Bill Presentment Architecture in Oracle Receivables -

Flexible Invoicing Solution

Venkanna Mittakanti
Lead Oracle Apps Analyst
Siemens Corporation
About the speaker

• Oracle Associate ACE

• Over 20 years of experience working with Oracle EBS and Oracle
technologies, focusing on implementing, designing, developing and
maintaining of Oracle EBS since 2002.
• Specializing in Supply-Chain modules implementations and solutions since
2013
• Have worked 7 years with Oracle Corporation for the EBS product
development
• Currently the Lead Oracle Apps Analyst at Siemens Corporation
• Board Member of Texas-Louisiana Oracle Applications & Technology User
Group(TLOATUG)
• Active member in multiple OATUG Special Interest Groups(SIGs)
Agenda

• Challenges with traditional AR Invoice Print Customizations

• Bill Presentment Architecture(BPA) Overview
• BPA Process Flow
• BPA Framework including demo
• Benefits and Limitations of BPA
• Questions?
Challenges with traditional AR Invoice Print
Customizations

• Any changes to the AR Invoice Print is time taking process

• Higher cost for customizations
• Drill down functionality is not possible
• Can’t have customer specific invoice format
• Can’t have Transaction class specific template
Bill Presentment Architecture(BPA) Overview

• Oracle Bill Presentment Architecture is a bill presentment tool that helps to

create and present comprehensive and more-customer-focused invoices
that increase the likelihood and timeliness of payment.
• BPA provides the architecture
- To retrieve billing data from multiple data sources, including transaction
flexfields and other data not interfaced and stored in Oracle Receivables
- Provides template-based configuration of online and printed bills
- Ability to select the content of the bill, choose the layout design, display
parent billing lines and drilldown details
- Setup the assignment of the billing templates by defining rules based
on criteria
• BPA templates can be accomplished by an end user with minimal/no
technical assistance
Bill Presentment Architecture(BPA) Overview

• Prior to EBS R12, The data source was restricted to the Receivables only.
With R12, three more supplementary data sources are added – Order
Management, Projects and Service Contracts
• BPA Framework internally uses OA Framework and XML Publisher
functionality. It uses XML Publisher to generate PDF output (BPA
generates xsl style sheet for the newly created templates)
• New button available for completed transactions in the Transaction
Workbench to view online bills
• BPA comes with Bill Presentment Super User and Bill Presentment User
seeded responsibilities.
• BPA provides all the invoice specific functionality needed for a full-fledged
invoicing solution
BPA Process Flow
BPA Framework

• Create Template to present bills

• Template Assignment
• View online bills
• Data Retrieval
• External Template
• Print BPA Invoices
Create Template to present bills

• Provides extensive abilities & flexibility to design a bill that best suits
customer needs
• Configure Bill Content & Layout
• Associate hyperlinks, images and messages to content items
• Specify Page setup
• Select flexible header and footer format for printed bills
Create Template to present bills

• BPA Responsibility
Navigation: Template Management -> Templates -> Create
Create Template to present bills

• Define a template name for a specific transaction class, primary data

source & supplementary data source as shown in above screenshot
Transaction Class -> Invoice/Credit Memo/Debit Memo/Chargeback/
Deposit/Guarantee
Create Template to present bills

• Primary Page Design

Create Template to present bills

• Primary Page Design > Header > Select Content and Layout
Create Template to present bills

• Using the icons, we can perform additional operations like splitting the
content areas horizontally and vertically; moving swapping or duplicating
the content items and layout; and updating properties like spacing, width
and labels
Create Template to present bills

• Primary Page Design -> Update Properties

Create Template to present bills
Create Template to present bills
Create Template to present bills

• Line - Primary Page Design > Lines & Tax > Select Content
Create Template to present bills

• Footer - Primary Page Design > Footer > Select Content

Create Template to present bills

• Primary Page Design - Final Layout

Once the content and layout for each section is selected, the Invoice template will
appear as given below:
Create Template to present bills

• Details Page Design:

Since we associated a Supplementary Data Source to this template, Presented with

an option to modify the Details Page Design.

This section is similar to the Primary Page Design, except that the data source is our
custom view. Clicking on the content icon allows you to pick what items you want to
use in the template.
Create Template to present bills

• Printer Setup
Create Template to present bills

• Preview
Create Template to present bills

• Completing the template

– Incomplete allows modifications
– Complete allows assignment
Template Assignment

• Define the criteria to use your template(s)

• Consists of
– Defining Rule
– Assigning Template to the Rule
• BPA has seeded default rule that contains no criteria. The seeded default
template for specific transaction class will be used if no other rule is
matched
• If multiple rules are matched for a particular transaction, then it uses rule
order to determine priority.
Template Assignment

• Rule Order
Template Assignment

• Template Assignment -> Assignment Rules -> Criteria

• Primary & Supplementary data sources should match template sources

View Online Bills

• Internal users and external customers can view bills online using Oracle
Receivables, Oracle iReceivables, Oracle Collections or other calling
application
• When a user selects a transaction number, the assignment engine in BPA
determines which template to use to display the bill.
• When viewing a bill, all the features and functionality of BPA's Interactive
Preview, such as drilldown to transaction details are available to the user.
• Allows you to preview the template using any AR Transaction
View Online Bills

• Navigate to Template Management section and select the template to

interactively preview. Click on Interactive preview icon
View Online Bills

• Select the transaction number and click on Online Preview icon

View Online Bills

• Online previews will have full functionality of any hyperlinks and drilldown.
Printed previews will be in PDF format.
Data Retrieval

• Data Sources - Primary and Supplementary

• Primary Data Sources are seeded data sources only.
Data Retrieval

• Secondary Data Sources – Can be seeded or custom

Data Retrieval

• Database views
• BPA views can be three display levels
– Header & Footer
– Lines & Tax
– Details Page
• Seeded database views are ARBPA_CUSTOMER_TRX_HEADER &
ARBPA_CUSTOMER_TRX_LINE
• Only database views prefixed with ARBPA_ will be recognized by BPA
• Custom database view(s) must start with ARBPA_xxxx. It must be
registered in Oracle Receivables and associated to an interface context.
External Template

• External templates can be PDF or RTF template file.

• Not available for interactive preview
• External templates cannot be modified in BPA. External templates are for
printed invoices only and cannot be assigned to Online print.
• Are language specific
• BPA has a fuzzy mapping feature that automatically maps the external field
to BPA content item based on the name. Unmapped items will display null
values
• External templates can be assigned in template assignment
External Template

• External Template: Item Mapping

Print BPA Invoices

• BPA provides the flexibility to print a single transaction or batch of

transactions through the print management tab or alternatively by
launching the BPA transaction print program from Forms based app(SRS
Form)
• Concurrent Program - BPA Transaction Print Program
Print BPA Invoices

• When the ‘BPA Transaction Print Program’ is submitted, it launches one or

more child programs depending on the number of invoices requested for
printing. The child program generates one PDF file for each group of
invoices.
BPA Benefits

• End user can maintain (create/modify) BPA templates with almost no technical
assistance for most of the changes.
• Bypass the complex coding and customization traditionally associated with AR
Invoice Print
• Helps lower the cost of doing business while increasing the efficiency of billing and
collections groups
• Can have customer specific templates
• Hyperlinks and drill down functionality can be incorporated
• Integration with iReceivables. Customers can login into iRec and print their bills on
their own
• Reprint invoice from Transactions Workbench
• Templates for transaction classes other than invoice
• MLS(Multiple Language Support) Language enabled
• Restrict access to details information when external users are allowed to view
online
BPA Limitations

• Only can print, No other delivery options like EDI.

Profile Options
• AR: BPA Attachment Update Enabled
controls whether attachments are updateable on BPA online bills. If set to Yes, the customer
can view, add, or delete an attachment when viewing the online invoice. If set to No, the
customer can only view the attachment. No default is set for this.

• AR: BPA Details Access Enabled -> Determines whether a user can access the details page of
an online invoice.

If set to Yes, user can access the details via the billing lines hyperlink. If set to No, no hyperlink
is displayed. Default is set to Yes.

• AR: BPA Print Attachment Document Category

To print attachments with printed bills, configure the AR: BPA Print Attachment Category profile
option. While printing a transaction the profile option triggers printing associated PDF
attachments that match the specified document category.

• HZ: Enable DQM Party Search

Set this option to enable DQM searching for customers in Interactive Preview. If this is not set,
DQM search will not work properly for customer search. No default is set for this
Questions?

venkanna.mittakanti@siemens.com