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Author's profile photo Imran Sajid

Employee Central Payroll – A Process Introduction

One of the areas that I have gotten a lot of questions on, heard a lot of excitement on, and seen a good amount of confusion on is around Employee Central Payroll. This is certainly a hot topic with a lot of intrigue and mystery in the SAP HCM & SuccessFactors space. I have run across many SAP Payroll consultants who have previously resisted moving into and working with Employee Central but who are now at least getting interested in late 2015/ Early 2016 as Employee Central continues to grow. Here are some of the questions/comments that I have gotten that inspired me to write this blog post to clear some misconceptions and show the process of running payroll using Employee Central Payroll and how it really is an integrated experience..

  1. What do the screens and integration look like with Employee Central?
    1. Is it an SSO page in Employee Central that takes you into SAP so you can run your processes such as RPCALC* or is it truly integrated?
  2. Does Employee Central Payroll still use the same configuration as on premise Payroll using the IMG and a payroll schema?
  3. For US Payroll is there still a connection to BSI?
  4. Are the new Payroll Screens only for Employee Central customers or can existing customers live with SAP on premise Payroll also implement these screens?
  5. Can you show me the screens and process?

First and foremost, we do need to understand that Employee Central is the system of record and that the data will be maintained by Employee’s, Manager’s, and Administrator’s in Employee Central. The data that is updated in Employee Central is then replicated over to the Employee Central Payroll system via point to point integration.

For the purposes of this blog post I am going to focus on the Payroll Manager, or the person processing the Payroll and not go into the Payroll Administrator role or the people correcting data issues.

Let’s start by take a look at the screens of Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll to provide a little more transparency to begin answering the questions above.

To begin the process of running payroll, the person responsible for running payroll (Payroll Manager role) would log into their SuccessFactors Employee Central instance and based upon having the correct role based authorization they would have a tile for “Payroll Process” once they login to the home page. This tile tells you the number of current, upcoming, and completed payroll processes. It would look similar to Screenshot 1 below.

Image 1.png
Screenshot 1 – Employee Central Home Page

Once you are ready to run payroll you would click the SuccessFactors drop down and then select Payroll as highlighted in Screenshot 2.

Image 2.png
Screenshot 2 – Employee Central drop down showing Payroll button

Once you click the Payroll button that takes you to the “Payroll Control Center” or the “Payroll Cockpit” as shown in Screenshot 3. Depending upon your role you would now see the screens where you can run payroll (Payroll Manager role) entitled “Payroll Process” and where you can resolve issues associated with a payroll process (Payroll Admin role) entitled “Payroll Errors”/”Payroll Team Errors”. In my example and screenshot both roles are assigned to my user although this may not necessarily be the case. Pay attention to the seamless integration with Employee Central and notice how we can easily jump right back into any of the other implemented modules in our SuccessFactors instance.

To clear up a common misconception, these screens are SAPUI5 programs that were delivered with HR Renewal 2.0. The screenshot below is a screen for the Payroll Manager or person running the payroll that was delivered in HR Renewal 2.0 Feature Pack 3 (hrpy_pcc_proc_2). The newer Feature pack 3 screens are the screens that I will show for the purposes of this blog post although I will point out that there was an earlier version of the screen to run payroll.

Starting with EA-HRRXX 608 SP012, the payroll control center introduces a new payroll experience for the payroll process manager. One cool piece of functionality that SAP delivered in Feature Pack 3 that I want to point out here is the following: “In order to correct the last payroll errors centrally, specific selected users are now able to change employee’s data, even if the control record has status “released for payroll” or “check results””. So if you pay attention to the steps in this post further below you will notice that there is no step to change the control record to a “released for correction” status to fix employee data due to the fact that we can correct the data without changing the control record as part of this change.

So to address one of the questions from earlier – you can use these same screens that I will discuss here for existing on-premise SAP Payroll if you implement the HR Renewal 2.0 functionality with the key difference being that you would access the Payroll Control Center from ESS via the HR Renewal Landing page or the Fiori Launchpad instead of via the seamless integration to SuccessFactors as I am showing and talking about in this post.

Image 3.png
Screenshot 3 – Payroll Control Center Manager screen delivered in FP3

The 5 processes shown in Screenshot 3 are defined in configuration and they are available to run for the Payroll Manager as part of the Payroll run. Each of these Processes has multiple steps which are shown in the form of a circle containing the number of steps – for “Payroll Data Validation (Prepayroll)” you can see that it is a 2 step process and then on the far right you can see we are currently on Step 1 as shown in Screenshot 3. If you click into one of these processes the system will take you to the current step being processed as shown in Screenshot 4 when I click into the “Payroll Data Validation (Prepayroll)” Process.

Image 4.png

Screenshot 4 – Payroll Control Center “Payroll Data Validation (Prepayroll) detailed screen

With the RDS solutions that SAP has provided, as well as the ability to decluster your payroll results, you can create your own policy checks/validation and look at results from a simulation which gives a tremendous amount of flexibility to analyze, correct, and adjust data before you ever run the live payroll which we can see an example of in screenshot 4 above. You can easily compare employee statistics, retro statistics, and gross amounts between periods as is shown. This is a game changer for Payroll and a huge time saver for Payroll departments as they should be able to resolve almost all payroll issues before the date arrives to run payroll and have far less surprises.

From Screenshot 4 you can click on the circle with the number of steps (2/2) in the process to see what the two steps consist of as shown in Screenshot 5. It is here where we can repeat a previous step as necessary. In this case the first step is to create the results and the second step is to take a look at the monitoring policies that we were looking at as shown in Screenshot 4. These steps are for the manager to gain an understanding of Payroll metrics and assign issues identified to the Administrators in the company to resolve (They could also resolve it themself) and then we can repeat the policy checks to verify the issues were indeed resolved.

Image 5.png
Screenshot 5 – Payroll Control Center “Payroll Data Validation (Prepayroll) step overview screen

Okay great, so now we ran our pre-payroll policy validations, had the administrators fix the identified issues, and have metrics of what our payroll will look like once we run it. Here are some of the things that we should have an idea about going into the payroll run without even starting payroll.

  • A comparison of total gross in the period as well as a comparison with the previous period
  • The number of retro calculations that we are expecting in this run as well as the number from the previous period
  • The difference in active employees from this period compared to the previous period.
  • The total number of employees in this payroll run as well as the number from the previous period
  • The number of new employees in this payroll run
  • The number of employees with an organizational change

This is extremely helpful for Payroll departments to know this information before running payroll.

 

So what about the next step of actually running payroll? In order to do this, I would go back to the Payroll Control Center main page from Screenshot 3 above and this time select the “Payroll Production” process to begin the process of running a live payroll. In screenshot 6 below I have shown all of the steps that make up this process by click into the process and then clicking the circle that shows 6/7 as well as what has so far been completed and what is currently being processed in our system.

Image 6.png
Screenshot 6 – Payroll Control Center Payroll Production process

This process will have all of the defined steps that we need to run each period as part of our production payroll run. These should sound pretty familiar to anyone who has worked with SAP on premise Payroll because we are indeed running the same programs in Employee Central Payroll. The first step “Start Production Payroll” is releasing the control record (PA03) into a released for Payroll status for us to be able to run Payroll. The second step “Run Payroll” is the step to run the familiar RPCALC* program we all know and love. To execute it we click on the step and then click the start button. If there was a previous run and there are employees that have been updated from the first run the system will prompt and ask if you want to only run those and you can make a selection as shown in Screenshot 7, otherwise we will run it for everyone.

Image 7.png
Screenshot 7 – Start Run Payroll step within Payroll Production Process

Once you make your selection this will kick off the RPCALC* program in the background and update the status from “Open” to “In Progress” and then “Completed” when finished with the background job as shown in Screenshot 8.

Image 8.png
Screenshot 8 – Complete Run Payroll step

To see more information you can click the “See details” button in Screenshot 8 which will take us to another screen showing some more information from the run where you can click further to see even more details as shown in Screenshot 9.

Image 9.png
Screenshot 9 – Details of Run Payroll step

In Screenshot 9 we can see the familiar payroll output log showing us information about this run including the schema that was used, the selections made on the selection screen, employee statistics, and the BSI connection information such as TUB level (FYI the BSI level in the output of the US Payroll log was delivered via Note 2193769 in case anyone is curious on how this is shown in the schema log output). So to answer some of the questions from earlier, yes the configuration still needs to be done in SAP, yes there is still a schema, and yes there is still a connection to BSI (Although it is a bit different for Employee Central Payroll – BSI Tax Factory Saas).(Update 2/4/2016 – See the comment from Robert Moeller below for more information on this)

We can re-run Payroll as many times as necessary which is done by clicking the “repeat” button that was shown in Screenshot 6 for whichever step you want to re-run. Once you are happy with the results you can move on to the next step in the process to work your way through your payroll. In our example the next step involves taking a look at a report that should be familiar to SAP Payroll people – the Payroll Journal which we have defined in our “Payroll Production” process as shown in Screenshot 10 and 11 with a define variant for how we want to run this report. Keep in mind that your process in all likelihood will be different based upon your requirements for running payroll each period and may involve a different report or a different variation of the same report.

Image 10.png

Screenshot 10 – Payroll Journal step

 

For the step of the Payroll Journal, you will notice that in Screenshot 10 it says “manual confirmation is required” – that is because this is a report that requires someone to look at the output and verify it looks good – it isnot like releasing the control record which once it is done then there is nothing to look at. Once again, we can click see details and click into it to see further details and look at the report as shown in screenshot 11 below.

Image 11.png

Screenshot 11 – Payroll Journal output.

 

Once you take a look at the output and confirm everything looks good you can then go back to the screen shown in Screenshot 10 and click the “Confirm” button to move onto the next step.

 

If you are coming from an SAP on premise Payroll background think of the existing process and how you would run each transaction separately such as launching PC00_M10_CALC to run Payroll, go through the process of fixing data by changing the control record to a corrections status, setting the control record back to released for payroll, re-running payroll to update results, and then once we are happy with that we would back out to the SAP Easy Access menu and launch PC00_M10_CLJN to run the payroll journal and making sure to select the correct variant. Once we are done with the Payroll Journal we would back out to run PC00_M99_CIPE to simulate posting and once again make sure to pick the right variant! With the Payroll Control Center it is a defined process that has each one of the transactions as steps within that process that we must go through in each payroll run and the variants are selected for us so we don’t have to choose or change selection screens to enter things such as the correct schema.This leaves significantly less room for user error before we exit payroll.

 

As we continue with this Payroll example, I wont go through each step here, but the user would go through each defined step for the “Payroll Production” process such as simulating posting to accounting (To make sure there are no issues such as missing cost center), run payroll data validation so we can once again do a validation on our defined policies (Which hopefully wont have any issues because we resolved them before the payroll process in Screenshot 4 🙂 ).

 

If there are any issues you can take a look at them as shown in Screenshot 12 as part of step 6 out of 7 and assign them to the appropriate administrators to be resolved at this point (post payroll running) and re-run payroll and the other processes that we defined accordingly.

 

Image 12.png

Screenshot 12 Check Payroll Data Quality Step

Once you reach the last step of “End Payroll Production” this translates to exiting the control record and telling the system that you are done with running payroll for this period and the results are final. It is at this point that we are ready to continue on to the next process shown in Screenshot 3 “Posting to Accounting” or whatever you may have defined in your requirements as post payroll processes.

 I hope that this blog post is helpful and clears up some questions and misconceptions that are out there regarding Employee Central Payroll as well as the Payroll Control Center in general. For information on how to configure the Payroll Control Center it is recommended to attend the new SAP/SuccessFactors class HRH65

https://training.sap.com/shop/course/wnapcc-sapsuccessfactors-payroll-control-center-configuration-classroom-016-us-en/

For a functional overview of the Employee Central Payroll & Payroll Control Center see my amazon book

 

 Feel free to post your thoughts below!

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      Author's profile photo J. Pazahanick
      J. Pazahanick

      Great job with this blog Imran

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you! Feel free to add anything if there was something that I may have missed or anything that may be helpful.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      This is an excellent blog Imran! Love the fact that the control record status does not need to be changed to fix errors! Thanks for putting the time into it.

      Cheers,

      Jyoti

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks a lot Jyoti - I appreciate the comment and feedback! The control record change was one of my favorite improvements as well.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks Imran for posting this blog. It really have cleared many of my own doubts regarding Employee Central Payroll 🙂 Really appreciate your efforts.

      Best Wishes,

      Neha

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for commenting and letting me know Neha! I am glad that it was helpful for you. Clearing doubts and confusion was my goal with this post because I saw a lot of confusion on ECP

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Nice Blog Imran. Great effort.

      Regards

      Soumya

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you so much for the comment Soumya. Always nice to get feedback!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Good Job. Thank you for putting the information together.

      Phillip

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome Phillip! I am glad that this post seems to be helpful for people!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great blog.  Keep up the good work.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Mohammed! Hope all is well!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Excellent blog Imran! And perfect level of details to get a solid overview. Great job.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks a lot for the comment Chirag! That is exactly what I was hoping for!

      Author's profile photo Danielle Larocca
      Danielle Larocca

      Great article, thanks for sharing.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome Danielle! I appreciate the comment

      Author's profile photo Robert Moeller
      Robert Moeller

      Nice blog Irman!  As you mentioned, SF Employee Central Payroll is growing, now more rapidly than ever.  It is a robust solution - you might have noticed that Thomas Otter tweeted recently that a customer is now paying 90,000 employees and will be adding more.

      One clarification though, SF Employee Central Payroll doesn't use HCI and there are no plans that I am aware of to use HCI.  DELL Boomi is the current middleware. There is something coming (legally, I have to say is subject to change)  that I am not yet at liberty to share but here is a hint - sometimes, less is more. 😉  HCI will be an option for integrating SF EC to SAP ERP Payroll on-premise.

      I'd also like to expand on the topic of BSI connections.  SF Employee Central Payroll is connected to SaaS versions of BSI TaxFactory and BSI eFormsFactory.  They are connected via web-service instead of RfC.  BSI SaaS means customers don't have to setup or maintain their own TaxFactory servers.  Tax Update Bulletins (TUBS) are applied automatically!  Employee Central Payroll also has tools that can be setup as reoccurring batch jobs to automatically sync the tax data with payroll.  Furthermore, validation checks in payroll make sure everything is in sync.

      BSI eFormsFactory SaaS allows employees or admins on behalf on an employee or pensioner, to maintain payroll withholding certificate info (aka., W-4), by clicking a link within Employee Central.  W-4 information is then maintained in an image of the government provided form.  W-4 info is saved back to SF Employee Central payroll automatically by default or may be configured to go to an admin queue to be reviewed/released.  Note, eFormsFactory is not available for EC to SAP ERP Payroll on-premise implementations.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you so much for your comment and clarification Robert! It is very exciting that a customer of that size is using ECP and hopefully will help show others that it is a viable solution for even larger customers.

      That is a great deal of terrific information that I am sure will be extremely useful to all involved. I will update my post to clear up the confusion regarding Boomi.

      I have gotten some private messages about the topic of the BSI connection so your comment is a perfect addition to this blog post. The functionality to have reoccurring batch jobs to sync the tax data is a great addition as well.

      I also appreciate the additional explanation of BSI eFormsFactory!

      Author's profile photo Robert Moeller
      Robert Moeller

      Hello Imran, e.t. all!  Sorry, I should have come back earlier since in my previous reply I mentioned that there was a change coming but I couldn't say explicitly at that time.  In 1605 release, we made Point-to-Point (P2P) integration the standard for Employee Central Payroll.  This eliminated the need for the DELL BOOMI 3rd party middleware for integrating SF Employee Central with Employee Central Payroll.  Point-to-Point (P2P) is based on SAP-SF native APIs and web-services thus eliminating that 3rd party layer in between.  Again, nice work on the blog!

      Author's profile photo Marcus Bonrat
      Marcus Bonrat

      Hi Imran,

      I enjoyed reading your post, especially it joins the many dots that I have with ECP. May I ask :

      1. So, assuming I already have on-premise SAP payroll, how can I then migrate the schema (which is fully customized and adapted for my organization) to ECP ? In short, how do I transition from on-premise SAP payroll to ECP ?

      2. Typically who is maintaining the payroll schema/functions/rules etc in ECP ? For on-premise, each organization is free to adapt the schema or develop new functions etc. but this is cloud, so to what extent can one customize the schema to adapt to organization's need once in ECP ? What can or can no longer be done in ECP ?


      Thanks, hope you can enlighten me with my remaining dots ...

      Regards,

      Marcus

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Marcus,

      Thanks for the feedback and the questions.

      The customer still owns all the configuration including schema's, wage types etc. SAP Cloud is responsible for the system including backups, upgrades, patches, legal changes including Tax updates which Robert touched on in the comment above.

      I answered your second question first because I think it indirectly answers the first - since you still own the the schema and would be doing all of the configuration then you would still need to build your own schema in ECP. If you can reuse existing work that will be a time saver compared to someone who is coming from a different payroll solution.

      I am not sure where you are located, but if you are attending the HR2016 conference in Las Vegas here are some good sessions to get additional information on your questions that will certainly be worth checking out from some terrific experts.

      • Make sense of your payroll options when moving HR to the cloud
        • Steve Bogner, Insight Consulting Partners

        • Wednesday, February 24, 2016

        • 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM

      • Migrating on-premise payroll to the cloud – Practical options to gain speed-to-value while removing risk
        • Willem Spies, EPI-USE
        • Paul Snyman, EPI-USE Labs
        • Wednesday, February 24, 2016
        • 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
      • Simplify your conversion and migration to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP Payroll
        • Courtney Robbins, Accenture
        • Tobias Bloch, Accenture Software For HCM
        • Tuesday, February 23, 2016
        • 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM

      If a move from On Premise SAP to Employee Central is on your roadmap then a major part would be transitioning your SAP OM/PA to Employee Central. My advice is don't replicate your existing system in Employee Central. Take a good look at your processes during this time. This type of implementation is a great time to simplify and optimize your business processes.

      Employee Central has come a long way and with the tremendous amount of flexibility that you have with MDF and the EC framework you may be able to get close to recreating your existing system in EC but that does not at all mean you should. If you are going to HR2016 here are some great sessions on this topic with some more terrific experts in the space.

      • Panel discussion: SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central: Get your most pressing questions answered
        • Moderator: Steve Bogner, Insight Consulting Partners
        • Panelists: Rebecca Murray, Cultiv8 Consulting; Joachim Foerderer, SAP SE; Jane Stewart, Outerwall; Luke Marson, Hula Partners
        • Wednesday, February 24, 2016
        • 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
      • Tips for successfully implementing, integrating, and utilizing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
        • Rebecca Murray, Cultiv8 Consulting

        • Wednesday, February 24, 2016

        • 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM

      • Leveraging position management in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central: Considerations for an effective solution design
        • Jyoti Sharma, HRIZONS

        • Tuesday, February 23, 2016

        • 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM

      Also, make sure to pick the right consultant to help you with your move to the cloud!

      Best of Luck!

      Imran

      Author's profile photo J. Pazahanick
      J. Pazahanick

      Thanks for the mention of my article Imran and as far as HR2016 I would recommend it

      SAP and SuccessFactors HR2016 and a Special Discount Code

      I will be there for a short visit this year (48 hours) but looking forward to it.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Going to the conference is definitely worthwhile. Hopefully I will see you there!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      gud article ....and one more thing when sap is going to stop all on-premise and stick on to only success factors becoz clients are not interested to spend on two softwares .....they need only one for their all HR  business processes

      Author's profile photo Robert Moeller
      Robert Moeller

      SAP has prolonged mainstream maintenance until end of 2025 for SAP Business Suite 7 core application releases.  Just in HCM alone we have something like 13 - 14k customers.  We want them to be able to leverage the investments they already made.  At the same time, we give customers options for moving to the cloud at their pace with a start anywhere, go anywhere strategy.  We have options for customers to move full-cloud HCM now if they are ready so it is really the customer's choice. 

      Author's profile photo Christian Baetz
      Christian Baetz

      Very helpful. Thanks.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome Christian! I appreciate the comment.

      Author's profile photo Danielle Larocca
      Danielle Larocca

      Great breakdown, thanks for sharing.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you Danielle. Best of luck with your sessions at the conference this week!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Excellent article Imran. Thanks.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome! Thank you for the comment Namsheed! I appreciate it.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Very good explanation. Thanks a lot. please let me if have an idea about how to integrate the SAP Payroll Pay slip to Successfactors.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Raghu,

      Yes, please take a look at SAP Note 2253359 - How to enable Pay Statement service to view payslip in Employee Central System. This note has detailed information on the technical things that need to be done in order to enable. Here is what it would look like in your SF instance - the pay statement would be integrated directly into Employee Central.

      Image 1.jpg

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank You Imran.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you Imran.  Great Article and thanks for sharing!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      As a payroll enthusiast who's had zero exposure to Employee Central so far, this is exactly the write up I was looking for! Excellently written and beautifully explained. Thanks Imran.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks a lot of the comment Tania! That is what I was hoping to accomplish with this blog post

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Very informative blog, Imran.  Looking forward to the course!

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Bill! Looking forward to it as well, just need to put it all together!

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Thanks so much Imran.  This was excellent as I am geaing up for a EC payroll project and need all of the tutuorials I can obtain.  To your knowledge, are there any self paced classes that you could recommend for EC payroll? 

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vicki,

      You are welcome. At the moment the only thing available for EC Payroll are some courses in Learning Hub. HRH60e and HR812 are their titles. For some of the brand new items such point to point contact that SAP recently released you will need to get the information from the implementation guide.


      Hopefully you have a resource on your team who has experience with EC Payroll that you can work with and that can guide you. Best of luck with the project.


      I am working on creating a new instructor led course (taught by myself) for implementing the Payroll Control Center and I will have a unit on EC Payroll (PCC is for ECP & SAP HCM), but have not finalized the details of that yet. Ill create a post with more information once I have more information.


      Regards,


      Imran

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Thanks for the tips Imran; the two courses you mentioned are on my list to complete.

      Any idea of the time frame for the PCC course?

      Regards,

      Vicki

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      With my schedule right now it is likely a month or two away, but I will create a post with more information when I have more details

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vicki,

      Please see my new blog post announcing the new SAP/SF class on how to configure the payroll control center. The first instance of the class is scheduled in a few weeks from September 6, 2016 - September 9, 2016 as a Virtual Classroom.

      New SAP/SuccessFactors Class: Learn to configure the Payroll Control Center (SAP Payroll & EC Payroll)

      If you are working on a project that will be implementing the PCC (Which it sounds like you might be) then I would highly recommend taking this class.

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo Siraj Md
      Siraj Md

      Thank a lot Imran.  Great Article and thanks for sharing!

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome! Thanks for your comment

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Very informative blog Imran! I would like just to ask you three questions and of course if you know the answers  :

      1. The different collective agreements are maintained in EC and replicated in ECP in IT 0008 or they are maintained directly in ECP?

      2. the payroll specific reports are displayed in ECP or in EC?

      3. for the cost allocation of the payroll (e.x allocated to more than the primary cost center and also to internal orders) I would have to replicate the data from EC to ECP or I will have to maintained them only to ECP and more specifically to IT 0027?

      Can you please provide your advice?

      Once again thank you for the post,

      Regards

      Filippos

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Filippos,

      1. They should be maintained in EC within the pay structures and then replicated over to ECP (Or directly updated via P2P) onto Infotype 8.
      2. The standard reports such as WT Reporter, Payroll Recon Report, Payroll Journal would be in ECP. There is a way to export results from ECP and import them into EC so you can also have Payroll reporting in EC, but that is a blog post of its own.
      3. These would also be updated in EC and replicated or updated directly via P2P into the ECP system on IT27.

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      This was a wonderful blog, the screen shots really helped me to visualize the steps! Thank you for taking the time to do this!

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you Heather! I am happy that it was helpful.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Its Really  Informative blog Imran

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you Praveen! I appreciate the comment.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks a lot for elaborative details.

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Your welcome Aparajit! Thanks for the comment.

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Imran,

      I understand that with ECP, the configuration still needs to be done in SAP, a schema is being utilized and the RPCALC program is running in the background.  I have a client that SAP is telling them that all aspects of the payroll process is being done specifically in ECP, with no mention of the use of the "SAP host" system.  Also I’m reading a lot of documentation provided by SAP and the content implies no utilization of SAP ECC payroll engine. 

      Please clarify that SAP ECC payroll engine is required for calculating gross to net for the use of ECP.

      Thanks,

      Vicki

      Author's profile photo Robert Moeller
      Robert Moeller

      It isn't clear to me what issue or concern you have.  ECP is private cloud. Each client has a dedicated DEV, QA, and Production payroll environment.  Since 1605, payroll is integrated with EC via native web-services/APIs referred to as Point-to-Point (P2P) integration.  ECP is leveraging the ECC payroll engine with some enhancements.  Payroll specific configuration is done in the ECP system.  The payroll system is accessed via webgui or VPN but VPN is preferred. Employee data is entered via Employee Central.  Payroll and related processes may be controlled from within EC via the Payroll Control Center (PCC) as mentioned by Imran.  Please find necessary implementation guides here http://help.sap.com/hr_ecpayroll

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Oh Yes Robert, I read these implementation guides on a daily basis! 

      Author's profile photo Danielle Larocca
      Danielle Larocca

      Hi all and Robert thanks for chiming in.  There is confusion on this topic.  I appreciate what Vicki Kyle-Marshall is asking.  It seems that ECP is often positioned as simply a 'hosted' version of SAP Payroll.  That payroll requiring the same configuration steps, wage type configuration, RPCALC, IMG etc. inside SAP with the distinction of it being hosted on SAP servers.  David Ludlow cautioned the HR2016 Sapinsider European audience in June that it is not a "lift and shift" from SAP to ECP and that it requires a "simplification" and "re-implementation" but a common understanding in the market is that it really is just the SAP Payroll underneath the hood.  Can you chime in?

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Guys,

      @ Vicki - I believe some of the confusion is due to the different names/terminology that you are hearing. For Employee Central Payroll, the hosted system would be the ECP system and would not be referred to as the SAP ECC system or SAP ECC payroll engine. You mentioned that SAP is telling your client that the that the payroll is being done specifially in ECP - well this is referring to the hosted system. This SAP slide explains it well and Robert mentioned that in Q/2 2016 the systems are directly linked with P2P and dont need a middleware.

      Image 1.png

      @Danielle - I would agree with David cautioning that it isnt a "lift and shift" and I will give some specific reasons for this. With SAP on premise you may be using Benefits, Workflow, CATS, Leave Request etc. You also might have enhancement spots or customization in your SAP code over the years. With ECP you cannot use the aforementioned modules as you should be using their EC counterparts and you cannot change the SAP code. Usage of those modules as well as enhancement spots/changes to code you have in old system would need to revisited. This might mean moving from SAP Benefits to EC Global Benefits or from using Leave request to EC Time Off. In addition, with ECP you are going to be on one of the latest enhancement and support packs in that system. There arent too many SAP on premise customers who are on the absolute latest enhancement and support pack and stay updated every quarter. When you move to a different enhancement pack and support pack things change (Tables/structures) in the system and that can cause an issue for you if you "lifted and shifted" them over as I am sure people have seen when they do support pack testing. So for an ECP project it isnt a case of just taking your configuration from your SAP Payroll system and moving them into the ECP system since they are on different levels. Let's also consider that in the US you would need to use a different version of BSI for the tax calculation (BSI Saas) so that would be changing as well. Lastly, if your moving from SAP HCM PA/OM to Employee Central  you would need to do the necessary mappings as shown in the screenshot above and revisit all your HR policies etc. Overall, there are many considerations that make it different and not a "lift and shift" and more of a "re-implementation"

      For specific items such as payroll schema rules that do certain calculations for your organization, the specifications of processing class of wage types, or the setup of your payroll areas etc. it can definitely save time compared to someone who has to write it from scratch and come up with the logic.

      I also agree with David on taking the time to use this type of project as a "simplficiation". I would recommend revisiting existing setup (Not just payroll specific) and seeing if there is a better/more standard way to do it. Many companies who implemented 10-15 years ago might have some setup in their system that they are not proud of and should take this time to revisit and do it the right way. I know there is setup and programming from my early consulting years that I am not proud of and would like to revisit now that I know more and have additional experience.

      I hope this clears it up a bit.

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Hello All,

      Thank you Imran and Robert for your responses! 

      @Imran - You are absolutely correct; different names and terminology was causing a bit of confusion for me and your (and Robert's) detailed explanations helped tremendously.  My current project is more simplified in that there is no migration from SAP HCM PA/OM to Employee Central.  This is a new EC / ECP implementation and we are also implementing Workforce Software and BenefitFocus. 

      We appreciate your knowledge share!

      Author's profile photo Guillermo Cordoba Bernal
      Guillermo Cordoba Bernal

      It was clearer for me now!!! in this answer, regards!!

       

      Author's profile photo Robert Moeller
      Robert Moeller

      Yes, ECP will use report RPCALCU0 (USA) to produce the payroll results.  Yes, the same or similar wage type and schema configurations will be used. However, we don't want customers or partners with previous on-premise experience to think they can move a customer to ECP with a few transports.  That doesn't mean there won't be opportunities to use parts of that configuration to shorten implementation time.

      We expect you to use a leading time management solution other than SAP Time such as EC Time or WorkForce Software.  Similarly, for Benefits you need to use a leading benefits solution such as EC Benefits or BenefitFocus.  SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) is a prerequisite for ECP.  Master data is entered via EC and payroll must be aligned which is another reason we warn against the idea of lift-n-shift.

      ECP must be core modification free!  SAP-SF needs to be able to apply new releases and patches without having to resolve code conflicts.  You can still have custom payroll operations and, or functions.  You can still have custom payroll related infotypes.  You can write your own reports in ABAP.  You can use 3rd party tools whitelisted by SAP-SF.

      Ok.  These questions are motivating me to get on with my own blog long planned.  Hopefully, I still have material left over for that.  I also be at SuccessConnect in Las Vegas if you want to meet.

      Oops!  Sorry to step on you Imran!  We were typing at the same time.  Anyway!  What Imran said.  Thanks and keep up the good work!

      Author's profile photo Danielle Larocca
      Danielle Larocca

      I appreciate the response and I will seek you at SuccessConnect, you can also find me at the EPI-Use booth.

      Author's profile photo Vicki Kyle-Marshall
      Vicki Kyle-Marshall

      Imran Sajid

      Hi Imran,

      Can you give me some insight as to how shadow payroll would work in ECP?  My client has workers who work in different countries from their home base frequently.  When working in a foreign country, in order to meet minimum wage requirements of the country in which the project is located, a validation must be performed to see if the employee's base hourly rate of pay is below minimum wage of that country worked.  If it is, a calculation must be performed to pay the employee the difference in his base hourly rate of pay and the minimum wage of the country in which he's working, and finally pay that difference in their home base currency.

      I believe calculation rules could be utilized, but your high level thoughts on this requirement or guidance on where I can find detailed info is greatly appreciated.

      Thanks. 

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vicki,

      This is a consulting question and without doing research/analysis/proof of concept I dont have an answer for this off the top of my heard.

      You could try to post this as a question on the forums and see if the good people of SCN have some insight.

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo vinay kumar
      vinay kumar

      Dear Sajid,

      Your document and inputs regarding ECP are more than a curtain raise. Thanks alot for sharing very useful document.

      Hope to see more such inputs from SuccessFactors which would help consultants to have a insight before opting to learn.

      Best Regards,

      Vinay

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you very much Vinay I appreciate your comment. I am glad it was helpful

      Author's profile photo v kumar pattisapu
      v kumar pattisapu

       

      Hi All,

      I am working on ECPY and I need the information on Posting File flow from ECPY to S4 (Finance System). I read PTP implementation guide and Standard ALE IDOC functionality, but can anyone let me know the exact technical details. My Middleware is HCI.

      In the same way, Client want to Run DME at S4 Finance system and  send the DME file to treasury because all the payments are processed through SWIFT by treasury. Do I run Pre-DME in PCC and provide Identification number to Finance required ?

      Awaiting your response as quickly as you can.

      Thanks for your support,

      Kumar.Pattisapu

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Imran,

      thank you for your great blog on sf payroll integration.

      here i have few more questions:

      1. how about other  payroll related infotypte, for exampel 0014,0015 and 0267?

          are these infotypes ready to be maintained on EC?

      2. if the payroll admin click start payroll , will this action lock all employee related?

      3. the pcc works both with ec payroll (cloud) and local on-prem payroll system ?

      thanks again.

      jun

      Author's profile photo Imran Sajid
      Imran Sajid
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      Thanks for your comment. It looks like you asked this question on the SCN forums (Which is what I would recommend anyways) and got it answered.

      Regards,

      Imran

      Author's profile photo Jai Karan Korpal
      Jai Karan Korpal

      @Imran,

      Thanks for an excellent blog! It gave me answers to many questions I had around ECP and EC-ECP Integration 🙂

      A question still lingering in my mind is if we need to integrate ECP with S/4HANA Finance or SAP ECC FI to transfer GL postings- is there any recommended ways to achieve this ?

      Please share your thoughts.

      Regards,
      Jai

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you Imran for an excellent post and your full generosity in sharing.  It helped clear up a lot of questions for me regarding ECP, Payroll Control Center and beyond.  Much appreciated!  Regards, Jignasa

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Question: Does SAP have on their roadmap anywhere to deliver standard functionality that would allow reconciliation between critical Employee Central payroll inputs and EC Payroll outputs?  This would provide internal controls between items such as salary changes which may be approved in HR and replicated to payroll, and payouts made in payroll.  Currently, it's possible for such pieces of data to fail in replication, causing discrepancies between Payroll and HR.  Granted, it is important to set up thorough monitoring techniques between HR and Payroll, but having a standard reconciliation method between Payroll output and HR approvals would greatly improve the customers' ability to minimize and fix any discrepancies and investigate any cases where proper HR approvals may not have been obtained.

       

      Author's profile photo Bharti Sood
      Bharti Sood

      Hi Imran,

      Hoping to get some inputs on one of my queries below:

      How does integration of Employee Central Payroll with a Non SAP Finance System works?Can you please send me any links on how it may work. What I mainly need to know is how will data (e.g. GL Postings) flow out of ECP - Coud Payroll to a non SAP Finance system

       

      Author's profile photo Martina Stoeger
      Martina Stoeger

      Hi Imran,

      great blog, thanks for sharing.

      Does anyone know since when the EC Payroll Function is already available?

      Thanks.

      Best regards,

      Martina

       

      Author's profile photo v kumar pattisapu
      v kumar pattisapu

      Hi All,

      I am working on ECPY and I need the information on Posting File flow from ECPY to S4 (Finance System). I read PTP implementation guide and Standard ALE IDOC functionality, but can anyone let me know the exact technical details. My Middleware is HCI.

      In the same way, Client want to Run DME at S4 Finance system and  send the DME file to treasury because all the payments are processed through SWIFT by treasury. Do I run Pre-DME in PCC and provide Identification number to Finance required ?

      Awaiting your response as quickly as you can.

      Thanks for your support,

      Kumar.Pattisapu

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Imran,

      Great blog! Thank you for sharing!

      Regards,

      Ignacio

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Small business owners generally take care of payroll systems on their own, or through a consulting CPA. Businesses need a working payroll system that is cost effective for them as well as being accurately maintained and all income taxes are correctly calculated and submitted to the federal and state tax governing bodies.

      Author's profile photo Ajay Kumar
      Ajay Kumar

      Hi Imran Sajid ,

      Your blogs always have helped me to enrich my knowledge. I need an ifo for US payroll.

      How would employee update his W4 withholding for life events like marriage or birth of child etc in EC hybrid and EC Payroll system?

      Thanks in advance.

      Ajay

      PS - I know W4 is onboarding process but this need a change with life event.

      Author's profile photo vishal agrawal
      vishal agrawal

      Hi Imran,

      This is a very good document. Thank you very much. I am an SAP ABAP HCM consultant. I have a question.

      If after running the payroll you have a PERNR which has for example not received a benefit you would still do all your investigation in on premise PRD? All the payroll data still resides in on Premise ECC?

      Regards,

      Vishal Agrawal

      Author's profile photo Divyashree rai
      Divyashree rai

      Very good Document Imran!!

      We are planning to implement PCC for USA.I just want to know how many policy/validations we can have it? Do we have any list of it for the reference , currently all the validation done by manually. Before implementing it just wanted to see these features. Please advise.

      Thanks