Oracle Cloud Financials 24A Release: What's New?
Tags: oracle, cloud
Published: 2024-01-29 11:39:23

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The 24A release from Oracle Cloud includes a range of new features and updates to the Financials module. Without proper testing, improperly implemented changes can jeopardize business continuity and even lead to system downtime.

To avoid this, Oracle customers need a comprehensive testing strategy for the Oracle Cloud Financials 24A update. Thorough testing, enabled by test automation, allows users to concentrate on how to take advantage of the new capabilities that Oracle has released.

**What are the best practices for testing the Oracle Cloud Financials 24A Release**?

- Define the scope of testing. Decide which tests are necessary and which are not during the quarterly Oracle Financials Cloud update.

- Quickly implement sanity tests in order to guarantee business continuity.

- Determine which Financials business processes should be automated and which still need to be tested manually.

- Use impact analysis reports to illustrate the differences between releases.

**What specific technical changes should you expect from the Oracle Cloud Financials 24A Release**?

- Users can now download and install the latest version of the 
Oracle ADF Desktop Integration add-in, version 5.1.5.26625.  

- With the 24A Oracle fusion update, Business Intelligence View Objects (BIVOs) that are deprecated are no longer available for extraction using BI Cloud Connector.  

- The Receivables XML invoice extract will include additional data elements as required by the mandates in several countries. This reduces the need for implementation-specific change.  

- The Oracle 24A financial update allows to use the Zengin Format for Japan REST API to upload alternate payer name mapping rules for Japanese customer bank accounts in bulk.

**Functional Changes from the Oracle Cloud Financials 24A Release**

**Common Financials**  

- Users can now Auto-Post Journals process to post journal entries for all ledgers across all data access sets assigned to them at the time of submission.

**Taxes**  

- Oracle has enabled automated tax partner integration with Avalara for tax compliances.

**Payables**  

- The Payables Exception Report has been added which allows to view invoice exceptions grouped by exception categories, for specific exceptions to resources for review and resolution.

- Suppliers can now be selected for dynamic discounting campaigns based on payment terms, method, and currency, maximizing campaign effectiveness by enabling the campaign manager to choose suppliers with longer payment terms.

**Expenses**  

- The resubmitted expenses shall be evaluated using audit rules to identify duplicate expenses.

**Receivables**  

- By using the program ‘Review transaction information without sweep’ or ‘Sweep transactions to next accounting period’ we can sweep Invalid Receivables Transactions to a future Accounting Period.

- Third-party tax registration numbers can automatically be assigned to Receivables transactions during transaction creation. Now we can optionally enable automatic assignment of the legal entity third-party tax registration number to the bill-to customer during Receivables transaction creation.

**General Ledger**  

-Attachments Audit can be enabled on the journal attachments files to track and assess all attachment activities such as insert/check in, delete, update and download activities.

- Secondary ledger can be assigned as a subset of the primary balancing segment values that are assigned to the primary ledger and its legal entities. This effectively enables organizations to populate secondary ledgers for specific legal entities when the primary ledger represents multiple legal entities or countries.

**Project Financial Management**  

**Billing & Revenue Management**  

- This new feature means that once you click on the Task list, the new field will be added. You can now configure the contract validation rules of type Warning and enable or disable them as required.  

- From the Documents tab, now manage your signed contract document in its own document category, separate from other supporting documents  

**Cost Management & Control**  

- In this feature, check for funds availability, reserve funds against control budgets, and account for encumbrances, if applicable, when procuring material to an inventory destination for sponsored or non-sponsored projects.

**Planning, Scheduling & Forecasting**
  

- Perform a detailed impact assessment on the project budget and then automatically update the budget when the change is approved. For example, record a change for a specific task and assignment and view the overall impact on the project budget.

- Upon stakeholder approval, implement these changes to the project budget automatically. Automation improves accuracy during assessment and implements the changes without any further involvement from the change order owner.

**Resource Management**  

- Designate qualifications on the project resource request as mandatory or optional. Resources that have mandatory qualifications in their talent profile appear in the results when searching and evaluating qualified candidates for a request.

- Project managers can specify the required qualifications at a role level or at an individual resource request level.

**How can Opkey help**?

We understand that Oracle Financial clients will only have two weeks to verify that existing business processes are not adversely affected by these changes. This can be a challenge, but test automation is already changing the way companies test and reducing quarterly update times from weeks down to 3 days. Opkey's managed Oracle Cloud quarterly certification will assist you in successfully navigating through the Oracle Cloud’s 24A update.

Here's how we accomplish this:

Quickly implement our pre-built accelerator library, which has over 7,000+ Oracle Cloud business components and 1000+ pre-built test scripts for different Financials modules.
Prior to updates, Opkey provides a detailed advisory document that describes the specific changes to be expected.
Our Impact Analysis reports compare as-is and to-be processes, highlighting major changes that need to be evaluated.