This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at Financial Enterprise Structures and the security feature of Oracle Fusion.

Financial Enterprise Structures

One of the most critical decisions for any project is the financial structure. In Oracle Fusion, the financial enterprise structure exists as depicted in the below illustration:

Fig. 1 - The financial enterprise structure with legal entities and primary ledgers

Here, the Enterprise is on top, and there can be only one enterprise for a project in Fusion.

Under the enterprise, there exist the Legal Entities. These legal entities will be associated with Primary Ledgers. Note that there can be multiple legal entities for a single primary ledger. In such a case, each legal entity has to be associated with a balancing segment. In case of a one-to-one relationship, the balancing segment is optional.

Fig. 2 - A financial enterprise structure with business units

Under the primary ledger, there will be Business Units. A business unit is an entity that performs certain business functions. Each business unit will have Inventory Organisations associated with it.

Fig. 3 - The structure of a primary ledger

As seen in the above chart, each primary ledger has a Chart of Accounts, currency, calendar, and accounting method associated with it. In case of any difference in those components, either a reporting currency or a secondary ledger is created.

When creating a secondary ledger with a different currency, it cannot be done directly. First, the secondary ledger is created with the same currency as the primary ledger. Then, a reporting currency is created for the secondary ledger.

Business Functions

Business functions are those that are performed by a business unit. Oracle Fusion Financials has a number of financial-related business functions available to be performed by the users, according to their roles and duties. The various business functions related to financials that can be performed are:

• Payables Invoicing

• Billing and Revenue Management

• Customer Payments

• Service Request Management

• Order Fulfillment Orchestration

• Collections Management

• Materials Management

• Customer Contracts Management

• Project Accounting

• Procurement

• Requisitioning

• Receiving

• Expense Management

• Order Capture

• Sales

• Marketing

• Procurement Contracts Management

• Incentive Compensation

Fusion Security - Roles in Fusion Applications

There are different roles available in Fusion applications. As specific roles will be able to perform only those functions for which they have access to, this type of system enhances its security and prevents mistakes or any unauthorised access. There are different types of roles applicable to users in Fusion:

• Duty Role (Application Roles)
  Any employee of an organisation performs certain tasks (e.g. invoice creation, approval, enquiry, etc.). These tasks are related to the employee’s duties that are a part of his/her work. Duty Roles have certain privileges and access to these duty-related tasks.

• Job Role (External Roles)
  Job Roles are collections of duty roles, or duties. For example, the person who performs the tasks of invoice creation, invoice approval, invoice enquiry, etc. is called the Payables Clerk, which is the employee’s designation.

• Abstract Role
  Abstract Roles are roles that are not related to business activities. They can include leave application, viewing salary, etc. which basically are self service activities for the employees.

• Data Role
  Data Roles are created for job roles. These data roles are the ones which provide access to the actual data associated with the job roles. If the appropriate data role is not assigned to a user, he/she can only view the page for the job role, but not the data in that page.

• Data Access Set
  The Data Access Set is used to control the access of users to a ledger or a specific balancing segment. A data access set will be created automatically upon the completion of the ledger configuration along with data roles. Further data access sets can be created to restrict access to a particular balancing segment value or ledger set level.

Role Based Security

The following illustration depicts how the role based security in Oracle Fusion works in Fusion Financials:

Fig. 4 - Role based security in Oracle Fusion Financials

Here, the user ‘Fred’ has the following roles associated to him: Accounts Payable Manager - US-West (here, US-West is a business unit), Employee, and Line Manager. Each of these roles has got certain functional privileges and data access granted to it, as depicted above.

The role Accounts Payable Manager - US-West grants Fred the following functional privileges: Manage Payables Invoices, Apply or Unapply Payables, and Prepayments. These privileges grant Fred access to the following data: Payables Invoices in US-West Business Unit. Similarly, the Employee and Line Manager roles follow suit with their functional privileges and data access.

Krishnaa Lakshmanan

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