By Aijaz Ansari, MBA

Oracle Payments is an application within Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 12. It serves as the fund’s capture and disbursement engine across Oracle EBS R12.

Acting as the central payment engine, Oracle Payments processes transactions such as:
1. Invoice payments from Oracle Payables
2. Bank account transfers from Oracle Cash Management
3. Settlements against credit cards and bank accounts from Oracle Receivables

Additionally, Oracle Payments provides the infrastructure to connect these applications and others with third-party payment systems and financial institutions.

The new Oracle Payments system combines Funds Disbursement and Funds Capture into a single centralized payment engine. As a result, organizations quickly generate enterprise-wide payments across multiple business units, currencies, and regions, resulting in accelerated and straight-through processing rates.

Payment Factory Processing

The Payment Factory model generates payments from a pool of user-defined/configured payments for the most efficient payment processing. This results in a powerful and efficient payment solution. Payments are combined within Oracle from multiple batches submitted by the Payables team to form the appropriate payments by printing payment documents or generating electronic files. In addition, the Funds Disbursement Process Dashboard is configured to determine the processing option best for you.

Oracle Payments also manages the interfaces between E-Business Suite products and financial institutions such as banks and credit card processors. Multiple applications can leverage the same functionality by centralizing the payment processing into one payment engine. Previously, in Release 11i, the same functionality would be an element of several different products. For example, Direct Debits functionality was contained in the Receivables, iPayment, and Global Financials modules; and Check Printing functionality could be found in both the Payables and Global Financial modules. This created redundancy between the systems and was an ineffective use of resources. Now, in Oracle Release 12, a single payment processing solution is leveraged.

Oracle iPayment no longer exists in Release 12. Previous iPayment functionality has been replaced by the new Oracle Payments application Funds Disbursement Process (FDP) Dashboard.

Users can also manage the creation of payment instructions and the generation of payments and reporting, such as the payment instruction register from the Funds Disbursement Process (FDP) Dashboard. Users monitor the payment instruction process and take appropriate action when required, including the payment confirmation. The form includes quick searches, links to standard Processing functions, a list of payment instruction pending actions, and a list of payment process requests completed with Quick Links to submit payment instruction registers and separate remittance advice. Drilling down payment details from the home page is also a handy feature. Finally, graphical metrics are included on the dashboard detailing the previous year’s straight-through processing rate and error count. Because this dashboard supports the segregation of duties, “submit” functions do not default in this menu, and users cannot submit Payment Process Requests. “Submit” actions are initiated from the Payables Payments Dashboard. While Funds Disbursement is the payment of monies from the organization, the Funds Capture process represents bringing monies into the company. The end-to-end processing of the fund’s capture begins when a transaction is entered, captures the necessary payment information, and subsequently requests authorization from Oracle Payments. The Payments engine then authorizes the transaction.

Routing rules (configured in Oracle) determine how the transaction will be processed and which third-party payment system is used. On the settlement side, Receivables sends a request for settlement, and the payment engine manages that request and sends it to the payment system. The Payments application also queries the payment system to acknowledge that the transaction was processed successfully. The new Payment module replaces the functionality of iPayment in Release 11i, making it obsolete in Release 12. Since Payments relies heavily on XML Publisher, format templates can be created and maintained for payment processing. With over 120 XML templates from which to choose, companies can easily keep their payment documents more quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion
The centralization of payment processing in Oracle Payments offers organizations many benefits:
1. Companies can efficiently centralize payment across multiple business units, currencies, and regions.
2. Improved management of working capital.
3. Improved visibility of cash inflows and outflows.
4. Greater flexibility and efficiencies in payment generation.
5. Enables corporate compliance and standardization across the entire Payment Process.

If you have questions about the functionality of Oracle Payments or other Release 12 applications, our consultants will be happy to speak with you. Send us an email at information@projectp.com and let us know how we can assist.