Oracle Corp. and PeopleSoft Inc. are developing new tools to help accountants balance the books more efficiently.
Oracle is planning to release next month Version 11i.7 of Oracle Financials, which will extend the software suites capabilities to manage global business, officials said. The upgrade includes enhanced functionality in 10 areas, including a new global tax requirements feature in the AP (Accounts Payable) and AR (Accounts Receivable) modules, a cross-currency application in AR, and enhanced global intercompany data sharing in the General Ledger module.
Other capabilities include an invoice-receipt matching feature in AP, document sequencing enhancements in AR and a re-runnable depreciation feature in the Fixed Assets module.
Along with the upgrade, Oracle will roll out its Daily Business Close portal, which the Redwood Shores, Calif., company announced at its European AppsWorld conference in January.
Separately, Version 8.4 of PeopleSofts namesake financials suite, which will be unveiled this week, combines code from the private- and commercial-sector versions of the software. This expands the suites Web-based architecture to public-sector users and bolsters accounting capabilities for commercial companies, said officials in Pleasanton, Calif.
The native Web architecture in the public-sector version of PeopleSoft Financials 8.4 will let the city of Oshawa, Ontario, move forward with its portal and business process integration plans, said Dave Mowby, manager of application support for Oshawa. Mowby said hes also interested in the Chart Field Configuration utility in Version 8.4. “That allows you to rename and reorder chart fields in a general ledger, and you can disable and remove chart fields you dont use,” Mowby said. “When we put in PeopleSoft, we had to go through a learning process of, What you call this, PeopleSoft calls that. Now we can go back to what everyones used to.”
By repurposing code from its public-sector suite in Version 8.4, commercial companies will get a more proactive accounting system akin to what many public-sector agencies adhere to. This adds commitment control capability to alert department managers when their department is getting close to a budget cap.
Finally, the 8.4 upgrade provides a single instance of data across different databases. This answers rival Oracles single-database approach, which provides access to real-time data.