Hi everyone! Hope you are doing well. Excited to write this blog to cover the first half SAP SuccessFactors 2023 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 will be available in Support Pack B9 which was delivered on May 11, 2023. You can visit our Support Pack Release Schedule for more information.

Now let’s look at the release for Payroll.

Table of Content

1. Payroll Control Center
   1. Action Links
   2. Resolved Alerts Visibility
2. SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to different SAP based payroll systems by legal entity
3. Integration Enhancements
   1. Integration Start Date
   2. Enhanced Advanced Leave Payments
   3. Push Integration Visibility
4. Onboarding for Payroll Tasks

Payroll Control Center

With this release we have a few customer driven enhancements around the day to day usability of the payroll control center.

Action Links

One area of feedback we have gotten from customers (Including from our customer influence tool) is that they want to do as many things as possible from the payroll control center for payroll processing yet in many cases there is always a need to navigate elsewhere as part of the overall payroll step. This could be to upload a file required for a legal entity, it could be to do something with a payment file.

With this release, we have now added the ability to have action links in the My Processes application that allows a customer to navigate outside of the payroll control center. Previously, this may have been a step that needed to be done but required the payroll admin to know where to go and what to do. Now, you can include this within an existing step as shown below.

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

Resolved Alerts Visibility

Another feedback request we have heard commonly from our customers is they wanted higher visibility into “Resolved alerts” in the PCC. These are alerts which have been marked as resolved by a payroll administrator within the My Alerts application. An example is if someone has a large pay variance but it is not an issue and instead may be related to a retention bonus or something completely legitimately. We have always provided the framework to clear these alerts, but previously there was not visibility afterwards. Now, we have added a new column directly so you can quickly and easily see it.

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

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to different SAP based payroll systems by legal entity

As we continue to have more customers using SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for their single global HR system, we continue to see a high demand for SAP payroll systems. In 1H 2022 we delivered functionality to allow customers to use different SAP based payroll system based upon countries (Ex: ECP in the US and SAP ER HCM Payroll in Germany) as often times different countries run their own payroll and make their own buying decisions.

With this release, we are taking it a step further based upon the request of our customers and allowing customers to have different payroll systems based upon legal entity.

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

Integration Enhancements

Every release we continue to focus on the requests of customers and their day to day usability which includes a continued investment in integration between HR and payroll.

Integration Start Date

When a customer first implements ECP they define a date for which data integration starts which is called the full transmission start date (FTSD), This filters out any data before the start date and prevents issues. After customers are live for a while, they may move this date into the future as they do not want too many past dated records and changes. With this release, we are making enhancements that will prevent splits in records.

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

Advanced Leave Payments

For some countries and regions there is legislation in place where companies need to pay employees for vacation before they go out on vacation (Definitely a little jealous) which is often times called “Advanced Leave Payments”. With this release we are making enhancements to how the advanced leave payment and the regular payroll run functionality work together so there are no issues in the regular payroll run.

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

Push Integration log visibility

With this release we are enhancing our application log (SLG1) to show data about push replication (Often used for Hire and termination) so there is visibility to see that the data was integrated from push replication which can help when investigating an integration.

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

Onboarding for Payroll Tasks

We continue to enhance our Payroll Tasks functionality (originally released back in 2017) based upon customer feedback. You may recall in 2H/2021 we added the ability to include absences which was based upon customer feedback. In this release, we are now adding an event for Onboarding (For New Zealand and United Kingdom).

This allows a payroll administrator to automatically be alerted to employees who do a certain activity in Onboarding which requires them to take action (Ex: Onboardee chooses tax code STC which requires payroll to manually create a record). Rather than needing to run a report or search for employees this can now automatically be created and actioned using the Payroll Tasks functionality.

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 SAP SuccessFactors suite, see this great blog: First Half 2023 Release: What’s New in SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite

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: A Practical Guide for Payroll Professionals: Third Edition: Updated & Enhanced (2023)
• 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 Learning Hub subscription)