Oracle EBS General Ledger data flow and data model

In just about any ERP financial accounting system, including Oracle EBS General Ledger, the General Ledger module is integrated with other modules, such as Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. The General Ledger will collect and store financial activity information from the other modules, and will be the module that best reflects the overall financial condition of the company. Because of this, the General Ledger is typically heavily used for financial reporting from OBIEE, OBIA, or other tools.

This post aims to provide a quick overview of the data model of Oracle EBS General Ledger and the data flow within the module.

Oracle General Ledger is a part of the Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Application. Many of the other Oracle Applications modules are integrated with Oracle General Ledger, and send transactions to the General Ledger in the form of journals.

For example, when a company receives an invoice, the transaction is entered into Oracle Payables; and then when the invoice is paid, another transaction is generated in Oracle Payables. There could be tens, hundreds or even thousands of these transactions per day. This activity is recorded in the Oracle General Ledger in the form of journals.

Similarly, when a company makes a sale, and then when payment is received for that sale, those transactions are recorded in the Oracle Receivables module, and the transactions are also passed on to the Oracle General Ledger with the Transfer program.

Below is a diagram of Oracle General Ledger’s data flow and some of the key tables in the data model.

Oracle EBS Modules and External Systems populate the GL_INTERFACE table through the Transfer program and Load programs respectively. The Journal Import Process takes those records and loads them into the GL_JE_BATCHES, GL_JE_HEADER and GL_JE_LINES tables. The Posting Process calculates and loads balances from those records into the GL_BALANCES table.

The tables covered here are some of the sources for the OBIA star schemas (fact and dimension tables) used in OBIA Financials, and in particular, the General Ledger dashboard and analyses.

GL_INTERFACE	This table holds financial transactions (journals) transferred from other Oracle Applications modules and external systems.
GL_JE_BATCHES	This table identifies a “batch” of journals that are related and processed together. Each batch contains one or more journals.
GL_JE_HEADER	Each journal has one journal header and one record this table
GL_JE_LINES	Each journal has one or more journal lines and are tied together by the journal header

Some other important supporting tables in the GL data model include:

GL_CODE_COMBINATIONS	This is the Accounting Flexfield table and it stores the chart of accounts values, and so the table contains the valid GL account combinations allowed in the system, along with other relevant information about the accounts.
GL_LEDGERS	This table stores all the Ledgers and Ledger Sets in the Oracle GL system
GL_PERIODS	This table stores information about the accounting periods defined in the Oracle GL system. Each row contains information such as, start date, end date of the period, the period type, the fiscal year, and the period number.
FND_CURRIENCIES	This table stores the list of valid currencies to be used in Oracle Applications