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Hi Everyone! Hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and have had a good start to 2021. Excited to write this blog to cover the first half SAP SuccessFactors 2021 release! I would recommend checking out the “What’s New Viewer” to take a look at the full release notes and get into all of the details for everything we are delivering!

The updates in H1/2021 will be available in Support Pack 93. You can visit our Support Pack Release Schedule for more information.

Now let’s look at the H1/2021 release for Payroll.

Table of Content

1. New Local Version
2. Payroll Control Center: Manage Configuration
     2A. Payroll Alerts
     2B. Payroll KPIs
3. Wage Type Information Report
4. Pay Statement
5. Core HR
     5A. Prevent past date changes
     5B. Master data date flexibility
6. Time Management
     6A. Custom Field to Absences
     6B. Automatic update of Substitutions when changing hire date.
7. Public Sector

1. New Local Version – Turkey

Our localization strategy is to deliver countries we offered on-premise based upon customer and prospect demand and with this release we are excited to now provide the ability to run Employee Central Payroll in Turkey. This now brings our localized versions to 47 countries (See the full list in SAP Note 2438150 – List of supported languages, currencies and countries/regions by SuccessFactors Employee Central and SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll)

For more information on this feature see the following information in the “What’s New Viewer”

2. Payroll Control Center – Manage Configuration

Last year in the H1/2020 release we delivered a simplified configuration workbench to simplify the configuration of our Payroll Control Center. We have taken this to next level with a new front end application that enhances and simplifies the configuration of PCC with an easy to use modern application. It will allow customer to take more control themselves rather than relying on the IT team. This has been over a year in the making with a lot of customer feedback. This is available for SAP Payroll & Employee Central Payroll customers.

This functionality needs to be activated via a new business function. See the SAP Help Portal for specific details. It is recommended to apply HRSP 94 (Available on 06/10/2021 per the HRSP release schedule)

This new functionality is intended to replace the existing configuration. You cannot have PCC process (Ex:Pre-Payroll) that use both the new framework and the old framework at the same time. For existing customers we are providing a report to assist with the migration (PYC_CONVERT_VR_TO_TSK) if it makes sense for the customer to do so. An existing live customer may want to do this if they want to enable their administrators to take more responsibility or if they find themselves creating/changing configuration often.

We are also working on an update to the pre-delivered best practices content for Payroll Control Center which is currently in-progress and will be available in the upcoming few months.

We are delivering a new Authorization Object (P_PYT_CFG) that will allow granular control including the ability to give read only access.

2A. Payroll Validation Rules/Alert

With this new application we are delivering a new business rules framework that will allow users to quickly and easily create their own Payroll Control Center Validation rules/alerts. This is a customer request we have heard loud and clearly.

An example use case is to quickly and easily allow a Payroll Admin to change an alert such as Pay Variance over 15% to use a different threshold such as 20%. This could be necessary if the organization is seeing too many “false positives” and decide to increase the threshold. With this new application.

Another example is if the payroll team wants to create a new alert using a wage type over a certain amount they can easily use this framework to do it.

This includes all the various aspects of a PCC alert that are necessary.

  • Administration
    • Name, ID, etc.
  • Alert/Data
    • Conditions and core Logic for what triggers the alert
  • Solution
    • What are the steps to resolve this alert (Ex: Link to People Profile)?
  • Root Cause Analysis
    • What details should we provide when this alert happens (Ex: Key value, Employee Information, Wage type information)?

2B. Payroll Key Performance Indicators/Analytics

The second part is the ability for customers to be able to design and create their own key performance indicators (KPIs). This will include the name, ID, KPI type, Icon, logic, color, and more.

New Analytics Types

Previously with the Payroll Control Center we allowed 4 types of KPI chart types (Numeric, Delta, Harvey Ball, & Comparison)

We have now added the ability to add four new types of charts that are available for PCC KPIs.

  • Radial Chart
    • Displays a ring chart highlighting a current status.
  • Column Chart
    • Compares different values which are represented as vertical bars.
  • Line Chart
    • Ability to see values against a threshold
  • Bullet Chart
    • Displays a colored horizontal bar representing a current value on top of a background bar representing the compared value

For more information on this feature here is some additional information

3. Wage Type Information Report

With this release we are happy to deliver a new wage type information report that allows customers to see all the relevant configuration details for wage types from a single place. This is delivered for our International Payroll (99), United State Payroll (10), and Canada Payroll (07)

  • Transaction Code = PC00_M99_WT_INFO
  • Report = RP_PC_WTI_REPORTER

This is a customer influence request submitted by Jarret Pazahanick who was kind enough to guide our product team along with Steve Bogner & Mike Timm. This request was voted on by over 60 different organizations and is relevant for both on-premise and ECP customers. This new report will allow customers to be able to easily understand the characteristics of the wage types in the system which is important in many phases of a project from new implementation, ongoing day to day operations, and even in moving to a new payroll system such as from SAP HCM Payroll to Employee Central Payroll.

This includes the ability to directly export your wage type catalog to excel to do an analysis with the ability to easily filter and sort from a single place

Alternatively customers can also evaluate a specific wage type and look at the attributes from a single place directly within the system such as finding out specifics (Where it was copied from, Where it is posting to, the relevant cumulations, permissibility, & much more)

We have delivered the ability to configure the report such as allowing customers to include their own “business categories” in case they have made customizations that should be displayed. It is available at the following location of the IMG and there is also relevant help documentation

 

For more information on this feature see the following SAP Note and take a look at the associated & pre-requisite notes

4. Pay Statement Enhancements

In our H2/2020 release we delivered functionality for enhanced access to the SuccessFactors Pay Statement. With this release we are happy to meet customer requests with enhancements that allow customers to setup their own key values (Desktop & Mobile) beyond the two we deliver (Payment amount & Gross Amount).

Customers can now add their own values such as tax amounts based upon what information they would like their employees to see on the pay statement. This is relevant for both mobile and desktop

For more information on this feature see the following  information in the “What’s New Viewer”

*Please note a legacy version of the pay statement which has been referred to as “Fiori Pay Statement” is slated for end of maintenance for April 1, 2022. For more information about this see the following information in the “What’s New Viewer”

It is recommended customers move to the new pay statement. There are many benefits without requiring results to be replicated (Since they are read directly) which reduces total cost of ownership. The newer functionality also removes limitations such as multiple payments in a day, provides functionality for the new SuccessFactors home page to make access even easier with a card to view the pay statement directly. Customers who are using the “Arrow based pay statement” are also encouraged to use the new pay statement but there is no end of maintenance date for this.

For more information on the various pay statements see this section of our ECP Implementation Guide

Here is a screenshot showing the new home page functionality card for viewing the pay statement directly from the home page.

5. Core HR

5A. Prevent Past Date Changes

Based upon customer request we have delivered a new Employee Central rule function that allows configuration that prevent past dated changes. The way we are accomplishing this is by offering a new rule function that can get the “Next Possible Date for Changes” and then you can setup information/error messages to prevent changes.

A few common examples of this is preventing an employee from entering a past dated bank account changes or an HR administrator from entering past dated changes to payroll relevant data.

For more information on this feature see the following  information in the “What’s New Viewer”

5B. Master data date flexibility

With this enhancement we are adding the ability to use an effective date to choose the integration of employee master data replication to payroll. This is intended to create more flexibility when we deliver new functionality so customers can use a date to choose when new functionality becomes active which will reduce impact to previously replicated data and prevent retroactive errors.

For more information on this feature see the following  information in the “What’s New Viewer”

6. Time Management

For more on Time Management I would recommend the following two blogs by my colleagues Paul Meredith & Volker Ruof

6A. EC Time Custom Fields to Absences

Customers can now include custom fields from Employee Central Time into Payroll absences and our customers let us know this flexibility will help them meet their Payroll needs. This will allow more flexibility for customers to have fields available in Payroll to be able to build rules that are relevant for paying employees.

For more information on this feature see the following information in the “What’s New Viewer”

My colleague Volker Ruof covers this in more detail in his H1/2021 release blog for Time Management

6B. Automatic Update to Substitutions when changing hire date

With this release we are now providing an automatic deletion of Substitutions (2003) when customers change the hire date to a future date

For more information on this feature see the following information in the “What’s New Viewer”

7 Public Sector

With enhancements to Employee Central non-recurring pay components to allow them to be assigned to cost objects (Funds and grants) and we are enabling Payroll to be able to support this data for Additional Payments (15) & Off-Cycle Payments (267).

For more information on this feature see the following  information in the “What’s New Viewer”

Where can I find more Information?

For information on release highlights across the SuccessFactors suite, see this great blog from my colleague Janne Wise: First Half (1H) 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Release Highlights are Here.

For the full list of deliverables for H1/2021 have a look at our “What’s New Viewer”

You can find helpful material on how to implement our latest functionality in the implementation guide on the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Help page.

Here are additional resources for those interested in learning more about SAP Payroll solutions

Thank you for taking the time to read and leave your comments below!

Tags: Employee Central Payroll HCM Payroll HCM Payroll USA SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central SAP SuccessFactors SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll third-party data integration tool View more
Randa Khaled

Randa Khaled

Author Since: November 19, 2020

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