Journals in Oracle apps

Journal entries are the entering/recording of financial transactions and their monetary value in the transaction accounts of the accounting journal as debits or credits.

Journal entry is strating point of the accounting cycle , Journals are first created for any accounting entry and are then take forward.

For a business any transaction that affects the finances of the business needs to be recorded in the general ledger with proper accounting entries. Oracle creates journal entries for these transactions. Each transaction will have minimum 2 entries one debit and other credit to keep a track of the transaction and its financial impact.

In a complete EBS setup Oracle will receive journal transaction details from various modules:

• Purchasing
• Payables
• Assets
• Receivables
• Work In Progress
• Inventory
• Payroll
• Projects

Using the functionalities provided in EBS we can perform a number of actions on journals

• Creating journal entries
• uploading journals
• import journals
• Reverse journals
• Post journals
• Journal inquiry
• drill down to subledgers
• Run Reports

Types of Journal Entires:

1. Basic Journal Entries: This type of journal entry is used for most journal transactions to record revenues,expenses,accruals , adjustsments and re-classifications. 
2. Reversal Entries: These journals are created for reversing an error, revaluation or encumberance journals. The reverse journals are created either by switching debits and credits or by changing the signs. The reverse entires can be posted in the same or a future acccouting period
3. Recurring Entries : There might be scenarios where some transaction journals will be created on a recurring basis. Recurring journals can be defined for automatic consolidation and elimination of such journals
4. Mass Allocation: Journal entries that utlize a single journal entry to allocate revenues,expenses across a set of centers,departments etc.

Journal Creation Methods :

Journal Import: This is one of the commonest method of Journal creation in which the data is populated into the GL Interface by the different modules or third part systems and then journal is created by running the journal import process.

Web ADI : Another method of journal creation is to upload the data via Web ADI through spreadsheets which will create journals.

Manual: As the name suggests is the journal creation method in which Journals are manually created by the users using the oracle screen

Journal parts:

When Journals are created in the system it will be affecting 3 tables: gl_batches , gl_je_headers and gl_je_lines

When ever a journal is created the system will create a journal batch in which this journal will be included..

Each journal will have 1 journal header and 2 or more journal lines.

The journal header will have details of the journal header and the lines will have details of the journal line ie which accounts have been affected by the journal by which amounts and the debit  or credit amounts.