Accounting setup in Oracle General Ledger - R12

Accounting setup is used to set up the accounting structure which controls transaction processing across Oracle Financial Applications . With Accounting setup manager we can define and maintain the accounting setup for Legal Entities,

                      Ledgers,
              Operating Units,
              Subledger Accounting,
              Intercompany and Intracompany Balancing, and
              Reporting Currencies

Responsibility:   General Ledger

Navigation:       Setup : Financials : Accounting Setup Manager → Accounting Setups

Click on Create Accounting setup to setup the Accounting structure.

There are three steps in Accounting setup process.

1. Assign Legal Entities: 

Here we may create or assign existing LE to the accounting structure. We need not assign legal entity if there is no legal entity context.

If legal entities are involved, we need to define separate accounting setup for each legal entity, which require it's own primary ledger. So ledgers have to be defined for each legal entity separately.

The need for other legal entity depends on Chart of Accounts, calendar, Currency, Accounting Method and Ledger processing options. If a legal entity requires any one of the above attributes to be different, a separate primary ledger is required.

Chart of accounts refers to the number of segments that a Chart of accounts structure consistes of.
Calendar refers to the type of accounting calendar that a legal entity uses. Ex: Monthly or Quarterly Calendar.
Currency refers to the primary currency that a legal entity belongs to.
Accounting Method refers to the subledger accounting methods based on the different accounting standards that a legal entity operates.
Ledger Options refers to the options that control how journals and transactiones are processed for a ledger.
Ex: Journal approval, Suspense account, Average balances, Intracompany balancing option, etc.

If we assign Legal entities to the accounting structure, we must assign specific balancing segment values to legal entities to identify and secure transactions by legal entity.

2. Define Accounting Representations: 

Here we need to define Primary and Secondary ledgers to make the Accounting representation.

Primary Ledgers are mandatory. We need to define the primary ledger for each legal entity and accounting setup.

Secondary ledgers are optional.  Secondary ledgers have to be assigned to the accounting setup or primary ledger to maintain multiple accounting representations for the same legal entity. A secondary ledger can differ in one or more of the following attributes from primary ledger.
Chart of Accounts,
Currency,
Calendar,
Accounting Convention

Secondary ledgers can be maintained at different levels such as:
Subledger level
Journal level
Balance level
Adjustments

In this step we can map the ledgers to  chart of accounts and assign currency, calendar, subledger accounting method and reporting currency.

Reporting currencies have to be assigned when you want diferent currency representation to primary or secondary ledgers.  Reporting currencies must share same chart of accounts,calendar,accounting method and ledger processing options as their source ledger. Reporting currencies can be assigned at different levels.
Subledger level
Journal level
Balance level

We can not use subledger level reporting currencies for secondary ledgers.

3. Save Accounting structure: This step is to review and complete the accounting setup.