Oracle Procurement Interview Questions and Answers

1.What exactly do you know about Procure to pay?

Ans:  Well, it is an approach which is commonly called as P2P. Basically, it is the process of fulfilling the need for raw material which is required to accomplish manufacturing and other important tasks within an organization simply. The payment making of the raw material is also included in this. One of the best things about this cycle is it easily enables them to manage their cash flow without facing major issues. 

2.What is a Purchase Requisition and define various requisitions?

Ans: It is a formal request intended to procure/buy something that is needed by the organization. It is created and approved by the department requiring the goods and services.

A purchase requisition typically contains the description and quantity of the goods or services to be purchased, a required delivery date, account number and the amount of money that the purchasing department is authorized to spend for the goods or services. Often, the names of suggested supply sources are also included.

Basically, requisitions are of two types:

         1.Internal requisition

         2.Purchase requisition

Internal Requisitions are created if the Items are to be obtained from one Inventory location to another location within the same organization. Here the source of the requisition would be INVENTORY. There is no approval process for the internal requisition.

Purchase Requisitions are created if the goods are obtained from external suppliers. Here the source of the requisition would be SUPPLIERS. The purchase requisitions are sent for approvals.

3.What Are The Base Tables For A Purchase Requisition?

Ans:  PO_REQUISITION_HEADERS_ALL (SEGMENT1 column in this table represents the requisition number):

This table stores Header information of a Purchase Requisition.

Important columns of this table:

REQUISITION_HEADER_ID:It is a unique system generated Requisition identifier

PREPARER_ID:It is a unique identifier of the employee who prepared  the requisition

SEGMENT1:It is the Requisition number

AUTHORIZATION_STATUS:Authorization status type

TYPE_LOOKUP_CODE:Requisition type

ORG_ID:Unique Operating unit unique identifier

PO_REQUISITION_LINES_ALL:

This table stores information about Requisition lines in a Purchase Requisition. This table stores information related to the line number, item number, item category, item description, item quantities, units, prices, need-by date, deliver-to location, requestor, notes, and suggested supplier information for the requisition line.

Important columns of this table:

REQUISITION_HEADER_ID:It is a unique system generated Requisition identifier

REQUISITION_LINE_ID:Link between PO_REQUISITION_LINES_ALL And PO_REQ_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL

LINE_NUM:Indicates the Line number

LINE_TYPE_ID:Indicates the Line type

CATEGORY_ID:Unique Item category identifier

ITEM_DESCRIPTION:Description of the Item

QUANTITY NUMBER:Quantity ordered

PO_REQ_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL:

This table stores information about the accounting distributions of a requisition line. Each requisition line must have at least one accounting distribution. Each row includes the Accounting Flexfield ID and Requisition line quantity.

Important columns of this table:

DISTRIBUTION_ID:Unique Requisition distribution identifier

REQUISITION_LINE_ID:Unique Requisition line identifier

CODE_COMBINATION_ID:Unique General Ledger charge account identifier

 DISTRIBUTION_NUM:Distribution number

4.What are the success components of an organization that procurement can always build?

Ans:

• Market Placement
• Company Identity
• Settling management issues
• Enhancing company capabilities

5.What are the documents that use PO_HEADERS_ALL?

Ans:  The following are the documents that use PO_HEADERS_ALL

RFQ’s, Quotations, Standard Purchase Order, Planned Purchase Order, Blanket Purchase Order and Contracts

6.What Are The Different Purchasing Modes In Receiving?

Ans:There are three modes:

Online: Receipts are processed online. If there are any errors, they are shown on the FORM itself, and don’t let you IGNORE and PROCEED.

Immediate: Receipts are processed immediately, but no errors are shown. Errors are recorded in REC_TRANSACTION_INTERFACE table.

Batch: Receipts are processed in batch, but no errors are shown. Errors are recorded in REC_TRANSACTION_INTERFACE table.

Note: In all the above two cases, it requires Receiving Transaction Processor to be run periodically.

7. What Does Create Internal Order Conc Request Do?

Ans: Create internal order request will transfer the IR info to OM interface tables.

8.What are the prime responsibilities of a Procurement Manager?

Ans: One of their prime responsibilities is to buy and make sure of the availability of goods. They need to make sure they are buying the same at best available prices so that profits for the organization can simply be enhanced. Those with a good background in academics and finance can enable organizations to get results better than expected.

9.Name any one milestone in the procurement process?

Ans: Concept and technology development

10.What Is An Approval Hierarchy?

Ans:  Approval hierarchies let you automatically route documents for approval.

There are two kinds of approval hierarchies in Purchasing:

• position hierarchy
• employee/supervisor relationships.

11. Explain The P2p Process Flow?

Ans:

Procure to pay (p2p) is a process of requesting, purchasing, receiving, paying for and accounting for goods and services.  Procure to Pay Lifecycle is one of the important business Process in Oracle Applications. It’s the flow that gets the goods required to do business.  It involves the transactional flow of data that is sent to a supplier as well as the data that surrounds the fulfillment of the actual order and payment for the product or service.

Create a requisition>> create RFQ>> create a quotation from quote analysis>> generate a PO>>receipt of material>> create Invoice in payables>> transfer to GL

12.What is invoice Validation Process?

Ans: Before you pay or create accounting entries for any invoice, the invoice validation process must validate the invoice.
Invoice Validation checks the matching, tax, period status, exchange rate, and distribution information for invoices you enter and automatically applies holds to exception invoices. if an invoice has a hold, you can release the hold by correcting the exception that caused Invoice Validation to apply the hold by updating the invoice or to the purchase order, or changing the invoice tolerances.

13.What is Pay on Receipt AutoInvoice Program?

Ans: By running this program, we can automatically create an invoice for a PO when we enter a receipt for the respective PO.

14.Mention the general tasks in procurement procure in a step-wise manner?

Ans: Recognizing the need for a product→Specifying the need→ Exploring source options→Looking for price and terms→Making purchasing order→Product Delivery→Purchase Inspection→Invoice Approval & payment to vendor→Maintenance of record

15.What are the important tasks that matter a lot when it comes to handling a procurement process?

Ans: There are actually certain things which are really very important. It is not possible for the organizations to make sure that everything goes best in the process if they don’t pay attention to this. The very first thing is to pay attention to the selection of vendors who have a good reputation in the market. Once they are selected, next is to establish the payment terms which make sure no future conflicts. Procurement is actually an umbrella term in which purchasing can be considered integrated.

16.Does a similar procurement process works for all the organizations?

Ans: No, this is not true. Different organizations need to adopt different processes that are different depending on organization size and many other factors.

17.What is the Oracle Exchange?

Ans: The Oracle Exchange is an electronic catalog of goods and services offered by a wide range of                      suppliers. The Oracle Exchange catalog does not reflect pre-negotiated prices with the University.

18.What are the reasons that an Express processor may reject lines due to validation failures?

Ans:

• If the item revision, Subinventory and locator is not available & the entered destination is final. (Revision, Subinventory & Locator are not obtainable as a default from the item definition.)
• If the early / late receipt date tolerance is exceeded & the exception control is set to Reject.
• If Lot / Serial information is required.
• If Ship-to- location is not available & the destination is Receiving.
• If the location is not available for Expense destination type & the destination is final destination.
• If PO Supplier & Receipt Header Supplier do not match.
• If other receipts are pending for the specified shipment.

19.What is the use of Sourcing Rule?

Ans: The planning process to create Purchase Requisition for Buy items & Internal Requisitions for Make Items uses a Sourcing Rule.

20.How will you identify the status of a Purchasing document?

Ans:If the status is to be seen for a specific document, go to the respective document-defining window and see the current status at the Status region.

If the status of any document is to be found out, go either to the ‘Notification window or the Action history window (Navigation: Special > View Action History).

21.How will you find out the number of documents assigned to a particular Buyer?

Ans:

• Navigation: Management > Manage Buyer Workload
• Select the field ‘Action’ > Review
• Enter the other required search criteria and press FIND
• In the popup window we see the following details:
• Buyer Assigned   Urgent Late Needed   Open Pos

22.How will you ensure that Receipt Routing mentioned in a Requisition or PO is not override at the time of Receiving?

Ans:Set the profile option ‘RCV: Routing Override’ to No.

(But in our instance I am getting the profile option named as ‘RCV: Allow Routing Override’ and the Default value and user value field are grayed out, I am not able to fill anything at user value also. why?)

23.What are the different Currency conversion Types?

Ans:

• Corporate: This is an exchange rate, generally a standard market rule, determined by the senior financial management of an organization, which will be used throughout the organization.
• Spot: An exchange rate entered to perform conversions based on the rate on a specific date. It applies to the immediate delivery of a currency.
• User Defined: An exchange rate that is specified when a foreign currency journal entry is made, that does not have a daily exchange rate.

24.Why timely payment is necessary for the vendor?

Ans: Timely payment always makes sure of healthy relations between the vendor and the buyer. Harming this relation is not good for both as it can largely impact the production and the overall availability of raw material. Sometimes vendors delay the delivery because of no other reason than a delay in payments. This can lead to significant losses for the business. 

25.Why is stock verification necessary at the time of delivery for the buyers?

Ans: It simply enables buyers to make sure that no damaged goods have been supplied to the buyers. In case there is an issue with the goods provided, buyers can raise a refund or a replacement for the same. Verification at a later date than receiving the stock can create conflicts between both the parties. If the stock is not as per requirement, obviously it is a huge loss for the buyer. 

26.Explain the Receipt Routing?

Ans: Receipt Routing is of three types: Direct, Standard and Inspection

• In Direct once the goods arrive at the destination, we directly move them to a specific Sub-Inv
• In Standard once the goods are at the destination, we receive it at the receiving point first and then move them to the Sub-Inv.
• In Inspection once the goods are at the destination, we receive it at the receiving point and then we perform inspection and accordingly we either accept it or reject them.