Special Handling in Oracle Fusion: Beyond Bill Only

A nurse scans an implant into a patient, mid surgery. No purchase order. No requisition. No receipt. The device left the shelf and went straight into a human body, and now finance has to pay for it, tie it to that exact patient, and record the precise lot and serial that got implanted. Standard procurement has no graceful answer for this moment. Special handling does.

Most people meet the feature through that hospital story and quietly file it under "medical thing." Big mistake. Sitting under the bill only example is a flexible engine for any purchase that needs to carry extra information and follow different rules than a normal order. Once that clicks, the uses show up everywhere.

What it actually is

Special handling lets a requisition or purchase order carry structured extra data and behave differently from a plain document. Two parts make it run. A special handling type defines the behavior and the switches. A set of descriptive flexfields, tied to that type, capture the extra data on the header and the lines. Oracle ships a Bill Only type ready to go, and the whole feature is opt in.

The interesting part is what a type can control. For any special handling order, three switches sit waiting. Require buyer review before the order goes out. Override B2B communication so the order does not auto transmit to the supplier. Automatically create the receipt so nobody has to receive it by hand. Add the flexfields for data capture and the ability to route approvals by type, and a simple idea grows into a real configuration tool.

Setting it up, end to end

First, opt in. In Setup and Maintenance, open the Procurement offering and opt in to Create Requisitions and Purchase Orders Requiring Special Handling. Nothing shows up until this is done.

Next, open the Manage Special Handling Types task. The seeded Bill Only type already sits there. Use it as is, tweak it, or build a fresh type for a different purpose.

Then decide the type's behavior with those three switches. Turn on Requires Buyer Review when a human should eyeball the order first. Turn on Override B2B Communication when the order should not fire off to the supplier on its own. Turn on Automatically Create Receipt when the goods are already gone and receiving is pure formality.

Two constraints trip people up right here, so plan around them. Switch on Automatically Create Receipt and the lines can no longer use lot or serial controlled items, receipt routing gets forced to Direct Delivery, and the destination type must be Expense. Auto receipt and full lot and serial tracking cannot both ride on the same line. Pick based on what the scenario needs most.

The flexfields are where the extra data lives. The type links to special handling descriptive flexfields on the header and the lines. Open the flexfield, add a context for the type, define the segments to capture. For a medical case that might be physician name, case number, lot, and serial. For another business it is whatever needs to travel with the order. Deploy the flexfield after configuring it, or the new fields never appear. One more setting matters if reporting is on the agenda: mark the segments BI enabled before deploying. That single toggle separates data you can analyze from data trapped inside the transaction.

Approval routing is optional but powerful. The special handling type is available as a header level approval attribute, so a rule can key off the type and send those orders straight to the right reviewer.

Finish by testing the whole flow. Create a special handling requisition in the Responsive Self Service Procurement application, capture the flexfield data, generate the order, and confirm the data copies from requisition to order. That carry forward is one of the feature's best qualities. Then confirm each switch behaved.

Where it gets interesting

Here is where the feature earns a spot in the toolkit. Same engine, pointed at a different problem each time.

Think about emergency and consumed purchases. Any situation where the goods get used before the paperwork catches up fits the bill only pattern, not just implants. Field service parts installed on site. Lab reagents burned through during testing. Catering delivered and eaten before an invoice ever lands. A type with auto receipt on closes these out cleanly, as long as the items are expense destined and free of lot or serial tracking.

Or high touch orders that must never auto transmit. Some purchases should never reach a supplier without a human glance, whatever the dollar figure. A custom fabrication. A delicate vendor relationship. A legal or compliance buy. A type with Override B2B Communication and Requires Buyer Review both on kills the automation and forces the checkpoint, while the flexfields capture the reason and any special instructions.

There is a quieter use too. Strip away the behavior switches and special handling is simply a clean way to force structured data onto specific orders. A grant funded purchase carries the grant number and the principal investigator. A capital project order carries the asset tag and the location. A regulated buy carries the permit or license reference. Because the data lives in flexfields instead of a free text note, it stays consistent, searchable, and reportable.

Then there is routing by character instead of cost. Most approval rules key off money. Special handling lets a team route by the nature of the purchase. Tag a category with a type, write a rule on that type, and those orders reach a specialist no matter how small the amount. A tiny but sensitive order gets the scrutiny a big routine one never needed.

And the one almost nobody turns on. Because the type and code live in the purchase order data model, they can go straight onto the printed PO template. The supplier gets the order plus the context that explains how to handle it. Quiet, and genuinely useful.

Reporting on it

Everything captured lands in OTBI. The Procurement Purchasing Real Time subject area carries a Special Handling folder with the type, code, description, and the behavior flags, plus separate folders for the header and line flexfield data. One catch to remember: those flexfield segments hide in the subject area by default and only surface once BI enabled and deployed. That is exactly why the earlier toggle matters.

The limits, plainly

Special handling is powerful but opinionated. Every line on a special handling requisition must share one supplier and supplier site. Internal material transfers are out. Lines cannot be split, manually grouped, or duplicated. And once a special handling type exists, it cannot be deleted, only left unused, so name and design them with care.

None of that is a dealbreaker. It is the shape of the tool. Design inside those edges and special handling quietly solves a whole class of procurement problems that ordinary orders cannot reach.

More practical Oracle Fusion walkthroughs land here every day. Video versions live on the SCM Simplified YouTube channel.