The Accounts Receivable function is responsible for managing outgoing invoices to customers who purchased goods or services, and the collection and application of all payments, including payments for invoices.  The Oracle Receivables module (a part of the Oracle EBS Financials Suite) helps the Accounts Receivable departments to manage this function effectively and efficiently.

This post describes a summary of the Oracle Receivables data model and data flow.  Some of these tables are source tables for the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications – Financial Analytics module, specifically providing information for the Payabales dashboard.

To be in the position where you need to handle and process a payment in Receivables, you need to have a buyer/payer (most times this is a customer but there are exceptions). Customer records are stored in the HZ_CUST_ACCOUNTS and HZ_PARTIES tables.  Each customer needs to have a site (a location/address of business) for which information is stored in HZ_CUST_ACCT_SITES_ALL and HZ_PARTY_SITES_ALL.

When a customer purchases goods or services from your company, an invoice is generated for the customer.  These invoice transactions are recorded in RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_ALL (invoice headers) and RA_CUSTOMER_TRX_LINES_ALL (invoice lines).

When the customer makes a payment, this generates new transactions.  These are recorded in AR_CASH_RECEIPTS_ALL and AR_CASH_RECEIPT_HISTORY.  If there is adjustment to an invoice, this is recorded in AR_ADJUSTMENTS.

Sometimes payments are received in batches, where a single payment is for multiple invoices.  These batch payments have records in AR_BATCHES.

The AR_PAYMENT_SCHEDULE table holds one record per payment.  Therefore, for payments that pay an invoice in full, there will only be one record related to that invoice.  However, if payments for an invoice are broken up into a payment plan, or if a partial payment is received for an invoice, additional records will be generated in this table for each payment.

I mentioned above that “most times payments are from customers, but there are exceptions”. An example of an exception is “payment from a bank for interest earned”.  The payment is not from a customer and it’s not for goods/services provided.  These types of payments are recorded in AR_MISC_CASH_DISTRIBUTIONS.

These transactions affect accounting which will eventually make their way to the GL (when the Receivables Transfer to GL program is run). The accounting transactions are generated in RA_CUST_TRX_LINE_GL_DIST and AR_RECEIVABLE_APPLICATIONS.