The latest addition to Oracle’s suite of EPM Cloud products, Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud (ARCS), is a robust solution for your reconciliation needs built using the capabilities of Account Reconciliation Manager (ARM). The cloud-based offering greatly reduces cost of deployment and administration, making a streamlined reconciliation process affordable for companies of all sizes.
ARCS allows you to view the performance of reconciliation in real time and ensures that all reconciliations prepared are properly qualified. We’ve compiled a list of the questions we get most often so you can decide if ARCS is the reconciliation solution you’re looking for.
1. What is included in Account Reconciliation Cloud Service?
Customers receive everything they need in order to manage a global reconciliation process:
- Flexible balance mapping rules with an automated completeness check
- Rules-based thresholds for automatic certification and risk assessment
- Workflow support for the reconciliation process
- Audit controls for all activities
- Reporting, monitoring, and analysis
2. What are the benefits of using ARCS over ARM?
ARCS has most of the functionality of its on-premises counterpart, ARM; however, there are some major differences, including the benefit of using the cloud’s time-saving and cost-reducing infrastructure. With a low monthly per user license cost, ARCS requires minimal hardware investment, minimal client IT involvement, and minimal Oracle application support.
The key advantages of the cloud version are faster time to deployment, reduced up-front deployment costs, and more flexibility to scale quickly to accommodate organizational needs.
Additionally, ARCS supports a tablet user interface and offers a pre-built dashboard that includes the Academy — an expansive library with links to training videos and tutorials.
3. Is there anything included with ARM that isn’t provided by the monthly subscription of ARCS?
The ARCS monthly subscription provides access only to the reconciliation management tool, while the license for the ARM on-premises solution comes with two additional modules in Financial Close Management (FCM). ARCS subscribers miss out on the functionality provided by the FCM suite’s Financial Close Manager and Supplemental Data Manager modules.
4. How fast can ARCS be deployed?
Because ARCS eliminates the need for on-premises hardware, operating systems, databases, and other technology, new applications can be deployed in weeks versus months for on-premises applications.
5. How can I integrate ARCS with my existing cloud or on-premises ERP systems?
Data and metadata can be integrated into ARCS using flat files or the included data management capabilities of the solution.
6. What tasks must be completed before reconciliations can be performed?
Before you perform reconciliations in ARCS, you have to decide how to configure the system to best achieve your organizational objectives and collect all data that’s required — this will take the most amount of time. After your configuration planning is complete, you can quickly perform the actual set up and reconciliation.
Configuration Tasks:
- Configure system settings, periods, formats, and users
- Import profiles
- Configure data loads
- Import currency rates
- Create reconciliations for a period
- Open the period
- Run data loads
Currently, ARCS requires a pre-mapped data load file for both balances and transactions. It functions similarly to the transactional data load feature available in 11.1.2.4.101 ARM.
New users should be mindful of naming conventions for reconciliation profile ID because the ARCS data load method causes greater sensitivity. Your application (i.e. profile naming convention) should be designed to allow little to no manipulation of your data input file in order to get the data to load.
8. How are upgrades and patches handled?
Each customer chooses a one-hour window for daily system maintenance and patching. Patches are automatically applied during this window if needed. When available, upgrades are provided at the same time. Customers are provided with advanced notice of an upcoming upgrade.
Critical patch fixes are done on the environment as needed. Typical updates are done once a month, and software enhancements are completed approximately once every quarter.
9. What web browsers are supported by ARCS?
ARCS supports Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
10. Does every user have unlimited access to the reconciliations?
No. The reconciliation process includes four predefined, hierarchal roles:
- The Service Administrator role is for users responsible for configuring the system and managing the worldwide reconciliation process — these users have unrestricted access.
- The Power User role is for users with regional reconciliation management responsibilities.
- The User role is for users that prepare and review account reconciliation or need to view or comment on reconciliations.
- The Viewer role is for users that require read-only access to reconciliations.
Yes. Like other EPM Cloud products, a batch of user accounts can be uploaded in a CSV file, but it cannot exceed 256K. After creating these users, you can assign a predefined role to a batch of users. This is easily done by creating a CSV file for each role that contains the email addresses for users you want to assign to that role.
Still have questions about Oracle’s account reconciliation tools?
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