Hope you are doing fine in these uncertain times and safe. Hope your family is safe too.
I am excited to share the new features that we are delivering as part of Best Practices package for Time Off via the upgrade center. We have some new features (new country localizations) along with enhancements for existing countries
Highlights for Time Off
Belgium Localization
We now provide localized configuration for Belgium (BE) Time Off. By applying the country-specific configuration block, you will get sample configuration for various leave types like Vacations, Illness, Additional Leave, Education Leave, Unpaid Leave, Maternity/Paternity etc
In Belgium, the requirement is to accrue every month based on Work Schedule (working hours per week) and Company working hours but the accrued accruals for year say 2020 can only be utilized in 2021. Currently, Since we do not have an entitlement transfer mechanism for recurring accounts, we have another way of tackling this.
- One Time Account (Monthly Accrual Dummy Account) – This accrues monthly as described above
- Second Time Account (Annual Holiday Account) – This accrues yearly based on the balance from the previous year’s Monthly Accrual Dummy Account (accumulated monthly accruals for that year).
- The Monthly Accrual Dummy Account should not be used for Leave booking
Further, In case the employee changes during the year the working hours per week, the accrual amount in the month, when the change takes place, will be averaged out.
The formula for sample monthly accrual is
2 days per month * (5/6) * worked hours per week/reference mean working hours( from Legal entity) = 20 days a year for a full time for a full year of activity.
Considering an employee working 40 hours a week (with base as 40 hours in legal entity) he/she would get 1.667 per month
Annual Accrual would be 1.667*12 approx. 20 days. This would be credited to vacation account for the next year
Along with these vacation accruals other time types include
- Extral legal Holidays – additional holidays are accrued based on seniority lookup table
- Illness leave
- Maternity and Paternity Leaves – Based on local laws
- Educational Leave
- Strike
- Unpaid Leave types etc
The below time profile is delivered
Purchase Leave for Australia and United Kingdom
Purchased leave is an arrangement whereby permanent full-time and part-time staff members, and temporary staff members employed for more than 12 months from the time of entering into the Purchased Leave Agreement, can apply to purchase additional leave entitlements of say 10 days (2 weeks) in a 12 month period.
The approval of Purchased Leave Agreements is subject to departmental business needs and work demands. Purchased leave is to be taken at agreed and specified dates as set out in the Purchased Leave Agreement.
Staff members will have their annual gross salary reduced in exchange for the purchased leave. A net equivalent recurring deduction is created and passed on to payroll when a set of leaves is purchased
Sample Purchase Leave Solution Delivered by Best practices
- Employees can Purchase Leave in Multiples of weeks and they cannot Purchase more than 12 weeks in a rolling period of one year.
- Employees can make multiple purchases in a rolling period of 12 months with an overlapping deduction period. With Best practices, only two sample deduction pay components are delivered.
- The system calculates the total number of hours by multiplying the number of weeks requested with employee’s std hours on their job info and the request is routed for approval.
- A new time account is created for every purchased leave with the balance of the purchased quantity when the request is approved.
- The bookable period should begin on the approval date and end on the deduction end date.
- The deduction will happen till the end of the employee requested deduction period or deduction end date.
- Time is Bookable against Purchased leave account as soon an Adhoc time account is created.
- The employee must take Purchased leave in multiple of weeks
Use Cases:
- Employees should be able to enter a new purchased leave request.
- Manager/Admins should be able to enter Leave Purchased requests on behalf of employees and should be able to approve employe’s purchased leave requests.
- Purchased Leave amount should be deducted from employee’s payroll in a pro-rated amount over a deduction period selected by the employee
The below is the time purchase profile and time account type delivered to cater to the above requirement
Sample example where an employee requests 4 weeks of leave and request gets approved on May 13th 2021
For the United Kingdom, we have slightly different rules but most of the business process is similar. You can view more information in https://rapid.sap.com/bp/
SEA Countries
Finally, we have delivered 4 new localizations for south east asian Countries : Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam
Features:
Most of these countries come up with two time profiles mainly because of how accruals are handled. Two variants are:
- Customers would generally provide direct accruals (say 15 days) based on the seniority difference between hire year and current calendar year. It does not matter if the employee is crossing the seniority mid of year
- Other customers would like to average out the accruals based on seniority crossing mid of the year. Also, If an employee is promoted to a different pay grade within a year, the accruals have to be recalculated or averaged out.
Example:
Employee hired on July 1st, 2018, with pay grade Salary Grade 15 (GR-15)
- Based on the seniority and pay grade lookup table, the accrual eligibility in the first 3 years of service is 15. The annual leave accrual in the hiring year is 7.5 days, while in the years 2019, 2020, and 2021 it will be 15 days for each year.
- On July 1st 2021, the employee reaches a seniority of over 3 years, which is accompanied by a change in accrual eligibility. The accrual eligibility becomes 18 as per the seniority and pay grade lookup table. As result, the annual leave accrual for 2021 is averaged out as follows: The accrual amount is calculated as (181 * 15) / 365 + (184 * 18) / 365, with 181 being the no of days during 2021 with accrual eligibility 15, 184 the no of days during 2021 with accrual eligibility 18, and 365 the no of days of year 2021. This gives 16.5123. Value 16.5123 is then passed to the rounding lookup and the correct amount of 16.5 days is obtained.
Apart from accrual handling, the other leave types mainly are related to Hospitalization, Sickness, Marriage, Birthday, Compensation, Illness unpaid, Unpaid Leaves, etc.
There are some unique time types as well pertaining to a country
- Magna Carta Leave – Each request is limited to almost 60 calendar days for female employees. This special leave benefit is a fully paid leave following surgery caused by gynecological disorders. Followed in the Philippines
- Baptism Leave for Employee’s Child – Each time off due to the circumcision or baptism event of the employee’s child is limited to 2 working days. Followed in Indonesia
- Leave for Performing Religious Pilgrimage – Limited to 40 days to attend religious events and can be availed only once during employment. Followed in Indonesia.
You can upgrade to these time profiles using the upgrade center. Filter by best practices and you can view all the upgrades relevant to best practices
We are also planning to release an exciting feature on blocked leave (mainly for financial institutions) as part of best practices shortly. I will update this blog once the feature is delivered as part of the best practice automation. My colleague Parthiban and I had worked on this solution.You can find more details here Mandatory Block leave
Looking at the next release you can also look forward to some more great enhancements.
Stay Safe and Healthy
Neelesh
Senior product specialist
SAP Best practices for SuccessFactors
