What is the Difference Between SAP and Oracle Financials?

When it comes to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), many clients ask which is better between SAP and Oracle Financials. It is because both can offer numerous benefits to different types of businesses, but only one can perform the best for a particular business. So, which is better for your business?
What is SAP (Systems, Applications and Products)?
In data processing, SAP is an acronym for Systems, Applications and Products. It is an ERP application or software, which integrates various business applications. It allows tracking of productions, sales, accounting, human resources, and accounting in an enterprise. It also allows real time management to businesses.
Typically, information systems (IS) are used for various kinds of businesses to manage several business processes including accounting, sales, and production. Each IS maintained its own databases as well as interactions between every system connected to IS. The maintenance and interactions of the systems are completed in a scheduled manner. SAP, on the other hand, maintains one information system for an enterprise and all applications access the common data only. The interaction between applications occurs when there is a real business event that happened. For instance, when there are events in productions and sales that occurred, accounting will be done automatically.
SAP became popular because of providing a complete solution to the standard business requirements including accounting, financial management, human resources, and manufacturing. It incorporates several concepts in ERP and BPR or Business Process Reengineering into integrated solutions.
SAP is software that was marketed and developed by SAP AG, a German company. The company was founded in the year of 1972 by the IBM application developers. As time passed by, the company continues to grow rapidly, and various applications were developed for several companies like Fortune 500.
The purpose why SAP was developed is to provide support to all business activities of enterprises by integrating an efficient and effective solution. But, according to experts in data processing, SAP is not the answer to all of your problems in operating your business successfully. It is not also an alternative for good planning, and it requires involvement of the users because not all transactions in the system are automatic. That is the reason why you must not expect that after implementing SAP, all your problems will disappear. It is because SAP has also both advantages and disadvantages.
When using SAP, it is essential to pay importance on the commitment of users when implementing it to ensure effective use. Once you have implemented SAP, there are several benefits that you may experience. Some of these benefits include information integrity, smaller amount of workload, cost optimization, easy to measure results, and fast customer transaction.
SAP also has different modules. These include finance, material management, controlling, production planning, and sales and distribution. Each module has its own purpose, and once the implementation of these modules is successful, any company will experience better resource management. Their customers will also experience the highest level of customer satisfaction because of the easy and fast transaction without committing any mistakes.
What is Oracle Financials?
Oracle Financials is one of the products included in the Oracle E-Business Suite. It is a collection of applications, which can serve as a solution to your problems in daily transactions and processes of your business. Although the majority of the experts stated that Oracle Financials is not the key to solve your business issues, the implementation of Oracle Financials can still be a good idea to achieve all your business goals because implementing this system can be an efficient way to satisfy your customers.
The products of Oracle Financials aim to provide solutions to types of accounting system issues of different kinds of businesses. No matter what size of your company is, Oracle Financials will help you meet your demands in accounting management with the implementation of several modules including:
Oracle Assets- sees to it that the equipment investment and property of an organization is accurate to ensure that the asset tax accounting methods you have chosen are correct.
Oracle GL (General Ledger)- this provides a complete and integrated solution to budgeting, financial reporting needs, allocations, and consolidation.
Oracle Inventory- this helps organizations make better decisions in inventory through eliminating stock and by increasing cash flow.
Oracle Order Entry- this provides an organization a sophisticated and efficient system for order entry to manage customer commitments.
Oracle Personnel- this improves employee management and other issues that are related to retaining and maintaining personnel data.
Oracle Payables- allows businesses to process many invoice with a fewer number of staff members. If your company is just starting in the industry, this might help you save money by bank float, duplicate payment prevention, and maximum discounts.
Oracle Purchasing- this enhances the buying power, eliminates the paper flow, boosts productivity, increases financial controls, and can assist you in negotiating bigger discounts.
Oracle Cash Management- allows you to perform cash forecasting and bank reconciliation.
Oracle Revenue Accounting- provides businesses accurate and timely revenue. It also gives flexible commissions reporting.
Main Difference Between Oracle Financials and SAP
The main difference between Oracle Financials and SAP is the level of complexity. Based from the statements of experts in ERP market, SAP is much complicated compared to Oracle. SAP can be used or integrated in different business applications while the Oracle Financials can be used in the enterprise environments. SAP lets users experience real time management while Oracle only allows management of data in the enterprise.
Overall, both SAP and Oracle Financials can provide you benefits, which will help you achieve your goals and reach the top of success. You can choose any from the two, but see to it that your chosen ERP software is best suited to the needs of your business to avoid any inconvenience in the future.
If you can’t still choose one from the two options, you can consider hiring IT experts or availing their services. They might help you pick the right ERP software that will take your business into the next level. Just make sure that your hired experts are knowledgeable with the main differences and benefits of both SAP and Oracle Financials.

Automatic Offsets and Invoice Processing

Overview of Automatic Offsets and Invoice Processing

If you enable Automatic Offsets and choose the Balancing method, then Payables automatically allocates an invoice’s liability amount across multiple balancing segments according to the balancing segments on the invoice distributions. This ensures that invoices always balance by balancing segment.
If you enable Automatic Offsets and choose the Account method, then Payables automatically allocates an invoice’s liability amount across each unique combination of segments other than the account segment on the invoice distributions.
Payables creates the liability accounting entries when you create accounting entries for an invoice. You can review these accounts in the View Accounting Lines window.
If you do not enable Automatic Offsets, Payables records the invoice liability using the liability account on the invoice, which defaults from the supplier site. When you distribute invoice distributions across multiple balancing segments, the invoice will not balance by balancing segment.

How Payables Builds the Offsetting Liability Accounts

When you use Automatic Offsets and create accounting entries for the invoice, Payables automatically builds the offsetting liability account for each invoice distribution on the basis of the default liability account for the invoice. The liability account for an invoice defaults from the supplier site; however, you can override it during invoice entry. See: Accounting Region of the Suppliers and Supplier Sites windows; Invoices Window Reference.
When you enable Automatic Offsets, you choose one of two methods for building your offsetting accounts: Account or Balancing. See: Accounting Methods Payables Options.
If you select Balancing as your Automatic Offset Method, Payables takes the default liability account for the invoice, substitutes the balancing segment from the invoice distribution, and uses that as the distribution’s offsetting liability account.
If you select Account as your Automatic Offset Method, Payables takes the account used for the invoice distribution and substitutes the account segment from the default liability account for the invoice, preserving all other segment values.
Suggestion: Use this option if you want to carry all the detail from your invoice distributions on your offsetting accounts. For example, a manufacturing company that uses a product segment to record sales information may want to capture product segment values in the expense account, liability account, and cash account.

Balancing Segment method:

Example. You enable Automatic Offsets using the Balancing method, and your Accounting Flexfield structure is Balancing Segment-Cost Center-Account. Your default liability account for supplier site ABC is 000-000-2300. You enter an invoice for supplier site ABC and distribute it as follows:
DR Expense 101-100-4500 $60
DR Expense 200-201-4610 $40
Payables records the following liability account offsets:
CR Liability 101-000-2300 $60
CR Liability 200-000-2300 $40

Questions and Answers on FSG

1. How do I find the latest FSG patch that is available?
For the General Ledger Patch List, on MetaLink, click on Knowledge…From The Knowledge Browser tab, quick find Note:159239.1.
2. Is there a way to suppress zero amounts on the FSG Report?
You cannot suppress individual zero amounts in FSG. However, when all the values in a row or column are zero, you can have FSG suppress them all. To do this, make sure the Display Zero option is unchecked on the appropriate Rows or Columns window.
3. How do you print credit amounts on the FSG Report as positive instead of negative numbers?
For a related row or column definition, check the Change Sign checkbox. Credit amounts for this row or column will now print as positive numbers. Negative credits will print as negative numbers. Note that this changes the sign for display purposes only.
4. Can I display account descriptions on the FSG Report in addition to the account segment values?
Yes. You simply have to define a Row Order, then, assign it to your report. In your Row Order, set the Account Display options of the account segments for which you want to print descriptions. Select Value and Description as your segment display method. Also, make sure that you set the printing width, so there is enough room to print both the segment value and the description.
5. Is there a limit on how large a FSG Report can be?
Yes. The column set width of an FSG report cannot exceed 255 characters. In release 11i, the column set width can exceed 255 characters. (However, while printing, there is still a limit of 255 characters.)
6. What is the profile option ‘FSG: Expand parent value’ used for?
This profile option controls the expansion of parent values when requesting summary balances. The following values are available to you:
Yes: FSG uses the rollup group to determine whether to expand a parent value into its child ranges. If the parent value belongs to a rollup group, FSG does not expand the parent value into its child ranges. If the parent value does not belong to a rollup group, FSG expands the parent value into its child ranges.
No: FSG uses the summary flag associated with the flexfield assignment to determine whether to expand a parent value into its child ranges. If the summary flag is set to Yes, FSG does not expand the parent value into its child ranges. If the summary flag is set to No, FSG expands the parent value into its child ranges.
The default value for this profile option is No.
Note:1012620.102 provides more information regarding this profile option.
7. I am trying to display budget amounts in my reports but they are not showing up or are incorrect. What is wrong?
Since Oracle GL allows you to define multiple budgets, you must indicate what budget you want displayed in the row or column. You do this by first assigning a Control Value in the Balance Control section of the Row or Column window. The control value is any numeric value. Next, you must tell FSG what budget relates to the Control Value. You do this in the Define Report form. When you define a control value for either your Row
Set or Column Set in your report, the Control Value button will be activated. By selecting the Control Value button you can assign budgets to your control values.
Another reason you may not be seeing your amounts is if you are using the YTD-Budget (FY End) amount type, but have not budgeted to every period in the fiscal year. See Note:1036437.6.
Also, make sure you have defined your Amount Types, Offsets and Control Values in the Column Set or Row Set, but not both. Typically these are specified in the Column Set.

AMFI Mutual Fund (Advisors) Certification Examination

Introduction & Mutual Fund Products

Ø  Mutual fund is a pool of money collected from investors and invested according to stated investment objectives

Ø  Mutual fund investors are like shareholders and they own the fund.

Ø  Mutual fund investors are not lenders or deposit holders in a mutual fund.

Ø  Everybody else associated with a mutual fund is a service provider, who earns a fee.

Ø  The money in the mutual fund belongs to the investors and nobody else.

Ø  Mutual funds invest in marketable securities according to the investment objective.

Ø  The value of the investments can go up or down, changing the value of the investors holding.

Ø  NAV of a mutual fund fluctuates with market price movements.

Ø  The market value of the investor’s funds is also called as net assets.

Ø  Investors hold a proportionate share of the fund in the mutual fund.  New investors come in and old investors can exit, at prices related to net asset value per unit.

Ø  Advantages of mutual funds to investors are :

o   Portfolio diversification

o   Professional management

o   Reduction in risk

o   Reduction in transaction cost.

o   Liquidity

o   Convenience and flexibility

Derivative Market,Futures and Options

1. What are options? An option is a contract, which gives the buyer (holder) the right, but not the obligation,to buy or sell specified quantity of the underlying assets, at a specific (strike) price on or before a specified time (expiration date),in consideration of a sum called the option premium. To put it in more simple terms,an option gives the holder an insurance against the risk of loss but a promise of unlimited profits if his judgment (of the future direction of the market or a particular stock) proves to be right. top

2.What are the important terms used in options trading? ·         Underlying : The specific security / asset on which an options contract is based. ·         Option Premium - Premium is the price paid by the buyer (of the the option) to the seller to acquire the right to buy or sell. ·         Strike Price or Exercise Price - The strike or exercise price of an option is the specified/ pre-determined price of the underlying asset at which the same can be bought or sold if the option buyer exercises his right to buy/ sell on or before the expiration day. ·         Expiration date - The date on which the option expires is known as Expiration Date. On Expiration date, either the option is exercised or it expires worthless. ·         Exercise Date - The date on which the option is actually exercised. ·         Open Interest - The total number of options contracts outstanding in the market at any given point of time. ·         Option Holder is the one who buys an option, which can be a call, or a put option. He enjoys the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a specified price on or before specified time. His upside potential (the ability to reap profits) is unlimited while losses are limited to the premium paid by him to the option writer. ·         Option Seller/ Writer is the one who is obligated to buy (in case of Put option) or to sell (in case of call option), the underlying asset in case the buyer of the option decides to exercise his option. His profits are limited to the premium received from the buyer while his downside is unlimited. ·         Option Class - All listed options of a particular type (i.e., call or put) on a particular underlying instrument, e.g., all Nifty Call Options (or) all Nifty Put Options. ·         Option Series - An option series consists of all the options of a given class with the same expiration date and strike price. e.g., Nifty-1100-February-Call is an options series which includes all Nifty Call options that are traded with strike price of 1100 and expiry in February. top

3. What are Call Options? A call option gives the holder (buyer/ one who is long call), the right to buy a specified quantity of the underlying asset at the strike price on or before the expiration date. Note: The seller (one who is short call) however, has the obligation to sell the underlying asset if the buyer of the call option decides to exercise his option to buy.