Chandra,

While one can never be certain, it is virtually impossible that this Note would be included in the HRSP to be released next week. At this point, that support package will almost certainly have been locked down as to its content so that it can pass all the final quality tests before being released to customers, so anything new that is released now will end up in a later support package. Of course, it's always possible that SAP will surprise us on this point.

The good news is that, as far as I can tell, there doesn't appear to be any cross-dependency between the Note and next week's HRSP for YELC 2021 Phase I. However, it is our plan to apply the HRSP, then the Note, along with the latest BSI Cyclic and Regulatory Updates (including, of course, TUB 62 that is required for WA Cares Act).

With regard to the information about recording exempt status in IT0235, while I agree with Roger that this is not a new change, and thus not something delivered in the Note, nevertheless as recording exemptions is an important and critical part of the new law this Note addresses, including some procedural information to provide guidance to customers on how best to handle this would be most welcome. So on this point I agree with Chandra. For instance, we were actually looking at customizing something in a different Infotype until this question came up here. Normally exemptions are a small part of any new procedure like this, but in this case we anticipate that there will be a very significant percentage of our employee base who will opt out by taking private insurance. Thus, some sort of "mass upload" facility for maintaining the infotype is going to be critical. That is likely to end up being a custom ABAP program.

Cheers,
Matt

Chandra,

They cannot include the SP details because this Note is brand new and thus not yet included in any SP. As Roger and Graziela said above, once it has been assigned to an SP for future release, that information will be added to the Note and the Note version will be incremented. That is standard for all Notes. Whenever you see a brand new Note, just released for the first time, it usually does not have any SP information, unless it has been in a pilot release for an extended period of time before general release.

Cheers,
Matt

Hi Jennifer,

We don't use ECP ourselves, so I'm afraid I cannot speak to this directly. We use the on-premise Enterprise Portal for ESS/MSS.

However, I am aware that the process as delineated by the Washington State Employment Security Department is that employees must provide their proof of individual insurance to the ESD, and not to the employer. It is then the ESD's responsibility to determine whether the employee is exempt from the new tax or not, and the ESD will provide employers with a list of exempt employees. In other words, employers are not supposed to just take an employee's word for it that they qualify for the opt-out.

So, our plan is to wait to see just how many of our employees apply and qualify for the exemption. If it's a large number, we'll probably build an LSMW for a one-time upload of the IT0235 data. If it's just a handful, then our HR staff will enter the data directly via PA30 or similar transaction, and that will similarly most likely be our ongoing maintenance procedure. If it looks like there might be a large number of changes on an annual basis, then we'll consider developing an ABAP report for a mass upload.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Matt