Overview
When you hear “Special Handling,” you probably think it’s an inventory, shipping or receiving related term. But in Oracle Self Service Procurement inside of Fusion, “Special Handling” is a requisition type that enables several neat functions. It’s easier to think of this by the common healthcare term Bill Only, because that is exactly what this is designed to do!
The key benefits for healthcare:
- Bill Only details like physician and DOS are stored on the PO and Requisition
- PO is not communicated to the supplier
- Receipt happens automatically
- You can still use your entire item catalog, or manually enter the lines
Special Handling lets you set up as many types as you want, though common ones include Bill Only and Bill and Replace. On each type, you can set
- Requisition Header and Requisition Line DFFs: physician name, DOS; lot and serial, or whatever you want! 20 text, 10 date/time, 10 number fields.
- Whether all lines need to be to the same supplier or not
- Whether a buyer needs to review the PO
- Negotiated: A flag that should be thought of as “touchless”
- Whether to automatically create the receipt or not
- Route approvals by whether they are Special Handling type xyz or not
- On the roadmap but not available yet: Buyer Assignment Rules by Special Handling Type
Setup
Before you can set up Special Handling, you do need to be in Redwood, which is probably a given at this point.
Security
There are three privileges, one for end users and two for administrators to set up.
- Create Requisition with Special Handling (POR_CREATE_REQUISITION_WITH_SPECIAL_HANDLING).
- Manage Special Handling Type (PO_MANAGE_SPECIAL_HANDLING_TYPE_PRIV)
- Manage Application Descriptive Flexfield (FND_APP_MANAGE_DESCRIPTIVE_FLEXFIELD_PRIV)
Configure the DFFs
This is straightforward just like any DFF, the type of DFF is Special Handling Attributes for Header or Line, then you create a Context. The Context is what appears on the setup for type, so you may want one for Bill Only Header, one for Bill Only Lines, etc.
Configure the Special Handling Types
This is where you name and describe the type, select the DFFs that will be used, etc. Typical healthcare will have these set to Negotiated (for touchless buying), and as Automatically Create Receipt.
Set Supplier Site to not communicate special handling orders
Placing Requisitions
Set your requisition to be a Special Handling Requisition
Use the action menu to set the requisition to be a special handling request. It will open a side bar to fill out the DFF values.
See how you will get notified on the page that you are in a special handling requisition
Want to check or change or cancel? Select to edit the details from the same menu.
From here on out, it’s almost the same as always. You can see you are in Special Handling while you order, but you add items to the cart just like usual. You can use Smart Forms or Enter Req Line too. The only difference is, if you are in a type that requires lot and serial, then adding items to cart will prompt you for those values. You can skip them if you set the DFF up to be not required.
As always, a few technical caveats
-Grouping doesn’t work, duplicating and splitting don’t work either.
-There are some seeded types, just disable them if you don’t like them
-Similarly, if you want to change DFF types, you may need to disable and replace the type
-The same DFFs show up on reqs or POs
-Doesn’t work with internal transfers
-Auto receipt only works if the item itself isn’t lot or serial controlled. So, you can auto receive a line where the item is a non lot controlled, expensed item, and you can enter the lot as the special handling DFF on the line level, but not if it has a lot that has to be entered at time of receipt. This difference, lot as a dff vs. lot as a lot, is confusing to some people. The limitation only applies if you have this as an inventory item with a lot defined in PIM.
-similarly, the receipt will be direct and the destination must be expense
