Minutes of the Atlanta OAUG Meeting


Date: Tuesday, May 20, 1997

Time Called: 2:30 p.m.

Location: BT North America, Two Paces West Conference Room, Vinings

Agenda:

I. Presentation: "Receivables Month End Close-out and Rollover Reconciliation's to New

Month" Jeff McDuffie - Tensar Corporation

Jeff presented an informative lecture showing how to use ORACLE standard reports as well as custom-designed Excel spreadsheets to balance and rollover monthly receivables. The lecture, which included a handout showing The Tensar Corporation's monthly receivables process, demonstrated the way in which ORACLE reports can be used to determine why the receivables sub-ledgers do not balance to the G-L. Aside from the basic four-step process to balance receivables, tips were also given on how to find errors and discrepancies.

Tips when out of balance:

1. Double-check the reports to assure the period and date ranges are correct

2. Run the Unposted Items Report to determine if some transactions do not appear on reports.

3. Make sure that the rollover values have the correct sign (+/-). Unapplied payments can be tricky!

4. Check that the beginning Aged Trial Balance total is correct and matches the ending balance of the prior period.

II. Presentation: "Overview of ADI - Application Desktop Integrator" (formerly GLDI -

General Ledger Desktop Integrator) Brenda Carlton - Tensar Corporation

Brenda presented an overview of the operation and features of the Applications Desktop Integrator (ADI) which is a free feature one may request from ORACLE on CD (part #A50834). Using a slide presentation shown at the Nashville OAUG, Brenda demonstrated the five major features of ADI:

1. Budget Wizard-Allows for preparation of budgets on Excel which can be uploaded via ADI to ORACLE applications. Also allows for the downloading of budgets into Excel and for graphing.

2. Journal Wizard-Allows for preparation of journal entries on Excel which can be uploaded via ADI to ORACLE G-L. This is especially useful with standard and recurring entries which are formula-driven such as inventory and cost of goods sold.

3. Report Wizard-Allows for the creation of reports (or FSG's) in Excel which can be uploaded to or downloaded from ORACLE. The primary benefit to this wizard is that one can take ORACLE FSG's and customize them with new features such as different fonts, logos, and other formatting to professionalize monthly reports.

4. Diagnostic Wizard-Only available on the latest edition of ADI, the Diagnostic Wizard is a fully automated utility which makes over 60 checks of file existence, versions, corruption, registration, ODBC configuration, etc.

5. Watch Dog-Monitors concurrent requests and alerts user when complete. Allows user to check that uploads and downloads were processed correctly. Runs automatically when ADI performs a request.

3. Demonstration: "Following a Transaction Through 10SC -Purchasing, Payables, General

Ledger and Fixed Assets" Gaye van der Eerden - Relational Technologies, Inc

Unfortunately, because of technical difficulties with her concurrent manager, Gaye was unable to present her full demonstration and has volunteered to present it again at a later OAUG meeting. We were able to view various screens within the modules and discuss the flow of information. A discussion also ensued regarding the latest changes to ORACLE products. Of specific interest to members was when it made sense for a company to upgrade its existing ORACLE applications. This type of forum seemed to be very useful to many of the members and will be continued at future meetings.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m. for networking at the Wyndham Garden Hotel.

Thanks to British Telecom North America for allowing us the use of their conference room!

The next Atlanta OAUG meeting will be July 15 at KPMG.

Forty people were in attendance. Companies represented:

UsersConsultantsOracle
Tensar CorporationKPMG Education
BTNARelational Technologies
BellSouthComputer Systems Authority
National DistributingEDS
Southern CompanyDeloitte & Touche
Schweitzer-Mauduit
AJC International
Hayes Microcomputer
AirTouch Cellular