Employee Central Payroll 101

[Former Member]

Employee Central Payroll

Really….you can do that?

 

When SAP SuccessFactors first released Employee Central Payroll (ECP) there was a lot of education regarding the capabilities and the differences between ECP and SAP on-premise payroll. As time went on the conversations changed to new functionality, roadmap and deployment options, which is exactly what customers were asking for.  Recently I noticed a trend where partners and customers started to ask a lot more questions regarding the basics of ECP; how it’s the same and/or different from on-premise payroll, and what changes can and cannot made. I was a little confused by the questions, but then I realized it truly had to do with the uptick of ECP adoption.  Four years ago most of those customers had no current plans to move to ECP, so the timing of all those education sessions were of little or no interest to them.  Jump forward four years, SAP is no longer talking about the basics of ECP, yet 100’s of new customers and prospects need to go back in time and learn about the differences and similarities.

If you are a seasoned ECP customer or consultant than this blog is probably not for you.  If you are an existing on-premise customer looking to move to ECP or you have just licensed ECP, then you have come to the right place. Hopefully this will help to clear up some misinformation regarding ECP and save you some time digging for answers.

 

Q. What is ECP?

A. Employee Central Payroll (ECP) is based on SAP’s on-premise payroll engine and delivered in a hosted environment. Though the core engine of ECP is the same as the SAP on-premise payroll engine; from a development, support and licensing perspective it is a separate product.

Q. Is Employee Central (EC) a pre-requisite to ECP?

A. Yes. Just as the on-premise payroll solution needs PA for the employee indicative master data, ECP gets that data from Employee Central. Employee Central is the system of record. All HR events are managed in Employee Central. Payroll relevant data is either replicated to payroll, via Point-to-Point Integration, or maintained in Employee Central using UI mashups.

Q. Is Time Management part of ECP?

A. No, Time Management is a separate product. With ECP you have a couple of options for your time management needs; Employee Central Time Management, SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software, or another 3^rd party time management system.  With EC Time Management and SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software SAP SuccessFactors delivers and maintains all the integration.  If you choose to incorporate a different time management solution you will be responsible for writing and maintain the interface files.

Q. My company has specific requirements and has made a lot of changes to the payroll schema, can I make those changes in ECP?

A. Absolutely. This is one of the most miss-understood areas when differentiating ECP from on-premise payroll. Though Employee Central Payroll has a higher level of standardization from the on-premise payroll solution, the only real HARD stop is that you are not permitted to make core modifications or changes to enhancement spots. You are most certainly able to build payroll functions, payroll operations, payroll reports, configure payroll schemas and rules. You may also continue to use any custom infotypes, if you have built them in the customer defined naming space.

You can also use two types of Business Add-Ins (BadI) to enhance the Employee Central Payroll default logic for specific infotypes.

• BAdIs that are processed after the standard mapping logic but before the infotype update. There is a BAdI for each specific infotype. Use them to extend or modify the mapping logic for the respective infotypes of the standard set, when basic extensibility is not sufficient. You do not need to update the Infotype Framework in the BAdI.


• BAdIs that are processed after the standard import logic for an employee but before save. Use these BAdIs to extend the replication scope to infotypes that are not a part of the standard set. The comparison between old data and mapped data and the update to the Infotype Framework must be done in the BAdI.

Q. Can I use 3^rd Party add-ons?

A. Deployment of 3^rd party products must be approved and certified by SAP. The partner who provides the solution is responsible for the functional correctness and needs to be contacted for questions of licensing before you request the installation. However, not all partner components available for on-premise are allowed to be used in Employee Central Payroll. The list allowable add-ons can be can be found in SAP Note #2167337.

Q. Do you have a standard template, in the Integration Center, to assist in creating the interface between ECP and SAP Finance?

A. The integration between ECP and SAP Finance is exactly the same whether you are using SAP on-premise payroll or ECP. The configuration steps, ALE’s and RFC’s are all delivered and maintain by SAP.  There is no reason to create a custom interface between ECP and SAP Finance.

Q. If I process US Payroll do I still need BSI?

A. Yes, BSI is the tax calculation engine used to process US payroll. If you are an existing on-premise payroll customer you must re-license your on-premise BSI license to a BSI SaaS subscription. If you are a new ECP customer you must subscribe to BSI to process US payroll.

Q. Can I subscribe to an additional ECP instance for testing?

A. This question comes up quite a bit and both partners and customers are a little confused, as they believe that ECP is sold the same as EC and the Talent modules, but ECP is different. With EC and the SF Talent modules you can subscribe to an additional Test tenant, but this is not necessary with ECP.

With an ECP subscription you get a payroll landscape that includes Development, QA and Production  environments. In addition, you have access to one additional Development client and two additional QA clients.  These additional clients are included in your subscription cost and there is no additional charge to create/use them.  At the end of this blog there will be a link to the ECP Service Catalog where you will find this documented there along with how to request the additional clients.

Q. Since ECP is based on the on-premise payroll engine does it have the same end of standard maintenance date as SAP ERP HR does?

A. No, it does not.  ECP is a separate product from SAP on-premise payroll and from a development, support and licensing perspective it is completely independent.

Q. We have employees in a country that is not supported by SAP, or any of their partners, and have used Molga99 to create a customer specific country solution. Can we continue to process this country in ECP?

A. Yes, you can continue to use Molga99 for non-supported country solutions, but you are responsible for the maintenance and legal compliance of those countries.

Q. What is Cloud Operations and what service do they provide ECP customers?

A. SuccessFactors Cloud Operations is responsible for the infrastructure, hosting and updates that are applied to your payroll environment. At the end of this blog is a link to the ECP Service Catalog.  The Service Catalog details whether Cloud Operations, the customer or a combination of both are responsible for specific activities.



I’m sure many of you will have additional questions, but this blog was written with the intent of answering the most recent questions I have received and some of the questions that I have seen on Social Media.  Two of the most important documents that any customer or consultant should refer to are the Employee Central Payroll Service Catalog and the Employee Central Payroll Scope Document. 

You can find these documents at: https://help.sap.com/viewer/p/SAP_SUCCESSFACTORS_EMPLOYEE_CENTRAL_PAYROLL

Scroll down to the “Reference” section and you will find the corresponding links.