Welcome to the SAP Payroll Insights newsletter by Insight Consulting Partners! This newsletter is focused on SAP and Employee Central (EC) Payroll features, news, tips & tricks and general industry information.
Notes and Updates from SAP
It's year-end support pack time for US customers. See the year-end blog for some good information on the recent changes. The new W-4 tax form work is being released bit by bit, with the final parts delivered by December 5, 2019. SAP should be updating the legal change notice with all the relevant information and notes as they are available.
US Payroll customers also need to remember that BSI 10.0 will be discontinued by January 2021. The new BSI 11.0 is available for customers to start implementing. SAP has a blog about that too. If you have implemented Tax Locator, that is also impacted by the upgrade. Also related to BSI - check out the FAQ for the BSI Sync Tool.
If you are using Work Tax Area taxation in the US to tax employees based on where they worked their time, notes 2810850 and 2808301 will be relevant. The first note has to do with how daily working time is handled via the ZL table and for salaried employees. The second note is about pretax deductions that change retroactively (not good to allow that anyway, but just in case... I suppose).
Back in our January 2019 SAP Payroll Insights newsletter I mentioned a new report H99_CWTR0_RETRO. And I gave SAP a hard time for not releasing it with a standard transaction code to run it. Now with note 2850043 they have done that. Please SAP, if you expect a customer to be able to run a program or report then release it with a standard transaction code so that it can be added to the appropriate role. Many customers, for good reason, don't allow access to transactions SA38/SE38/etc to let users directly run programs and reports.
Speaking of Wagetype Reporter, here's a performance improvement via note 2848996.
Note 2541044 contains a number of user guides for Canada Payroll. If you are interested in ROE, EEA and/or PIER then check them out!
And if you are running payroll in Brazil, note 2738011 has the latest on eSocial reporting. It will never end.
So there's a rounding issue when replicating EC Time to EC or SAP Payroll. EC stores time in hours and minutes, SAP/ECP stores it in hours with two decimals. So, inevitably we will have rounding differences. In note 2846593 SAP recommends a solution - one that involves customers creating custom payroll operations and rules. To solve a problem with the standard software. C'mon SAP, you can do better! Customers should not have to implement custom code and config to solve a problem with the standard software.
Finally - lots of Payroll Control Center notes to look at in area PY-XX-PYP. Note 2820114 has some advice for creating the perfect SAP Payroll support message, and note 2840821 announces field MASSN (Action Type) is being added to feature structure PME01.
Around the Web
The IRS has issued its third draft on the new W-4 for US payroll. Add this to your (probably) large basket of info and changes on this topic.
The US Department of Labor has published some guidance on calculating overtime for salaried employees who have fluctuating work schedules. It's an interesting scenario and becoming more common as the nature of work changes. Expect more of these sorts of changes from both states and the Federal level. And don't expect them to always align. Complexity in this area is only going to increase.
There are a number of good resources to review on SAP and EC Payroll. First, on the SAP SuccessFactors Community site check out the Employee Central Payroll Resources page.
Second - Everyone who integrates either SAP or EC Payroll with EC needs to fully understand how multiple employments are handled. This includes expatriates, nationalization, concurrent employment and certain country-specific process (hello Brazil!). Bridging the EC data model to SAP/EC Payroll can be challenging.
And third - SAP published some information on Leading Practices for Payroll. It's fairly high-level but also a good overview for people who are using SAP's on-premise payroll for information on some of the newer processes.
SAP SuccessFactors is moving to a semi-annual release strategy, instead of the current quarterly cycle. Urgent patches and compliance-related changes will be issued as needed.
Repeating from the previous newsletter because it's that time of year: Year-end preparations for the US are getting started. SAP's traditional year-end blog is up and going, and I encourage every US payroll customer to follow it and participate.
And repeating for our Canadian payroll friends - the year-end master note is 2832511 and needs to be reviewed often for the next few months.
Quote of the Moment
"Excellence is not a skill - it is an attitude" -- Ralph Marston, Jr
Have a great day!
Steve Bogner
Managing Partner, Insight Consulting Partners
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