Oracle Receivables integrates with any feeder system, such as Oracle Order Management, to let you record prepayments from customers before the delivery of goods or services.
This section describes how the process works.
A prepayment is payment in advance of the delivery of goods or services.
Receivables creates prepayments as receipts before the related invoices are created. Later, a business event from your feeder system triggers the invoicing process in Receivables, and an AutoInvoice postprocess matches the prepaid receipts to their related invoices.
See: Prepayments Process Flow.
The creation of prepayment receipts and the subsequent application to matching prepaid invoices is a process that occurs without user intervention.
Note: You cannot manually create prepayments in Receivables. Instead, your feeder system initiates the creation of prepayments in Receivables.
Your customers can use any of these Oracle Payments payment methods to make a prepayment:
Automatic Clearing House (ACH) bank account transfer
Cash
Check (tendered to order taker)
Credit card/purchase card
Direct debit
Your customers can use more than one of the above payment methods for a single prepayment. Receivables creates one prepayment receipt for each payment method.
You can create and track prepayments in Receivables. However, your unique business requirements dictate whether or not you require a prepayment. Your enterprise must implement specific business practices to determine which orders require prepayments.
For example, you might require customers to prepay all orders for consulting services. Or, you might require a down payment for any order over $1,000.