Interview Questions - Order Management

Q. What are primary and secondary price lists?
Every order is associated to a price list as each item on the order must have a price. A price list contains basic list information and one or more pricing lines, pricing attributes, qualifiers, and secondary price lists. The price list that is primarily associated to an order is termed as Primary price list. The pricing engine uses a Secondary Price list if it cannot determine the price of the item ordered in the Primary price list.
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Q. What are picking rules?
Picking rules define the sources and prioritization of sub inventories, lots, revisions and locators when the item is pick released by order management. They are user defined set of rules to define the priorities order management must use when picking items from finished goods inventory to ship to a customer.
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Q. Explain the Order Cycle?
1) Enter the Sales Order
2) Book the Sales Order(SO will not be processed until booked(Inventory confirmation))
3) Launch Pick Release & Generate Pickslip Report and print.
4) Allocate and transaction Move Order (creates reservations, determines the source and transfers the inventory into the staging areas)
5) Ship Confirm (with Shipping and Bill of Ladding documents) and interface the Invoice to AR & decrement Inventory.
6) Close stops and trips on confirmation of receipt at Customer’s location.
7) Run workflow background process for order cycle completion.
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Q. What are trips and stops?
A trip is carrier specific and represent a unique instance of that carrier leaving the warehouse with deliveries having atleast two stops and carrying atleast a BOL document for every delivery. A stop is a point along the route of a trip that is due for pick-up or drop off.
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Q. What is a delivery leg?
A delivery leg consists of two stops where the delivery is picked up and finally dropped off. A delivery leg will have a bill of lading receipt which lists the goods that were signed over to the carrier.
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Q. When will the delivery details be back ordered?
If there is no material in Inventory during the Pick Confirm process when Pick Release is launched, the delivery details will be back ordered. Further during the ship confirm process, part quantities can be staged and or back ordered based on the carrier condition.
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Q. What are ship sets and arrival sets?
Ship sets are a group of lines which our customer has requested to be shipped together on the same date & time from the same warehouse. Arrival sets are a group of lines which our customer wishes to arrive at their ship-to location at the same time.
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Q. What activities are performed during scheduling the order ?
1) Sales order lines ship and arrival dates are scheduled.
2) Reservation is placed if with in the res. Time fence.
3) Passes the demand to Inventory for consumption of the forecast.
4) Calculates the delivery lead time ship method set up by Inter location transit times.
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Q. Which item attributes will facilitate back to back ordering?
If Build in WIP and Assemble to Order attributes are enabled, the sales order will become eligible for create supplies, facilitating a back-to-back order.
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Q. What activity are completed when the Order entry line has a status “Awaiting Shipping”?
Awaiting shipping means that the sales order has undergone the workflow activities – Scheduling the line and create supplies and it is ready for release in shipping execution.
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Q. Which rules will be invoked when Pick Release is launched ?
Pick Release process will invoke Release rule, Release sequence rule and Pick Slip grouping rule. It will then allocate the material in Inventory using the Picking rule and generate pick slip grouping report for transaction of the material to the staging sub Inventory.
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Q. What will happen if we defer interface during ship confirm process ?
Inventory will not be interfaced and it will not get decremented. We have to explicitly run a trip stop SRS concurrent for interfacing to inventory, relieve the reservation and to update the order line status.
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Q. What activities are performed during ship confirm process ?) Inventory gets decremented & Reservation is relieved.
2) Non-pick confirmed items gets back ordered.
3) Depending upon carrier condition, part items may get shipped, back ordered, staged or transferred to Cycle count in a combination of any or all these activities.
4) If shippable is checked, ship confirm is a pre-requisite for Invoicing.
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Q. Can we associate delivery lines to a existing delivery ?
It is economical to associate delivery lines to the existing deliveries for utilizing the unused space ( weight ) of the carrier, provided all these lines have the trip stops as in an existing delivery.
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Q. Can we manually modify the price of a sales order line ?
No. The pricing engine apply suitable modifiers associated with qualifiers to a sales order line during the pricing phase activities of entering & booking and repricing.
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Q. When will the modifiers have incompatibility issues ?
For a given phase and for a given level of incompatibility, the pricing engine will encounter incompatibility of multiple modifiers. It will allow only one modifier for the above combination and the exclusion is processed in the below mentioned order, till the incompatibility is resolved.
1) One exclusive group is allowed for a given phase of pricing.
2) The best price offered by any of the incompatible modifier will be chosen.
3) Modifier having the lowest precedence number rules supremacy over the other.
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Q. Can we apply discounts and surcharges for a same sales order line?
Yes.
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Q. Is it mandatory to use defaulting rules ?
Defaulting rules simplify data entry and speed up order processing. It is not mandatory.
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Q. Can we book an order without entering any sales order lines ?
Sales order line entry is not mandatory for booking an order. It can be accomplished with no entry in the lines tabbed region.
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Q. Can we part cancel a sales order line quantity after interfacing to shipping ?
We can cancel a part of the sales order quantity by reducing the qty. in the lines region (with reason) before confirm shipment. The changes will reflect in the detail and its associated delivery in shipping. These changes will also be reflected in Purchasing and WIP if “Create Supplies” were effected during order entry process.
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Q. What should be done when sales order lines are closed but header is still in Booked status?
Verify the Sales order header workflow. It should be waiting at sales order line close.now navigate to Sysadmin>>workflow>>administer workflow>>status monitor on the new webpage enter the item type as OEOH and item key as the header workflow
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Q. What are the steps to define an order type and what are the mandatory requirements?
A:
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Q. What is the use of a picking rule?
When you pick release a sales order in Order Management module , Order Shipping Execution module (which is a part of Order Management) submits requests to Oracle Inventory module which uses the information given in picking rule to give priority to pick units of an items and then it generates pick lists for sales orders
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Q. From where is the sales order number pulled?
A:
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Q. What are possible reason for Interface trip stop to complete in Error?
A:
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Q. When scheduling the line got error "ATP Error Scheduling failed". How will you resolve?
A:
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Q. What to do when you get error message "Order header level sales credit must be equal to 100%"?
A:
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Q. How and where the components are added to a model item?
A:
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Q. When a line is at fulfilled step and the workflow is at apply Prepaymet. How can we progress the line to close?
A:
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Q. What happens when a sales order is booked. Explain the process
A:
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Q. What are the APIs used in Order Management?
OE_ORDER_PUB is the main API in OM. Using this API all data manipulation (Inserts, updates, deletes can be performed on a Sales Order and it's attributes. Besides these, certain other action requests such as applying holds, attachments, booking etc. can
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Q. After which stage can not cancel the order?
A:
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Oracle General Ledger

Things to Ponder:

• If you try to enter an unbalanced journal, Oracle GL will either reject the transaction or force the transaction to balance by posting the difference to a suspense account.
  

Oracle PIM

Oracle Product Information Management (also called Advanced Product Catalog) has three main product components:

1. PIM Data Hub
2. PIM Data Librarian
3. Product Data Synchronization for GDSN and UCCnet Services

Oracle PIM Data Hub , an enterprise data management solution that enables customers to centralize all product information from heterogeneous systems, creating a single product repository that can be leveraged across all functional departments.

PIM Data Librarian is a new product released in May'05, offers an easy-to-use HTML/Windows interfaces for creating, managing, consolidating, enriching and standardizing product information. Provides secure way to share product info within enterprise and with partners.

All business rules in PIM are based on one important concept - Primary Hierarchy which classify products in Primary Item Master Catalog.

Attributes & Attribute Groups

You can define upto 70 attributes per attribute group but there can be unlimited attribute groups.

Concurrent Programs in PIM:

• Bulkload Program For Spread Sheet Upload
• Item/Item Revision Implement Pending Changes Concurrent Program
• Import Catalog Items - Java Concurrent Program to Bulkload items from the interface table.
• Item Org Import - Item Organization Assignment Import
• Item People Import
• Purge Item People Interface Lines - Purge Program for Item People Interface Lines
• Item/Item Revision User-Defined Attributes Concurrent Program - For importing User Attributes for Items and Item Revisions
• EGO Item Import Batch Matching Concurrent Program - EGO Bulk matching engine of the item import process
• Purge Item Massupdate Temporary Tables - Mass update Temporary table purge program
• Optimize Item Catalog Text Index
• EGO Spreadsheet Java Concurrent Program - EGO Java Loader to Bulkload Item, BOM Attrs, User-Defined Attrs, UCCnet Attrs
• Item Catalog Text Index Build - Create/Rebuild Item Catalog Text Index
• EGO Setup Default Organization for User
• Catalog Categories Assignment Open Interface - Import Catalog Categories Assignments from the Open Interface table
• User-Defined Attribute Groups View (AGV) Compilation Executable

PL/SQL Errors

In PL/SQL, a warning or error condition is called an exception.

Some Predefined Exceptions

• VALUE_ERROR Exception is raised whenever PL/SQL runtime engine tries to execute a numeric FOR loop and either the low or high expression in the loop’s header evaluates to NULL. Use the COUNT method to ensure that the FOR loop is executed only when there is something in the collection. Here is the sample code:
  IF names_in.COUNT > 0 THEN
  FOR indx IN names_in.FIRST .. names_in.LAST
  
• ZERO_DIVIDE Exception - Program attempts to divide a number by zero.
  
• DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX Exception - Program attempts to store duplicate values in a database column that is constrained by a unique index.
  

Profile Options - AOL

There are four possible levels at which system administrators can view and update a profile option value: site, application, responsibility, and user.

• FND: Enable Cancel Query [ Yes (default) / No ] - Option to cancel the form query if taking long time
• Concurrent: Active Request Limit - Limits the number of requests that may be run simultaneously by each user or for every user at a site. If you do not specify a limit, no limit is imposed. Users cannot see or update this profile option. This profile option is visible and updatable at all four levels.
  

Multiple Reporting Currencies

Multiple Reporting Currencies (MRC) is an Oracle General Ledger feature that allows you to report in your functional currency and in one or more foreign currencies. You do this by defining one or more reporting sets of books, in addition to your primary set of books. You can set up multiple reporting SOBs and associate them with a primary SOB.

Your primary functional currency is the currency you use to record transactions and maintain your accounting data; the currency in which you transact most of your business and the one you use for legal reporting.

A reporting functional currency is a currency other than your primary functional currency for which you need to report accounting data.

If you only need to report balances in a currency other than your primary functional currency, the General Ledger Translation feature is probably sufficient.

You need MRC when:

1. You operate in a country whose unstable currency makes it unsuitable for managing your business. As a result, you need to manage your business in a more stable currency and still be able to report your transactions and account balances in the unstable local currency.
2. Your company is multinational, and you need to report financial information in a common functional currency other than that of the transaction or your primary functional currency.
3. You operate in a country that is part of the European Monetary Union (EMU), and you want to concurrently report in Euro in preparation for the pan-European currency.
   
   

Tables Info - Cost Management

CST_ITEM_COSTS

• Inventory_Item_ID
• Cost_Type_ID
• Organization_ID
• Item_Cost

CST_ITEM_COST_DETAILS

• Inventory_Item_ID
• Cost_Type_ID
• Cost_Element_ID
• Organization_ID
• Item_Cost

Period End Close - General

Periods represent non-overlapping consecutive date ranges. Every Financials customer needs to successfully close the accounting books each period.
General Steps
Here are some guidelines, from a general perspective, how you can perform the close process for every subledger:
a) Complete transactions
b) Create accounting
c) Reconcile transactions
d) Post to General Ledger
e) Reconcile accounting
f) Close period

Step b), Create Accounting, is a new step in Release 12, as it is an SLA feature. The accounting can be created immediately online, or can be run as a process in the background e.g. as a batch job at a time that matches your business needs.
The important thing to note, is that the accounting is not the distribution on the transaction. The final accounting by SLA could result in different accounting entries being generated based on the accounting rules you have configured. Therefore, you need to ensure that all your accounting for your transactions is created before you post to General Ledger, in order to update the balances correctly.

In Release 11i, when you close your periods in each of the subledgers, Oracle General Ledger will automatically create the balancing lines for journals posted to General Ledger. This changes in Release 12 as subledger accounting creates the balancing lines at the time you account for the subledger transactions.

The subledger accounting journal represents your REAL accounting and the balancing lines are created as part of these subledger accounting journals. When you close a period in Release 12, you’re actually closing subledger accounting. The journals can then be posted to the general ledger to update the GL balances.

Period End Close Dependencies

Performance Tuning

Database Metrics and Alerts:

Metrics and Statistics

Histograms

Database Alerts - DBA_THRESHOLDS gives you the threshold settings defined for the instance

Baselines:

Real-time Operation Monitoring:

Oracle Documentations

TSD / TDD Guidelines

• Mapped to its FSD / BRD.
• Data Flow Diagram
• Process Flow Diagram
• ER Diagram linking all the tables involved.
• Use Cases
• Assumptions / Dependencies / Open Issues needs to be updated regularly.

Oracle Finance

Chart of Accounts:
Chart of Accounts (COA) determines how your accounting information is collected, categorized, and stored for reporting purposes. In Oracle Financials, all accounts are identified by a unique Accounting key Flexfield combination, which is your COA structure. The Accounting Flexfield (AFF) consists of multiple segments, such as those for company, cost center, and account. One full AFF is called a combination.You assign each account the qualifier of asset, liability, owner's equity, revenue, or expense.

Subledger Accounting:
Sub Ledger Accounting (SLA) introduced in Release 12, provides a common repository of all your accounting information.

Just as Oracle General Ledger stores balances and journals, Subledger Accounting stores subledger balances and subledger journals for all of your subledgers that require accounting.

In Release 11i the transactions and distributions represented the accounting. In Release 12 however, distributions on transactions in subledgers are considered to be the default accounting and should therefore not be used for reconciliation purposes. The reason is that subledger accounting enables you to change the accounting for transactions so it is different from the default accounting. Therefore, the subledger accounting becomes the single source of truth for accounting reconciliations.

Things to Ponder:

1. Using more GL account KFF Segments doesn't affect the performance as the application uses the CCID (Code Combination ID) and not run the processes via the concatenated segments. However more the segments the more GL manual entries.