Oracle Cloud Financials 24C Release: What’s New?

The Oracle Cloud Financials 24C release is upon us, set for July 2024! Oracle’s mandatory quarterly releases keep your environment up to date with the latest features, fixes, and upgrades.  

This blog will provide a high-level summary of the new features introduced in the Oracle Financials Cloud 24C release notes. We'll also talk about why thorough testing is critical for the Oracle Financials 24C version rollout and how Opkey's AI-enabled, No-Code test automation solution can deliver a quick and easy update certification.

If you want info beyond these Oracle Financials 24C release notes, check out the 24C Concise Summary Advisory or the Comprehensive 24C Advisory.

Highlights: Benefits you get from Oracle 24C Financials Update  

• Generate detailed reports that clearly show the source and purpose of each budget entry.

• More straightforward analysis and comparison of budget data, aiding in better financial planning and decision-making.

• Reduces the risk of data mismatches and ensures that all budget entries are accounted accurately.

Why You'll Love the Changes Coming in 24C:  

• Enhanced Efficiency: These updates reduce manual processes and improve financial transaction accuracy.

• Improved Compliance: Automate compliance with financial regulations through new and improved features.

• Detailed Reporting: Generate comprehensive reports showing the source and purpose of each budget entry, aiding in better financial planning and decision-making.  

• Accurate Budget Management: Reduces the risk of data mismatches and ensures accurate accounting of all budget entries.

What Are the Best Testing Practices for the Oracle Financials 24C New Features?

• Define the scope of testing. Determine which tests are required and which are not during the quarterly Oracle Financials Cloud update.  

• Quickly develop sanity tests to ensure business continuity.  

• Determine which Financials business processes should be automated and which require manual testing.  

• Use impact analysis reports to show differences between releases.

Functional Changes from the Oracle Cloud Financials 24C Release

Common Financials

• Our continuous commitment in service excellence is highlighted in this update with advancements to facilitate reporting and budget entry inquiry, the budget entry name is necessary when integrating budget amounts from ERP integration services into Budgetary Control.

Taxes

• In this update, additional columns are added in Tax Rapid Implementation to input data on tax rate controls, offset tax and recovery rates.

Budgetary Control

• The use of a budget entry name in Budgetary Control from ERP integration services reporting and inquiry of budget entries across all methods for load budget balances.

• The project budget can be adjusted to control spending based on project tasks or resources, allowing users to manage costs as needed, reducing the risk of overspending.

General Ledger

• Users may keep an eye on the journal approval process through the Journal Action Log. We can also withdraw records that correspond to the "assigned to" action and take necessary action on pending close tasks.

Payables

• Escheatment in payables is when we give unclaimed money to the government. This helps make sure the money goes to the right people. We use an Escheatment process to do this automatically.

Assets

• Oracle Assets helps determine how much money is lost over time on things like equipment or buildings and figures out how much interest is lost on the money spent to buy those things by configuration of annuity depreciation method.

• To route exceptions for manager approvals and employ automatic approvals for routine transactions, optimize controls for managing the lifecycle of fixed assets. Most asset transactions, such as additions, transfers, retirements, reclassifications, and cost or method adjustments, are covered by these approvals.

Project Financial Management

Billing & Revenue Management

• The feature simplifies project and contract milestone completion, invoicing, and revenue recognition by tracking and analyzing milestone lifecycles in Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence, allowing project managers and administrators to provide comments.

Cost Management & Control

• Control the ability to delete payroll costs not successfully distributed to projects. A new privilege, Delete Project Labor Distributions in Error, is provided to determine which roles can delete payroll costs. Add this privilege to custom roles to allow for the delete functionality.

Planning, Scheduling & Forecasting

• Refresh budgets or forecasts from the source version to reflect changes made in the source version, such as new resources or changes to dates or periodic spread, to reduce the number of forecast versions generated.

Project Asset Management

• The Import Unassigned Asset Lines file-based data import workbook allows for the splitting of project asset lines by amount or percentage, enabling the simultaneous assignment of eligible project assets.

Technical Updates

• In Import Segment Values and Hierarchies FBDI or Rapid Implementation Spreadsheet, keep the original order of account hierarchy members so that customers can show child values in the order they want without defining names.

• New features for acknowledging bank payment confirmations have been added to the Payables Payments REST API. These features enable crucial business operations including releasing liens and relieving obligations.

• The Adjustment, Transfer, and Retirement FBDI Templates use the Interface Line Number to uniquely link parent sheet data with other templates and define transaction processing order for various assets.

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Why Enterprises Should Not Ignore Oracle’s 24C Quarterly Release?

• Fixing bugs from previous releases.  

• Security alerts and data fixes.

• New tax, legal, and regulatory updates.

• New upgrade scripts.

• Certification with new third-party products and versions.

• Certification with new Oracle products.

Test Guidance From Opkey

We are aware that Oracle clients will have a short window of two weeks to confirm that these modifications won't negatively impact on their current business procedures. This can be difficult, but test automation is already transforming the way businesses test and shortening quarterly update cycles from weeks to 3 days. Opkey's  Oracle Cloud quarterly certification will help you successfully navigate the Oracle Cloud 24C update.  

Learn how Haemonetics Streamlines Oracle Testing With Opkey and Reduces Testing Timelines by 80%

Here's how we do this:

• Quickly apply our pre-built accelerator library, which includes over 7,000 Oracle Cloud test assets and 1,000+ pre-built test scripts for various financials modules.  

• Prior to updates, Opkey offers a detailed advisory document outlining the exact changes that might be expected.  

• Our Change Impact Analysis report pinpoints the test components that need more attention.