Troubleshooting Average Costing In Oracle R12

When troubleshooting the Actual Cost Manager's failure to start you will discover that it is not fully documented in one source document. There are pieces of the troubleshoot process scattered throughout Metalink's notes and FAQ's that take a considerable amount of time to locate.

This article will help expedite the Actual Cost Manager's troubleshooting process.
When Average Cost Updates are not being calculated the cause can be related to the Cost Manager and the Actual Cost Worker not running.

There are several reasons why this is happening:
The first thing to check is the Inventory > Set Up > Organizations > Parameters > Costing Information [TAB] > Cost Cutoff Date.

 If the cost cutoff date is set to the current date or the date is in the past the Average Cost calculations will not work. The Fix: It will need to be re-set to a valid date or cleared.
Other problems are associated with the Actual Cost Worker - if it does not start or if it completes with a warning or an error the Average Costs will not get updated.

 If there are any errors in the MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS table the Cost Manager usually will not spawn an Actual Cost Worker in an Average Costing
environment UNTIL ALL ERRORS ARE CORRECTED in the table.

Problems can also be associated with the transaction rows that have a ‘null’ Distribution_Account_id which can cause the Costed_flag = ‘E’ which the Cost Manager identifies as an Error and then the Average Cost Update will not work since the Actual Cost Worker does not get started. The Fix: Add the correct Distribution_Acct_id and re-run the

Average Cost update.
Errors relating to the MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS can be viewed in the forms: Cost Management > View Transactions > Material Transactions > select a date range when costs are not posting or an item that has not had its unit cost updated after an Average Cost Update has been posted. Look in the Transaction ID [TAB] Error Code column and the Error Explanation column. (Example: Error Code = CST_NO_TXN_INVALID_ACCOUNT and the Error Explanation = An invalid account is associated with the item being transacted.)


If an invalid account is associated with the item being transacted it could be because a Cost Variance account is missing from the Cost Group - verify this by: Cost Management > Set Up > Cost Groups > Account field (Cost Variance.) The Fix:Add a new Cost Variance account in the GL module and apply it to the Cost Group’s Cost Variance account.

Thanks & Regards,
S.Grace Paul Regan