Technical Terms in Oracle Apps

The below example explains a few of the important terms and concepts used in the Oracle E-Business Suite.
This would be a good starting point for the beginners to better understand the concepts behind Oracle
Applications.

Say Harry is the owner of a wholesale fruit shop. He buys various fruits like apples, oranges, mangos and
grapes etc from farmers directly and sells them to retail shop owners and also to the direct customers.

The farmers are referred to as VENDORS/SUPPLIERS in Oracle Applications. Harry keeps track of all his
vendors’ information like addresses, bank account and the amount he owes to them for the fruits that he
bought etc, in a book named PAYABLES.

Harry gets an order from a retail shop owner of Fruit Mart, for a shipment of 11 bags of apples, 25 bags of
oranges and 32 kgs of grapes. In Oracle Apps, bags and kgs are referred to as UOM (unit of measure), Fruit
Mart is called CUSTOMER and the order is referred to as SALES ORDER. Harry maintains a book called ORDER
MANAGEMENT where he writes down all the details of the SALES ORDERS that he gets from his customers.

Say the fruits have been shipped to the customer Fruit Mart. Harry now sends him the details like cost of
each bag/fruit, the total amount that the customer has to pay etc on a piece of paper which is called
INVOICE / TRANSACTION. Once the INVOICE has been sent over, the customer then validates this against the
actual quantity of fruits that he received and will process the payments accordingly. The invoice amount
could be paid as a single amount or could be paid in installments. Harry’s customer, Fruit Mart pays him in
installments (partial payments). So Harry has to make a note of the details like date received, amount
received, amount remaining, amount received for what goods/shipments/invoice etc, when Harry receives
the payments. This detail is called RECEIPT, which will be compared to the invoice by Harry to find how
much Fruit Mart has paid to him and how much has to be paid yet. This information is maintained in a book
named RECEIVABLES to keep track of all the customers, their addresses (to ship the items), what and how
much he has shipped to his customers and the amount his customers owe him etc.

Harry’s fruit business has begun to improve and has attracted more and more customers. As a result, Harry
decided to buy a cold storage unit where he could stock more fruits. In Apps, this cold storage unit is known
as WAREHOUSE and all the fruits are referred to as INVENTORY. Due to increase in customers, Harry needs
to hire more people to help him out in his business without any hiccups. These workers are called
EMPLOYEES. At the end of every month, Harry pays the salary for all his employees through Checks. These
checks are nothing but PAYROLL in Apps.

At the end of every month, Harry prepares a balance sheet in a book called GENERAL LEDGER to determine
how much profit/loss he got and keeps track of the money going out and going in.

As the business grows, it becomes impossible to record everything on a paper. To make everybody’s life
easier, we have very good tools in the market, which help the business men to keep track of everything. One
such tool is Oracle E-Business Suite.

Oracle Applications is not a single application, but is a collection of integrated applications. Each application
is referred to as a module and has it own functionality trying to serve a business purpose.
Few of the modules are Purchasing, Accounts Payables, Accounts Receivables, Inventory, Order Management,
Human Resources, General Ledger, Fixed Assets etc.
Here is a high level business use of various modules:
Oracle Purchasing handles all the requisitions and purchase orders to the vendors.
Oracle Accounts Payables handles all the payments to the vendors.
Oracle Inventory deals with the items you maintain in stock, warehouse etc.
Order Management helps you collect all the information that your customers order.
Oracle Receivables help you collect the money for the orders that are delivered to the customers.
Oracle Human Resources helps maintain the Employee information, helps run paychecks etc.
Oracle General Ledger receives information from all the different transaction modules or sub ledgers and
summarizes them in order to help you create profit and loss statements, reports for paying Taxes etc. For
Example: when you pay your employees that payment is reported back to General Ledgers as cost i.e money
going out, when you purchase inventory items and the information is transferred to GL as money going out,
and so is the case when you pay your vendors. Similarly when you receive items into your inventory, it is
transferred to GL as money coming in, when your customer sends payment, it is transferred to GL as money
coming in. So all the different transaction modules report to GL (General Ledger) as either “money going in”
or “money going out”, the net result will tell you if you are making a profit or loss.
All the equipment, shops, warehouses, computers can be termed as ASSETS and they are managed by Oracle
Fixed Assets.

There is a lot more in Oracle applications. This is the very basic explanation just to give an idea of the flow
in ERP for the beginners.

1. Invoice
2. Receipt
3. Customer
4. Vendor
5. Buyer
6. Supplier
7. Purchase Order
8. Requisition
9. ACH: Account Clearance House

10. Sales Order

11. Pack Slip
12. Pick Slip
13. Drop Ship
14. Back Order
15. ASN: Advance Shipping Notice
16. ASBN: Advance Shipping Billing Notice
17. ATP: Available to Promise
18. Lot/Serial Number
19.
20. DFF: Descriptive Flex Fields
21. KFF: Key Flex Fields
22. Value Sets
23. Organization
24. Business Unit
25. Multi Org
26. Folders
27. WHO Columns

27. Oracle Reports

28. Oracle Form
29. Workflow Builder
30. Toad
31. SQL Developer
32. SQL Navigator
33. Discoverer Reports
34. XML/BI Publisher
35. ADI: Application Desktop Integrator
36. Winscp
37. Putty