Journal source and categories is used to differentiate journal entries and to enhance your audit trail.
Journal entry source indicates where your journal entries originate
Journal categories help you differentiate entries by purchase or type.
Examples for Sources:
Assets
Purchasing
Payables
Manual
Budget …...Etc.
Examples For Categories:
Accruals
Adjustment
Receipts
Revaluation
Payments..Etc..
Oracle applications provided required source and categories with default. But you can define with your sauce and categories by using the following navigation:
GL:Setup->Journal->Source
Setup->journal-.Categories
With Journal Source you can:
Define inter company and suspense accounts for specific sources.
Run auto post program for specific source
Import journals by source
Freeze journals imported from sub ledgers to prevent users from making changes.
If you have journal approval enabled for your set of books, you can use journal source to enforce management approval of journal before they are posted.
With Journal Categories you can:
Define inter company and suspense accounts for specific category.
Use document sequence to sequentially number journals by categories.