How to setup Oracle iExpenses

Here is a summary of steps to set up Oracle Internet Expenses. iExpenses is basically an extension Oracle Payables. Employee and Continget Worker expense reports become supplier invoices and get paid from Payables. You will need following responsibilties to set up Internet Expenses: Payables Manager, Internet Expenses Setup and Administration, System Administration, Application Developer, and AX Developer. If you are also planning on charging expense reports to projects, you will also need Project Billing Super User and General Ledger Super User responsibilities. You will also need access to Oracle Workflow Builder to customize the Expenses workflow and Project Expense Reports Account Generator.

Oracle Internet Expenses Setup Steps:

Step 1: PA: Enable Project Expenditure Types for Expense Report Entry.

Navigation: Project Billing Super User: Setup > Expenditures > Expenditure Types. Enable expenditure types to be used on project-related expense reports. Enable selected expenditure types with an Expenditure Type Class ‘Expense Reports’. You need to associate these expenditure types with Expense Type you define in the Expesen Report Template (next step).

Step 2: AP: Define Expense Report Templates

Navigation: Payables Manager: Setup > Invoice > Expense Report Template. You must define at least one expense report template with the Enable for Internet Expenses Users check box selected. Only expense report templates with this option enabled can be used in Internet Expenses. Use the Oracle Payables Expense Report Templates window to define your expense report templates. Default default natural account for non-project expenses. For project-related expenses, associate your expense types with project expenditure types.

Step 3: AP: Define Financials Options > Accounting

Navigation: Payables Manager: Setup > Options > Financials. You define the Expense Clearing Account in the Oracle Payables Financials Options window. This will be a default liability account for iExpenses expenses reports imported into Oracle Payables. The Expense Clearing Account field is also available in the Card Program window. If you define the Expense Clearing Account field in the Card Program window, the value you define there will take precedence over the value in the Oracle Payables Financial Options window.

Step 4: AP: Define Financials Options > Human Resources

Navigation: Payables Manager: Setup > Options > Financials. Use the Payables Financials Options window to define the Expense Report Reimbursement Address and Employee Numbering Method.

Step 5: AP: Establish Multiple Currencies Setup

Navigation: Payables Manager: Setup > Options > Payables > Currency. The currency in which an expense report is paid is known as the reimbursement currency. Internet Expenses users can specify a reimbursement currency that is different from your company functional currency only ifOracle Payables is set up for multiple currencies.

Step 6: AP: Defining Expense Report Options

Navigation: Payables Manager: Setup > Options > Payables > Expense Reports. Define the fields below:

* Default Template. The default expense report template that you want to use in the Payables Expense Reports window. You can override this value in the Expense Reports window. A default expense report template appears in the Expense Reports window only if the expense report template is active.

* Payment Terms. Payment terms you want to assign to any suppliers that you create from employees during Expense Report Import. Define and assign immediate payment terms for your employee suppliers.

* Pay Group. Pay Group you want to assign to employee expense reports, e.g. EMPLOYEES. You must define this pay group in the Purchasing Lookups window.

* Payment Priority. Payment priority for employee expense reports. Choose a number between 1 (high) and 99 (low) to be the priority of employee payments.

* Apply Advances. If you enable this option, Payables applies advances to employee expense reports if the employee has any outstanding, available advances. You can override this default during expense report entry.

* Automatically Create Employee as Supplier. You must enable this option, if you want to import employee expense reports and automatically create a supplier for any expense report where an employee does not already exist as a supplier.

* Hold Unmatched Expense Reports. This option defaults to the Hold Unmatched Invoices option for the supplier and supplier site for any suppliers Payables creates during Expense Report Import.

Step 7: AP: Assign Signing Limits

Navigation: Payables Manager: Employees > Signing Limits. Managers can approve an expense report only if the total amount of the report does not exceed their signing limit defined in Accounts Payable. When you assign signing limits to a manager, you specify a cost center to which the signing limit applies. You have to give managers signing limits for multiple cost centers, if employees from multiple cost centers submit expense reports to him/her.

Step 8: OIE: Define iExpense Policies

Navigation: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration: Internet Expenses Setup > Policy > Expense Fields. Use the pages in the Policy region to set up online policy compliance and perdiem and mileage rates.

* Schedules. Create rate and policy schedules for your employees to use when they submit expense reports.

* Expense Fields. Set up expense fields to capture additional information on expense reports.

* Exchange Rates. Set up exchange rate definitions to validate the exchange rates that employees enter on their expense reports for foreign currency receipts.

Step 9: OIE: Enable Expense Allocations

Navigation: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration: Internet Expenses Setup > Accounting > Define. There are two tasks to complete for setting up expense allocations:

* Use the Internet Expenses Setup responsibility to define which segments of the accounting flexfield segments are visible and updatable by the user.

* Use the OIE: Enable Expense Allocations profile option to enable expense allocations according to your requirements. You can set the display of accounting flexfieldsegments and online validation as user-defineable or automatic.

Step 10: OIE: Define Receipt Notification Rule Set

Navigation: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration: Internet Expenses Setup > Audit > Notification Rules. Create one or more notification rule sets to determine when to send notifications to users for overdue or missing receipts.

Step 11: OIE: Assign Receipt Notification Rule Set

Navigation: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration: Internet Expenses Setup > Audit > Notification Rule Assignments. Use the Notification rule set assignments pages to assign the notification rule sets that you created to the operating units that you want.

Step 12: OIE: Define Mileage Rate Schedule.

Navigation: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration: Internet Expenses Setup > Policy > Schedules > Mileage. A mileage rate schedule can take into account distance traveled, type and category of vehicle, type of fuel, and the number of passengers. Set up one or more mileage rate schedules and schedule periods that you require for employee expense reporting.

Step 13: AP: Complete Mileage Expense Type Definition in Payables

Navigation: Payables Manager > Setup > Invoice > Expense Report Templates. Find the expenses template, find the mileage expense type, and assign the Mileage Schedule.

Step 14: SA: Define New iExpenses Responsibilities

Navigation: System Administration: Security > Responsibility. Create a new iExpenses responsibility.

Step 15: SA: Define OIE Profile Options

Navigation: System Administration: Profile > System. Set Internet Expenses related profile options according to your business requirements. Below is a brief description of each profile.

OIE: Allow Credit Lines. Set the profile option to Yes to enable users to enter negative receipts (credit lines). Users enter negative receipts to report the refund of a previously reimbursed expense, for example, an unused airline ticket. The default value is Yes.

OIE: Enable Credit Card. Set the profile option to Yes to enable the credit card functionality to allow users with corporate credit cards to select and add credit card transactions to their expense reports.

OIE: Allow Non-Base Pay. Set the profile option to Yes to enable users to choose the reimbursement currency for their expense reports. You must set up Payables to use multiple currencies before you can enable this profile option.

OIE: CC Approver Req profile option indicates whether users must enter an alternate approver when they charge their expense reports to a cost center different from their own. Set the profile option to Yes to require employees to enter the Alternate Approver field when employees enter a cost center other than their default cost center. If you set this profile option to Yes, you must also set the OIE: Enable Approver profile option to Yes.

OIE: CC Payment Notify. Use the profile option to specify whether a notification is sent to employees when payment is created in Oracle Payables for corporate credit card transactions. The default value is No.

OIE: Enable DescFlex profile option enables Internet Expenses to display descriptive flexfields. You must set up descriptive flexfields specifically for use in Internet Expenses before you can enable this option.

OIE: Enable Projects profile option enables users to enter project-related information on expense reports. You must set up Internet Expenses to integrate with Oracle Projects before you can enable this option.

OIE: Enable Tax profile option enables the availability of tax-related elements on expense reports.

OIE: Enable Approver profile option enables the Alternate Approver field in Internet Expenses. When this profile option is set to Yes, the Alternate Approver field is available for users to specify a different employee to approve their expense report. When this profile option is set to No, the Alternate Approver field is hidden.

OIE: Approver Required profile option indicates whether users must designate an approver for their expense reports. If you set it to Yes, Internet Expenses requires that users always enter an alternate approver as defined in Oracle HRMS.

OIE: Purpose Required profile option controls whether users must enter a purpose when creating an expense report. A purpose is a brief description of the business activities that justify the expenses in a report

OIE: Report Number Prefix profile option specifies a prefix value for expense report numbers, e.g. EXP-. The expense report number becomes the corresponding invoice number when the expense report is converted into an invoice via the Expense Report Import program.

OIE: Grace Period profile option specifies the number of grace period days beyond an end date that certain OIE setup items remain available for use. The default value is 30.

OIE: Enable Policy profile option controls the behavior of Internet Expenses in relation to reports that contain policy violations.

OIE: Enable Expense Allocations profile option determines whether an end user can update the cost center segment value on an expense line.

PA: Allow Project Time and Expense Entry profile option enables users to enter project-related information on expense reports. If you set this option to Yes, then you must set the OIE: Enable Projects profile option to Yes as well.

PA: AutoApprove Expense Reports profile option permits automatic approval of project-related expense reports.

Journals: Display Inverse Rate profile option determines how the reimbursable amount is calculated when users enter foreign currency receipts. When this profile option is set to No, the receipt amount is multiplied by the exchange rate to determine the reimbursable amount. When it is set to Yes, the receipt amount is divided by the exchange rate. The default value is No.

AME: Installed profile option enables the integration between Internet Expenses and Oracle Approvals Management. Enabling this profile disables Oracle Workflow expense report approvals!

WF: Notification Reassign Mode profile option determines the forwarding functionality that is available to employees. See Do You Want to Delegate or Transfer That Oracle Notification? article.

WF: Mailer Cancellation Email profile option enables the functionality that sends the cancellation notifications when time outs are reached for a notification and a new notification is sent because of resend setup.

Step 16: WF: Customize Project Expense Report Account Generator.

This step will be described in detail in a separate IAF article.

Step 17: GL: Assign Your Customized Project Expense Report Account Generator to your chart of accounts

Navigation: General Ledger Super User: Setup > Financials > Flexfields > Key > Accounts. Select your accounting structure to which you want to assign the process. Find the Project Expense Report Account Generator Item Type. Select a Process Name you define in the previous step. Save your changes.

Step 18: SA: Define a new OIEADMIN Role

Navigation: System Administrator: Security > Users. Create a new Oracle OIEADMIN user. Run the Synchronize Local WF tables process every time you make changes to user setup.

Step 19: WF: Define Workflow Notification Performers.

Perform the steps in Oracle Workflow Builder to set up expense report performers. This step will be documented in detail later on.

Step 20: Personalize Expense Report Submission Instructions

* As System Administrator: Set profile option ‘Personalize Self-Service Defn’ to Yes.

* Navigate to Expenses Home page in your iExpenses responsibility

* Create and submit an expense report

* In the Confirmation page, click the Personalize Submission Instructions Header link in the Submission Instructions region.

* In the Choose Personalization Context page, enter Your Business Group in the Organization field and click Apply.

* In the Personalize Region page, click Personalize for the Raw Text item.

* In the Personalize Raw Text page, select False for the Rendered row at the Site level, then click Apply.

* In the Personalize Region page, click Create Item for the Header: Submission Instructions item.

* In the Create Item page, select the “Raw Text” value from the Item Style list.

* Complete the page according to your business requirements: ID = XYZ_SUBMISSION_INSTRUCTIONS Text: Include the text message. Add Your Company’s Submission Instructions Here. Click Apply.

* In the Personalize Region page, click Personalize for the message you created.

* In the Personalize Raw Text page, enter a message in the Text field for the appropriate level, then click Apply.

* In the Personalize Region page, click Return to Application.

* As System Administrator: Set profile option ‘Personalize Self-Service Defn’ to No.

Step 21: AD: Compile the Expense Types Descriptive flexfield.

Navigation: Application Developer: Application > Validation > Set

* Query value set name ‘OIE_EXPENSE_TYPES’.

* Click Edit Information. In the Table Columns section, for the ID column, change the Size to 30 and Save.

* Navigate: Flexfield > Descriptive > Segments

* Query the Title ‘Expense Report Line’

* Freeze and compile the Expense Report Line Flexfield.

Step 22: Enable the Display of Project and Task

Navigation: AK Developer responsibility. Navigate to the Define Regions window. Use the Region Items window to enable the display of project and task information. You need to perform this step in order to view projects and tasks in View Expense Report History:

* Query the region ICX_AP_EXP_LINES_D.

* Choose Region Items to navigate to the Region Items window.

* Query the region items ICX_PROJECT_NUMBER item (ATTRIBUTE_NAME).

* Check the Node Display box for these region items.

* Query the region items ICX_TASK_NUMBER item (ATTRIBUTE_NAME).

* Check the Node Display box for these region items.

* Save your work.

Other Configuration Considerations

* Make sure all expense approving managers are set up as Oracle users.

* Make sure every employee is assigned to one Oracle user only!

* Submit the Synchronize WF LOCAL tables process regurarly to update the Workflow resource information