Automating Advance Payments at the City of Atlanta

Transcription

1 Automating Advance Payments at the City of Atlanta Bret Swenson June 13, 2014

2 City of Atlanta General Information Population 450,000 Number of: Active Employees 8,500 Retirees 5, departments Oracle Products E-Business Suite OBIEE Hyperion CRM

3 City of Atlanta EBS Environment Implemented 01-Jan-2008 Database 10g AIX 5.3 Financials (PO, iprocurement, isupplier, GL, AP, AR, FA, PA, PN, GMS, CM, Treasury), HCM (HR, Adv Benefits, PAY, OLM, Self-Service) Single production RAC instance, 2 RAC test instances, 4 single-node test instances, 1 audit instance (DB only) Reporting Oracle Reports, Discoverer, BI Publisher Staffing: PMO, Technical Manager, 5 Technical, 4 Functional, 2 onsite DBAs, Oracle consulting

4 Agenda Old way User Requirements History New way Goals & Objectives Functional & Technical Changes Screen Shots Fun Facts Q & A

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6 Old (Paper) Process Advance Request Employee prints off and fills out the form Employee turns form in to a manager Manager fills in remainder of form (cost center, additional instructions, signature) Manager manually routes to others for approval If approved, form is sent to Payables Payables enters the advance (prepayment) and files the form for audit purposes Advance is approved via Oracle workflow Check is printed for employee to pick up

7 Old Process - Disadvantages Paper form Requires manual intervention and routing Employee does not know what status the form is in, i.e. who still needs to approve, is it in Payables yet? Payables personnel have to enter the advance (prepayment) Paper form kept for auditing

8 User Requirements History First meeting: All we want you to do is replace the paper form Solution: Create a web application using APEX that contains the same fields on the paper form Have a field to place an address Have a Submit button that s the completed information Development time: 1 week

9 User Requirements History Second meeting: Well, we like the web form, but can you add validation and GL list of values? Solution: Requirements from first meeting Add validations for dates and GL LOVs Development time: 2 more weeks (Total 3)

10 User Requirements History Third meeting: Great, but what we really need is a workflow for the manager to approve then route to Payables Solution: Requirements from second meeting Create custom workflow to route to employee s manager, then send a notification to Payables Development time: 2 more weeks (Total 5)

11 User Requirements History Fourth meeting: This is perfect, but can you go ahead and load the data for us? Solution: Requirements from third meeting Add additional fields to the APEX form Use Oracle APIs to load to invoice interface table after manager approves Development time: 3 more weeks (Total 8)

12 User Requirements History Fifth meeting: All good, but we didn t tell you that each department has a separate approval requirement, and that within some departments, the approval chain is different.

13 User Requirements History Fifth meeting: All good, but we didn t tell you that each department has a separate approval requirement, and that within some departments, the approval chain is different.

14 New Way Goals & Objectives Eliminate the paper form and its associated processes Allow employee to enter the Advance Request Allow employee to be able to track the advance from entry to approval to payment Workflow approval process Process to be applicable to 90% of employees

15 Use Internet Expenses Employee enters the advance request using the Internet Expenses responsibility Use the current expense approval workflow hierarchy to approve the advance Employee is notified when the advance is approved Payables imports the advance as a prepayment invoice Advance is automatically approved Check is printed for pickup or direct deposit

16 Advantages No paper form Employee is able to see where advance request is in the process of being paid Payables does not have to enter the invoice Approvals are kept in the system

17 Responsibility: Internet Expense Administrator Expense Administrator allows future dates to be entered Resp: Internet Expenses Setup and Administration Function: Internet Expenses Setup Tab: General Options

18 Responsibility: Payables Manager New Expense Template is created (technical requirement that template begins with Advance Request )

19 Technical Changes Personalizations New concurrent request set Modify the profile option to display expense header descriptive flex fields (DFF) Add DFFs for the expense report table and the invoice table Programming changes: Java (1), PL/SQL (3) Workflow (Expenses)

20 Coding Changes Modify a Java program to pass expense template to PL/SQL package AP_WEB_OA_CUSTOM_PKG Modify package AP_WEB_OA_CUSTOM_PKG to prefix expense report with ADV Modify package AP_WEB_EXPENSE_CUST_WF Create a custom PL/SQL package to change the imported expense report to a prepayment

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30 Fun Facts Took 18 months to finalize the solution Since implementation in Feb-2014, process approximately 180 advances/month AP manager can disable for year-end close-out Data-entry savings approximately 8 hours/month plus reduction in errors

31 Q & A

32 Thank you Bret Swenson