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ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE EXCHANGE RATES LOAD

This summary describes the Oracle E-Business Suite Exchange Rates Load
product, which is an end-to-end solution to automatically load daily exchange
rates into Oracle General Ledger.

Overview
Any organisation using Oracle E-Business Suite with more than one currency
needs to enter daily exchange rates. The solution provided with Oracle General
Ledger is to enter rates manually each day, but this can be both time consuming
and error prone.

Care I.T. Services has teamed up with OANDA, the web-based global leader in
currency conversion, to produce an automated interface for exchange rates.
This product is a ‘bolt on’ extension to Oracle General Ledger and provides the
following key features:
• A seamless end-to-end process that handles communication with OANDA,
validation and loading into Oracle General Ledger
• Exchange rates are queried in real time from OANDA via an http request,
using their FXCSV/FXML tools
• Rates are loaded between all currencies you have enabled
• True ‘bid’ or ‘ask’ rates are available, including an option to ensure
triangulation
• The interface can be scheduled to run early each morning
• Should a failure occur, the process can re-submit itself or send an e-mail
alert
• Optional extensions allow you to calculate period rates and publish rates
to a web page, so that the rest of your organisation can benefit from
official currency exchange rates

For further information, please contact:

Peter Care
Tel: +44 (0)7961 194669
E-mail: peter@careitservices.com
Web: www.careitservices.com

Or visit the link on the OANDA website – www.oanda.com

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Benefits
Daily exchange rates are entered into Oracle General Ledger and then used by
all other Oracle Applications modules. Any transaction in a currency other than
your functional currency requires an exchange rate for the date of the
transaction. Examples include supplier invoices and payments, customer
invoices and receipts, purchase orders and sales orders.

Oracle General Ledger is supplied with a screen to enter these currencies

manually. However, as rates must be entered daily, this can become very time
consuming, even when a relatively small number of currencies are required. In
addition, as with any manual process, mistakes occur which can have a major
impact on your business:
• If rates are not entered on a particular day, then foreign currency
transactions cannot be entered for that day.
• If a rate is entered incorrectly, the impact may not be noticed for weeks.
For example, if a rate is entered the ‘wrong way round’ the impact on your
GL balances at month end will be significant.

The Oracle E-Business Suite Exchange Rates Load loads all the rates you need,
without any intervention or checking required. With OANDA as the source, you
can be sure the rates are accurate and timely. Should the load fail on a
particular day, for example if the link to OANDA is not available, the process will
re-run itself. An e-mail alert can be sent if the process fails after a specified
number of attempts.

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Production Description

http
Oracle E- request OANDA
Oracle
General Ledger Business Suite web site
Daily Exchange
Exchange
Rates for all Rates Load
enabled FXCSV
output

The product is implemented as a concurrent program, run through the Oracle E-

Business Suite concurrent manager. The daily scheduling is managed by the
concurrent manager, but the load can also be run manually for a specific date if
required.

A number of options are available for the load, each implemented as a parameter
with a default:
• Choose whether to use ‘ask’ or ‘bid’ market rates, both of which are
provided by OANDA.
• Choose whether you want your rates to triangulate from a specified base
currency. For example, if you want to triangulate from USD, then rates
are loaded between USD and all enabled currencies and rates between
non-USD currencies are calculated from these. Alternatively, you may
want to load market rates for all currencies from OANDA, which will not
triangulate.
• Choose the number of times the program should re-try in the event of an
error and an e-mail address to be alerted if the program fails after the
specified number of attempts.

The concurrent program is implemented as a stored procedure and rates are

queried from OANDA using an http request direct from the database. Thus, all
processing is contained within the Oracle E-Business Suite database – there is
no dependence on the operating system or other components outside the
database.

There are two optional extensions to the product that can be implemented along
with the daily rates load:

Calculate Period Rates from Daily Rates

Period rates can also be entered manually in Oracle General Ledger, to provide
period average and period end rates for use with various Oracle General Ledger
functions, such as revaluation. Unlike daily rates, period rates must be provided

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for each set of books. Thus, if your organisation uses many sets of books,
entering period rates manually can be a significant task each month. The
obvious solution is to automatically calculate the period rates from daily rates.
Care I.T. Services has developed a single concurrent program that will perform
this task across all your sets of books.

Publish Rates to a Web Page

Using this product, you will have accurate, official exchange rates available within
Oracle E-Business Suite. So why not make this data available to the rest of your
organisation? This is enabled by an extension to the product that publishes daily
or period rates to a web page, that can be integrated as part of your company
intranet. The user can enter the currency and date or period – the rates will be
displayed as a table within the browser. Rates are queried from the database in
real time, so will always be up to date.

Purchase Information
The Oracle E-Business Suite Exchange Rates Load requires the purchase of two
elements:
• A subscription to the OANDA FXCSV service
• The Oracle E-Business Suite Exchange Rates Load product from Care
I.T. Services

The pricing structure is flexible according to your preferences and the level of
support required. For example, the two elements could be combined into a
single subscription-based fee or a licence for the Oracle E-Business Suite
Exchange Rates Load product can be purchased via a single up-front fee.

Care I.T. Services can offer the following services in conjunction with the product:
• On site installation and testing
• A brief training session and demonstration
• Full documentation
• Ongoing support

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