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PA Periods

Project accounting periods (PA periods) track Oracle Projects data on a periodic basis. Your PA periods may be more frequent than your GL accounting periods. You can use PA periods for budgeting and for accounting for cost and revenue. You set a current PA reporting period for Oracle Projects to summarize project amounts and to track project status. See: Setting the PA Reporting Period.

PA Periods and GL Periods Compared

If you want to report project information more frequently than your GL periods allow, you can define PA periods that are shorter than your GL periods. For example, you can define weekly PA periods and monthly GL periods. You can also create PA periods that match existing Oracle General Ledger accounting periods (GL periods). However, defining PA periods that overlap your GL periods can create the need for numerous adjustments and journal entries if you wish to reconcile Oracle Projects with your General Ledger.

For example, in the situation illustrated above, the second weekly PA period, P11-01-96, includes the ending date of a GL period. Based on the PA period ending date (11/03), transactions falling into PA Period P11-01-96 would post to the GL period ending November 30. Some of the transactions may actually have occurred in October; so these items would be inaccurately accounted for in GL.

In addition, there would be no easy way to reconcile Oracle Projects with GL, because at the October GL closing, Oracle Projects would be mid-period. Adjustments would be necessary to reconcile the two systems.

Alternatively, you can split PA periods that would otherwise overlap the end of a GL period into partial weeks. In the example above, period P11-01-96 has been be split into two periods, one beginning 10/28 and ending 10/31 (P10-05-96), and the other beginning 11/01 and ending 11/03. However, this method is very vulnerable to error, since every user entering and processing transactions (including time sheets) during a split week must enter and process transactions in the correct partial-week period.

The recommended way to resolve this conflict is to use 5-4-4 GL periods to match weekly PA periods, or some other matching scheme if PA periods are other than weekly. At calendar year-end, GL journal entries must be made in any case, to compensate for overlapping periods.

PA Period Effective Dates

You assign effective dates to each PA period. The effective dates signal the beginning and end of the PA period.

Note: After a transaction is posted to a PA period from any operating unit, the Oracle General Ledger Accounting Calendar window will not allow changes to the period date range.

PA Period Open/Closed Status

You specify a status for each PA period. The status must be of one of the following:

Status Description Entry Allowed Interface Transactions Reopen Period
Never Opened New periods that are in the future, and in which you do not want to allow entry. NO NO n/a
Future Future periods in which you allow entry but not interfacing transactions. YES NO n/a
Open Current periods. YES YES n/a
Pending Close Use for correcting unprocessed items. You can set a period to this status without checking for unprocessed items. NO YES n/a
Closed You cannot close a period if unprocessed items exist. A closed period can be reopened at any time. NO NO YES
Permanently Closed You cannot permanently close a period if unprocessed items exist. Once a period is permanently closed, you cannot reopen it. NO NO NO
Table 1 - 80. (Page 1 of 1)

At least one PA period must be specified as Open or Future in order for Oracle Projects processes to process transactions. The PA Period with a status of Open or Future that includes a project transaction date is the PA Period for the transaction. However, if the transaction date falls in a period that is not Open or Future, Oracle Projects will find the next Open or Future PA Period and use it as the PA Period for the transaction. Oracle Projects will reject the transaction if it cannot find a PA Period for the transaction.

Defining Future PA Periods for Period-Phased Budgeting

If you plan to use period-phased budgeting, you must define the future PA and GL periods in which you want to budget. The periods must first be defined in the calendar associated with your GL set of books and then copied using the Maintain PA Period Statuses window.

See Also

Defining PA Periods

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