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
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 E...l)
For more information on this feature see the following information in the "What's New Viewer"
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.
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.
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.
For more information on this feature here is some additional information
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)
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
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
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.
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"
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"
For more on Time Management I would recommend the following two blogs by my colleagues paul.meredith & volker.ruof
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
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"
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"
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!
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 E...l)
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
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
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
- https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/29/exciting-developments-in-the-1h-2021-release-for-sap-successfactors...
- https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/28/successfactors-time-management-new-features-in-h1-2021/
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
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Website
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll SAP Help (Implementation) (Requires ID)
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Community Page (Discussion Forum) (Requires ID)
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Learning Journey (Educational Content) (Requires Learnin...
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll H2/2020 Release Highlights
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll H1/2020 Release Highlights
- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Q4 2018 Release Highlights
- SAP Note 2550639 – Payroll Control Center – Working with Teams
- SAP/SuccessFactors Payroll Control Center Event Listener Functionality
- SAP SuccessFactors Payroll Integration & Off Cycle Payroll Demo
- An Introduction to SAP Payroll Processing, Control Center Add-On
- SAP Help Library Payroll Control Center
- Employee Central Payroll 101
- SAP Payroll Deployment Options
- Employee Central Payroll – What is the Payroll Unified Configuration?
- Employee Central Payroll – New Payroll End-to-End Hire
- SAP Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll for United States– Content Overvi...
- What’s new with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll for United States rapid-deployment solut...
Thank you for taking the time to read and leave your comments below!
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