External Vouchers Interface

The purpose of this document is to describe how to transfer external accounting transactions, vouchers, into the hold table in IFS/Accounting Rules, by reading and interpreting and processing text file based information.

External Vouchers Interface is based on External Files Interface, a general tool for loading and creating text files.

It is possible to describe different file layouts, so called File Templates.

Please refer to the Window and Process documentations for detailed information regarding how to specify File Templates.

Use this page when you want to load accounting transactions from an external system to IFS/Accounting Rules.

Contents

 

Process Import External Accounting Transactions

The process is started from Accounting Rules / Voucher / External Vouchers / External Voucher Assistant

The process has the following steps,

  1. Load External Voucher File   

    The external voucher text file is loaded into the External Voucher Interface tables.

    The following sub steps are performed,

    1. Load the text file information into External Files Interface.
    2. Unpack the file information.
    3. Transfer unpacked information to the External Voucher Interface.
  2. Check External Vouchers

    External Vouchers transferred from the file to to the External Voucher Interface are checked with respect to rules in IFS/Accounting Rules, e.g. code string based rules.

  3. Correct External Transactions  

    External transactions marked with an error code in the Check External Vouchers step must be corrected before they can be used to create new vouchers.

  4. Create Vouchers

    Create vouchers in IFS/Accounting Rules from externally loaded external vouchers

Standard File Structure

The structure of the file is described in External Files Interface by File Template STDVOU.

Example File (STDVOU):

201560651;2015;1910;;;;;;;;;;SEK;;;-100;;;-100;;;;;;Credit Text;;;;;;;2015-10-01;;;;;;;;;;;;;
20156200160651;2015;3111;LKP;;;;;;;;;SEK;;;100;;;100;;;;;;Debet Text;;;;;;;2015-10-01;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Mandatory columns in the file are related to specified Grouping Criterion, described in section External Voucher Interface Parameters.

Col Description
1 Voucher No
2 Accounting Year
3 Account
4 Code B
5 Code C
6 Code D
7 Code E
8 Code F
9 Code G
10 Code H
11 Code I
12 Code J
13 Currency Code
14 Currency Debit Amount
15 Currency Credit Amount
16 Currency Amount
17 Debit Amount
18 Credit Amount
19 Amount
20 Quantity
21 Process Code
22 Delivery Type Id
23 Tax Code
24 Project Activity Seq No
25 Text
26 Party Type Id
27 Reference Number
28 Reference Serie
29 Trans Code
30 Third Currency Debit Amount
31 Third Currency Credit Amount
32 Transaction Date
33 Load Group Item
34 Tax Direction
35 Tax Amount
36 Currency Tax Amount
37 Voucher Type
38 Event Date
39 Retroactive Date
40 Transaction Reason
41 Third Currency Amount
42 Third Currency Tax Amount
43 Currency Rate Type
44 Parallel Currency Rate Type

General Regarding File Handling

This version of IFS/Accounting Rules supports load of an external voucher file through External Files Interface.

It is possible to load the file Online using a client interface or Batch using Oracle's Utl_File functionality.

The preparation that has to be done is to create the file and to make sure that,

Setup External Voucher Basic Data

Setting up External Voucher Interface Parameters is in most cases a one-time operation, where the necessary parameters are defined for all different accounting transactions the company will receive.

Use the window Accounting Rules / Voucher / External Vouchers / External Voucher Basic Data to define the parameters used for the transfer.

The window is used to enter parameters defining e.g. how the external transactions should be grouped to vouchers, whether  loaded transactions can be altered or not.

Please refer to the Window and Process documentation for detailed information regarding the column setup.

There are 4 different possible values in Grouping Criterion:

  1. Voucher No

    Means that vouchers will be grouped by column Voucher No in the file.

    If column Voucher Type exist in the file, vouchers will be grouped by column Voucher Type and column Voucher No

    Voucher Number Allocation has to be defined as Set When Created.

    The voucher type entered in column Voucher Type must be defined to use Automatic Allotment.

    Mandatory columns in file for this case are,

    Column Name Note
    Account  
    Amount  
    Voucher No  
    Code B - Code J Columns Code B to Code J can be mandatory depending on Code Part Demands defined for accounts in the file.
  2. Transaction Date

    Means that vouchers will be grouped by column n Transaction Date in the file.

    If this column is missing or empty in the file then Load Date will be used as Grouping Criterion.

    Voucher Number Allocation must be set to Set When Created.

    The voucher type entered in column Voucher Type must be defined to use Automatic Allotment.

    Mandatory columns in file for this case are,

    Column Name Note
    Account  
    Amount  
    Code B - Code J Columns Code B to Code J can be mandatory depending on Code Part Demands defined for accounts in the file.
  3. Group Item

    Means that vouchers will be grouped by column Load Group Item in the file.

    If column Load Group Item is missing or empty in the file, then only one voucher will be created for all transactions.

    Voucher Number Allocation has to be set to Set When Created.

    The voucher type entered in column Voucher Type must be defined to use Automatic Allotment.

    Mandatory columns in file for this case are,

    Column Name Note
    Account  
    Amount  
    Code B - Code J Columns Code B to Code J can be mandatory depending on Code Part Demands defined for accounts in the file.

     

  4. Invoice Number

    Means that vouchers will be grouped by column Reference Number in the file.

    Voucher Number Allocation has to be set to Set On Transaction.

    The voucher type entered in column Voucher Type should not be defined to use Automatic Allotment.

    Mandatory columns in file for this case are,

    Column Name Note
    Account  
    Amount  
       
    Reference Numbers Columns Code B to Code J can be mandatory depending on Code Part Demands defined for accounts in the file.

All lines with same value in the columns used for Grouping Criterion will be created as voucher rows belonging to the same voucher.

About SERVER_DIRECTORY

In the window System Parameters for Accounting Rules (in Accounting Rules) it is possible to define a value for the parameter SERVER_DIRECTORY.

By default the attribute SERVER_DIRECTORY has the parameter value NULL. As long as NULL is defined it will not be possible to run the External Voucher Assistant in batch mode.

This must be a directory defined in the oracle database which is set to valid server path.

Specifying a directory example: (as appowner)

create or replace directory EXT_DIR
as 'C:\OraDB\A\ExternalFiles';

Note: Oracle is deprecating the UTL_FILE_DIR initialization parameter with Oracle 12.2, therefore the previous use of UTL_FILE_DIR in System Parameters for Accounting Rules is also depricated now.