Chapter 1: Overview

This diagram illustrates the flow of transactions from subledgers into the General Ledger. Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable can push data directly into the General Ledger, without PPM involvement, or PPM can be an intermediary that collects and/or creates transactions before the data is aggregated to the GL.

This table illustrates how Oracle Projects supports Expenses, Revenue, Resources and PPM Budgets at the project and task levels in PPM:

PPM Budgets (Financial Plans) are managed and controlled by departments - not central offices. This process can be useful for planning at the task level and will be in PPM reports in the Budget column.

• To track:
  • Contracts and Grants Award information, including funding amount, budget, expenses and revenue.
  • Traditional projects that have a start and an end date (e.g. Sponsored research, construction, conferences).
  • Fabrications.
• • Long-term efforts that cannot be captured by another segment in the chart of accounts (e.g. Recharge operations, academic courses, groups in the same financial unit).
  • Expenditures by task more granularly than required by campus leadership when needed for local level leadership.
• To record short-term and one-time costs (e.g. Faculty startup dispensations, service agreements).
• To view expenses in PPM and support performance monitoring with Budget vs. Actuals and facilitate reporting.
• To further track expenditures at a task level.

PPM functionality allows a budget (financial plan) to be entered at the project and task level in order to monitor variances between expected expenses and actuals. The PPM budget is a distinct concept from the Campus Operating Plan that is developed in the Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS). EPBCS has a separate budget planning and review process that occurs on an annual basis with approval from multiple layers of university management culminating with the Chancellor’s approval.

The approved campus budget results in allocations being distributed to financial units.  The PPM budget is a tool that can be used to implement the approved campus budget spending plan and enable reporting at a more granular level than is possible in the GL.  There can be instances where the EPBCS budget will not exactly match the financial plan in PPM for valid reasons. The EPBCS budgeting tool was designed to accommodate yearly baselined budget imports into PPM for General projects in FY22. EPBCS Operating Plan budget allocations are posted to the GL using the “chart string” including the project segment as the basis to post in the GL. 

• Campus Operating Plan (EPBCS) allocations are in the General Ledger at the project level only and are visible together with PPM detailed expenditure data only through reporting. Allocations are visible with summarized expenditure data in the General Ledger.
• External revenue generated through PPM Contracts is visible on the contract at the task level, through MyProjects in OFC and through reporting at a detailed, task level and summarized in the General Ledger at the project level.
• External revenue not generated through PPM Contracts are in the General Ledger at the project level only and are visible together with PPM detailed expenditure data only through reporting. This revenue is visible with summarized expenditure data in the General Ledger. See section 2.3.2 for more information about the revenue distinctions.
• POET(AF) is used to transact in PPM whereas the chart string is used to transact in the GL. See section 1.5 for more information.
• POET or POETAF is only used in the PPM subledger not in the GL.

• PPM displays Payables costs at time of payment approval. The GL shows this expense and a payable liability when an invoice has been approved and shows a withdrawal of cash when paid. PPM tracks a Cost Commitment until the payable is paid.

• PPM offers Costing functionality and is most commonly transacted through Miscellaneous Cost Import (MCI). Central Offices also have access to create costs directly in the system.
• PPM creates its own overhead (burden) transactions.
• PPM creates accounting for costs that are imported from outside Oracle Fusion Payables through Subledger Accounting rules (SLAs). Examples of costs processed this way include:
  • UCPath
  • Recharge Operations
• There are occasions when transactions are created outside of PPM and OFC. In those cases, a transaction is imported into the GL via journal entry. In order to have it represented as an expense in PPM without having it duplicated in the GL, the imported transaction is designated as “costed and accounted” in PPM. That way it does not affect GL accounting. There are very few transactions imported this way. Examples of this include:
  • ISIS transactions
  • EPIC transactions
  • Financial Control entries
• Costs for a project should always be reflected in PPM
• Costs must be incurred during award/project/task dates. In other words, the Expenditure Item Date of the transactions must be within the start and end dates of the task being charged to

• • Expenditure Item (EI) Date: Date a cost was incurred (service or good provided)
  • Project End Date: Date project ends. This is equal to the latest task end date
  • For more information on Dates, see section 2.2.8.
• PPM Costs that are not able to be posted for date issues are considered Unprocessed Costs 
  • These must be corrected to be reprocessed or the cost posted to a different project
• PPM Costs that are not able to be posted for other control issues are considered Unprocessed Costs 
  • These must be corrected to be reprocessed or the cost posted to a different project
  • See section 8 below for more information

PPM Commitments are a type of cost to represent an obligation to pay, but is not yet a project cost. An example of this is a Purchase Order or subcontracts. More information on Commitments can be found at Commitments in OFC. 

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1.6.1: PPM Subledger Accounting Rules (SLAs) overview

SLAs are built based on logic to derive each chart segment. The current system configuration has multiple rules not captured in the table below. SLAs are subject to change based on requirements. Each entry drives a journal to the GL. Journals are always two lines per entry (could be summarized).

This table represents the expense and revenue SLAs for PPM (all subledgers have their own SLAs). The correlating entry (usually a liability or balance sheet account) is not represented here.

General Projects and Capital Projects leverage DFFs to capture values for the SLAs to use

1.6.2: Defined Flex Fields (DFFs)

Defined Flex Fields are fields that Oracle provides that customers can customize for their needs. These fields can be a variety of types of field types such as free form, checkbox, or list.

When General and Capital Projects are setup, there are 4 DFFs on the Task that are available to enter segment values to drive SLAs.  These are Fund, Function, Program, Location. Fund and Function are required.

On General and KR Service Agreement Contracts, there are 2 DFFs on the Contract for fund and account to drive the revenue and AR SLAs.