You can define organizations and the relationships among them.
You create sets of books using the Define Set of Books window in Oracle General Ledger. You define all other types of organizations using the Define Organization window.
1. Business Group
The business group represents the highest level in the organization structure, such as the consolidated enterprise, a major division, or an operation company. The business group secures human resources information. For example, when you request a list of employees, you see all employees assigned to the business group of which your organization is a part.
Note: This is true in all applications except the HR applications, which support more granular security by a lower–level organization unit, the security profile. Multiple sets of books can share the same business group if they share the same business group attributes, including HR flexfield structures.
2. Set of Books
A financial reporting entity that uses a particular chart of accounts, functional currency, and accounting calendar. Oracle General Ledger secures transaction information (such as journal entries and balances) by set of books. When you use Oracle General Ledger, you choose a responsibility that specifies a set of books. You then see information for that set of books only.
3.1 Legal Entity
A legal company for which you prepare fiscal or tax reports. You assign tax identifiers and other legal entity information to this type of organization.
Note: There are currently only a few features provided for legal entities, such as intrastat movement reports and
intercompany invoice generation.
3.2 Balancing Entity
Represents an accounting entity for which you prepare financial statements. This is a segment in the Accounting Flexfield structure (usually the Company segment) at which all accounting entries must balance. There may be multiple companies within the same structure, and each of these must balance within itself. Each legal entity can have one or more balancing entities. You can use Flexfield Value Security rules to restrict data entry of balancing segment values by legal entity
or operating unit.
4. Operating Unit
An organization that uses Oracle Cash Management, Order Management and Shipping Execution, Oracle Payables, Oracle
Purchasing, and Oracle Receivables
. It may be a sales office, a division, or a department.
An operating unit is associated with a legal entity.
Information is secured by operating unit for these applications. Each user sees information only for their operating unit. To run any of these applications, you choose a responsibility associated with an organization classified as an operating unit.
5. Inventory Organization
An organization for which you track inventory transactions and balances, and/or an organization that manufactures or distributes products. Examples include (but are not limited to) manufacturing plants, warehouses, distribution centers, and sales offices. The following applications secure information by inventory organization:
Oracle Inventory, Bills of Material, Engineering, Work in Process, Master Scheduling/MRP, Capacity, and Purchasing receiving functions.
To run any of these applications, you must choose an organization that has been classified as an inventory organization.
6. HR Organization
HR organizations represent the basic work structure of any enterprise.
They usually represent the functional management, or reporting groups that exist within a business group. In addition to these internal  organizations, you can define other organizations for tax and government reporting purposes, or for third part payments.
7. Organizations in Oracle Projects
Oracle Projects allows you to define organization hierarchies to reflect your company’s organizations structure. You can add Oracle Projects–specific organization types to the organization hierarchy (for example, projects organizations or Expenditure organizations) to help you to better manage your project control requirements. You assign project and expenditure hierarchies to operating units.
8. Asset Organizations
An asset organization is an organization that allows you to perform asset–related activities for a specific Oracle Assets corporate depreciation book. Oracle Assets uses only organizations designated as asset organizations
The Oracle Applications organization models define organizations and the relationships among them in arbitrarily complex enterprises. This organization model serves as the cornerstone for all of the Oracle Applications products. It dictates how transactions flow through different organizations and how those organizations interact with each other.
Generally, a complex enterprise has several organization structures, such as Internal, Accounting, and Human Resources. You are able to define different structures to customize Oracle Applications according to your business needs.
Basic Business Needs
Oracle Applications provides you with the features you need to satisfy the following basic business needs:

  1. Use a single installation of any Oracle Applications product to support any number of organizations, even if those organizations use different sets of books.
  2. Define different organization models
  3. Support any number of legal entities within a single installation of Oracle Applications.
  4. Secure access to data so that users can access only the information that is relevant to them.
  5. Sell products from a legal entity that uses one set of books and ship them from another legal entity using a different set of books, and automatically record the appropriate intercompany sales by posting intercompany accounts payable and accounts receivable invoices.
  6. Purchase products through one legal entity and receive them in another legal entity.

Major Features
Multiple Organizations in a Single Installation
You can define multiple organizations and the relationships among them in a single installation of Oracle Applications. These
organizations can be business groups, sets of books, legal entities, operating units, or inventory organizations.
When you run any Oracle Applications product, you first choose an organization—either  implicitly by choosing a responsibility, or explicitly in a Choose Organization window. Each window and report then displays information for your organization only. Organizations that share the same functional currency, Accounting Flexfield structure, and calendar can post to the same set of books.
Secure Access
You can assign users to particular organizations. This ensures accurate transactions in the correct operating unit.
Sell And Ship Products From Different Legal Entities
You can sell from one legal entity and ship from another, posting to each organization’s set of books.
Receive Goods Into Any Inventory Organization
You can enter purchase orders and assign for receipt any inventory organization that uses the same set of books. Your purchase order operating unit and receiving inventory organization must share the same set of books to receive against a purchase order.
Automatic Accounting for Internal Requisitions
You can create an internal requisition (sales order) in one organization, then ship from another organization, with correct intercompany invoicing.
Multiple Organizations Reporting
You can set up your Oracle Applications implementation to allow reporting across operating units by setting up the top reporting level. You can run your reports at the set of books level, legal entity level, or operating unit level

There are two types of auditing in Oracle Applications: auditing users, and auditing database row changes.
Auditing User Activity
Auditing users is supported by:
• Sign-On:Audit Level profile option setting
• Audit Reports
Based on the audit level you choose, Sign-On audit records usernames, dates, and times of users accessing the system, as well as what responsibilities, forms, and terminals users are using.
Auditing Database Row Changes
Auditing database row changes is supported by:
• From the Help menu, About This Record
• AuditTrail:Activate profile option setting
• Audit forms

Implementors and administrators can verify the successful configuration of end user functions by performing the tasks described in this section.
Self-Service Registration
Oracle User Management enables users to register for access to applications without requiring assistance from administrators. To register for application access, users must provide information in the required fields and click the Submit button.
Oracle User Management ships with the following sample self-service registration processes:

  • Employee Self-Service Registration
  • Customer Self-Service Registration (external individuals)

Organizations can use these registration processes in their existing form, or can use them as references for developing their own registration processes.
Requesting Additional Application Access
Oracle User Management enables you to request additional access to the specific applications for which you are eligible. Application access is based on roles and to access an application you must be granted the appropriate role. Perform the following to view the roles you have been assigned and to request additional ones.
Steps
1. After logging into the system, click the Preferences link in the upper right corner, and click the Access Requests link in the sidebar menu. The Access Requests page displays the roles you have been assigned. Click the Request Access button to request one or more additional roles.
2. Most roles are organized according to role categories: roles that are not categorized appear under the Miscellaneous node. Select the role category that contains the role you want to request. If you do not see the required role, then either you are not eligible for the role or it has not been set up to for additional access requests.
3. Select the role or roles you require for additional access to the system, and click on the Add to List button. You can optionally remove roles from your list by clicking on the Remove Roles button.
4. When you have selected all your required roles, click on the Next button.
5. Enter a justification for your request and click on the Next button. You can remove any pending roles or check their status in the page that appears next.
Guidelines
Some roles may require you to provide additional information. In such cases, the system will prompt you for additional information before you can complete the process for requesting a role.
If the role being assigned would cause a separation of duties violation, the operation will flag this in the workflow attributes, and any approvers for the request will see the details.
Login Assistance
It is not uncommon for system administrators to have to reset a user’s forgotten password, or even advise a user of the account’s user (login) name. This is unproductive for both the user, who cannot do any work in the meantime, and for the administrator.
In addition, a user will occasionally request the password to be reset, when it is actually the user name that has been forgotten, or vice versa. This type of occurrence leads to even more time being lost.
A new feature reduces the time spent in such administrative activities by implementing a login help mechanism that is easily accessed from the E-Business Suite Login Page. A user simply clicks on the “Login Assistance” link located below the Login and Cancel buttons.
On the screen that appears, you can either:

  • Go to the Forgot Password section, enter the correct user name and then click on the “Forgot Password” button. You will then be emailed details of how to reset your password.
  • Go to the Forgot User Name section, enter the email address associated with the account, and click on the Forgot User Name button. The user name will then be emailed to the address specified.

For security, the relevant data is stored securely in workflow tables, and the URLs employed have both an expiration time and a single-use limitation.
The identify verification process required in previous Applications releases is no longer needed. Instead, a link to a secure page is sent to the email address of the user name defined in the system. From this secure page, the user can change password immediately.

Using the following profile options you can specify limits on user sessions.
ICX:Session Timeout
Use this profile option to enforce an inactivity time-out. If a user performs no Oracle Applications operation for a time period longer than the time-out value (specified in minutes), the user’s session is disabled. The user is provided an opportunity to re-authenticate and re-enable a timed-out session. If re-authentication is successful, the session is re-enabled and no work is lost. Otherwise, Oracle Applications exits without saving pending work.
If this profile option to 0 or NULL, then user sessions will never time out due to inactivity.
ICX: Limit time
Use this profile option to specify the absolute maximum length of time (in hours) of any user session, active or inactive.