You want to use Oracle's new subsidiary ledger features, but there is a lot of garbage in your chart of accounts.

Problem

A multinational manufacturing company wanted to upgrade to E-Business Suite R12 from 11.5.9 in order to take advantage of its subledger accounting functionality. With locations across the globe, secondary ledgers that use accounting methods and currencies specific to the location of the business – while all still using the same primary ledger for headquarters in the UK – was an attractive feature for the company. However, the company’s business had changed since it first implemented E-Business Suite, and much of the data in the current chart of accounts was obsolete (location, product line, and cost center values all needed a thorough overhaul). They also carried customer information in the CoA since they did not have receivables when they first implemented. Since it did not make sense to carry over the junk during an R12 upgrade, the company needed a way to clean up their chart of accounts before upgrading so that they could have a fresh start in R12 and use subsidiary ledgers with only the information they needed.

The company used FlexField software to clean up their chart of accounts in 11.5.9. They decided to use the FlexField software prior to the upgrade process since 11.5.9 was a known stable environment and an environment that the users were familiar with. They designed their new chart of accounts without a customer segment and, using FlexField software, cleaned up the values in the other segments by mapping the obsolete values to a single new value for each segment. After they made the change using FlexField software they upgraded to R12. There were no issues with upgrading, adding new modules in R12, and implementing the customer master in their Oracle E-Business Suite. The integrity of the database was maintained, and they were able to use the features of R12 effectively. They now consider using FlexField software a part of their routine maintenance to continuously change the chart of accounts to reflect changes in their business.