuration, however there is no real documentation to support such statement .....
Oracle Receivables user guides states, "You can set up AutoAccounting to create Accounting Flexfields that
meet your business needs." which means to me that it is not a mandatory setup .....CAN often refers to
Option ... SHOULD often refers to Mandatory ...
The primary purpose of auto accounting is to default account codes for every segment from different
configurations such as Transaction Type, Customer Site, Sales Person, Inventory Item and Constant value ......
there is no workflow or account generator that is involved in such defaults. Moreover they are just defaults,
which means they can be overridden by the End User at the time of transaction creation/completion .....
Honestly, why would i go in to trouble of defining Auto accounting when my end user can modify the resulting
code combination at his/her will.... Doesn't make sense ...? Rather I would be happy to enter the code
combination directly in the Invoice distribution screen as I do in Payables Module ...
If the Code combination resulted out of Auto Accounting is not modifiable ...this configuration would have made
lot of sense ..
The common argument that has been put in favor of using auto accounting is that, it minimizes the data entry
and automates transaction completion, resulting is quicker results...... For clients, who does not have complex
accounting requirements such an argument may hold good, but not for all .. there are clients with complex
requirements where they need to monitor the movement of transactions through its related accounting flexfield
value ......they find the autoaccounting logic of deriving the account code combination for transaction as a bottle
neck ..... hence they override the defaulted values to the values which they wanted. This post is resulted
basically out of a requirement from such a client ....
Now coming to the questions I posed earlier, have speculated few possible reasons behind such design,
why at all we need to make Auto Accounting configuration ....?
1) We do multiple configurations in oracle, which are not directly mapped to a client requirement... few are for
the sake of system compliance ... we could do this setup and choose to completely ignore its impact and keep
overriding the values at the transaction level manually.
2) Majority of the clients requirements are met by this way of generating account codes, hence this is to be
followed as a best business practice....
Why can't I skip this configuration ....?

1) I can skip this configuration, however every time I do transaction creation, there would be multiple pop up
error boxes, irritating the user to the max stating auto accounting has not been configured....
Why such a configuration is not available in Payables or Fixed Assets or Cash Management ?
1) In Payables, the accrual account available in the payable invoice is derived from the Purchase order, i.e. if
the invoice is created by matching with PO / Receipt, whereas in Receivables the revenue account/receivables
account is not derived from the Sales order. Since a receivable transaction cannot directly retrieve account
codes based on Item related configuration, there is a need of Auto Accounting configuration at the O2C Cycle
and not P2P Cycle ....
2) Also there is no need for such configuration in Asset Module or Cash Management, as they are not
transaction processing modules .... Even if they process transactions, Fixed Assets comes with a default
account generator which is a workflow based tool.... which takes care of defaults ... and in Cash management
the transactions often point to payables or receivables configuration, it does not have a configuration where
account codes are being populated ....

I am sure there is some other valid reason for having Auto Accounting in Receivables alone ........ if the feature
is too good, then why it is not available in all subledger modules .... ? There exists some valid reason which
needs to be revealed ....
Experts please share your opinion ....
Regards,
Ivruksha