Continuing my series on Oracle GL setup, I am discussing "how to define summary accounts" today. Summary accounts commonly mean a summary of many accounts. Using this concept, summary accounts in oracle is an accounting flexfield combination that is a total of the balances in other accounting Flexfield combinations.

Summary accounts can be created for the Set of Books using the Summary Accounts window. Oracle Setup will prompt you to enter the name, a description of the account, earliest period and a template for the summary accounts. The template here is used by Oracle General Ledger to create Summary Accounts. In this template you will have to define whether each of the segment you want in "Detail" or "Total". This can be configured by choosing either of the letters "D" or "T" respectively. Chossing Detail, Oracle creates and maintains a detail summary account. On the other hand in case Total is configured, Oracle, totals up the balances for all segments thus presenting a condensed value to the user.