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.
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Notes and Updates from SAP
Year-end processing is not over for everyone - if you have a US payroll be sure to stay up to date on everything via note 2683055. This is the main note for US year-end and has a lot of good links to other resources. One of those resources is the year-end blog from SAP, another good source of changes and news. There are three cumulative notes - Phase I, II and III - as well as smaller corrections, user guides and the like; all are great resources.
SAP issued note 2737469 to explain how infotype 9, subtype 1 'Other Banks' works. It's worked this way forever but people always have questions about it because it just doesn't make sense: "After making a change to an 'Other bank' IT0009 record in the middle of the payroll period, you find that both the previous and current IT records are loaded in payroll. - Standard behavior." Right; changing it mid-period causes both deposits to happen. I haven't found a customer yet - in 22+ years - who actually wants this to happen. So, to prevent it we put in user exits and etc to force the new IT 9 to start on a pay-period begin date. So when someone makes a change, they don't get two deposits, just the one they wanted to put into effect. Maybe when SAP makes their new/next payroll (see below) they will consider this?
And if you have Payroll in Brazil, this eSocial note 273801 will be useful. It collects all the major notes that have been released recently, into one place for easy reference.
Around the Web
SAP is working on creating a new payroll module. The details aren't public at this point, but some high level info has been released. Jon Reed at Diginomica put together a good article on the various aspects of this issue. I'm not going to get too excited or dismissive of SAP's new payroll until I see more details. The bottom line is that every on-premise SAP Payroll customer is going to see some change in the next 5-10 years, and the choices at this point aren't very appealing. So to a large degree I advise SAP Payroll customers to educate themselves on the options, prepare for change, and be patient. And, if you can, attend my two sessions at the HR Innovations 2019 conference (see below) on 'How to manage global payroll and the future of pay' and 'Building a business case for Employee Central Payroll.'
With the rise of SuccessFactors and the SuccessConnect conference, SAP Insider canceled their SAP HR conference last year. Many of us were disappointed, but understood that change happens. But now for 2019, SAP Insider refocused the conference under the new title of HR Innovations 2019. It's in Las Vegas, March 19-21. As mentioned above, I'm presenting two sessions on payroll. There are 270 sessions in total, with 168 speakers so it should have something for most every SAP Payroll customer.
SAP dropped a surprise recently by switching preferred Time Management vendors to Kronos from Workforce. If you are using SAP's Employee Central then the new preferred Time Management vendor is Kronos, and the application is branded as SAP Time Management by Kronos. You can license it directly from SAP too. The initial announcement didn't mention anything about the state of affairs with Workforce, but later follow-ups made clear that Workforce is still a supported platform. Kronos is the preferred partner. My take on this is to not give it a lot of weight. Choose the time management system that works best for your company, and then integrate it with your HR and payroll systems. Vendor-supplied integrations are nice but most always customized anyway. It's nice to license multiple systems through one contract, but be sure you aren't passing up a better deal by separating them (the fine print matters). Choose what is right for you, not necessarily what is sold to you.
This news on Kronos was a big part of our latest SAP HCM Insights podcast. My colleagues and I discussed that topic as well as other important topics for 2019. I hope you enjoy it!
Other bits of news... a nice collection of news on changes in sick leave laws for the US. This is a growing and more complex area causing a few headaches for payroll professionals (and payroll providers). And maybe the salary thresholds for FLSA exempt employees in the US will finally be changing?
Quote of the Moment
My motto was always keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. -- Hank Aaron
If you never shoot, you never score -- Steve Bogner
Have a great day!
Steve Bogner
Managing Partner, Insight Consulting Partners
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