SAP Payroll Insights 10 Dec 2019

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

We are in the busy days of year-end support packs and changes for most countries now. For the US, be sure to follow SAP's year-end blog for some good information on the recent changes. The new W-4 tax form update has been released by SAP - their blog on it contains the relevant notes. Be sure to apply all those notes, paying close and careful attention to the manual steps. If you don't apply all those notes, the new W-4 is not going to work correctly for you. So far, the notes address issues with reading the W-4 as of the check-date instead of the period-begin date, and some labels on the ESS application. In the discussion on the blog you'll see questions about how to test the W-4, and if the changes will also be released for customers using Webdynpro Java (currently only Webdynpro for ABAP). Keep coming back to the blog and following the master note - I expect more corrections to come out in the next few weeks.

One of the notes for the new W-4 has to do with implementing BSI version 11 - you can and must apply that note for the new W-4 to work. But, this is not the full BSI 11 implementation, just some technical pre-reqs that the new W-4 needs.

Speaking of BSI version 11 - the master note is 2760303. I recommend waiting until later in 2020 to upgrade to BSI 11 unless you really need the new functionality for  the Reverse Tax process for calculating taxes on negative taxable amounts. There are always a few kinks in the delivery of new functionality like this, so waiting a while for it to calm down could save you some work next year.

If you are doing  form 1095 reporting for the US Affordable Care Act (ACA) please take a look at note 2848673 to see what you might need to apply for 2019 reporting year compliance.

And if you are not on a later support pack you will want to review and apply note 2860186 for all the new savings plan limits for US Benefits.

Note 1931655 talks about inconsistent results in using the payroll operation TABLE to read and process infotype tables in payroll rules. The solution is to not use TABLE to do that - it is only designed to process the tables you see in the documentation, not infotype tables (i.e. P0006, P0002, etc). If you need to read other tables while calculating payroll, SAP (and I too) recommend creating your own payroll operation to do that. If you need help doing that, let me know.

There are a couple year-end notes for Canada to take a look at - the year-end master note 2832511 has the details. 

For Brazil there's a new note 2867476 for electronic reporting of Digital Work & Social Security Card (CTPS). And of course a collection of eSocial notes are also released.

And as usual - lots of Payroll Control Center notes to look at in area PY-XX-PYP. So if you are using PCP take a look at these and apply the ones that seem relevant.

Around the Web

Implementing a new HR/Payroll system is a very complex process, often misrepresented by the software providers and consultancies as being simpler and faster. UpperEdge wrote a good blog about this, comparing it to having presents ready for Christmas day: Accessories sold separately, Some assembly required, and Batteries not included. Getting a good HR/Payroll system implementation usually requires more time, effort and cost than vendors represent. You can mitigate this by getting several independent reviews of your requirements and RFP before going out to bid for a project.

Payroll fraud occurs world-wide, and the American Payroll Association has some examples and solutions for managing it. In addition to the obvious ones like segregation of duties they point out some less obvious ones. This topic touches on the one mentioned above about getting a full view of what a good implementation requires - most RFP's and standard implementation plans do not include putting in place audits for fraud. Be sure to include this in yours; you can create your own reports and processes for it, but better yet use a purpose-built auditing tool like HR Audit & Compliance from Accenture HCM. I've recommended and used it for several years now and clients are always pleased with the results.

With the US Federal W-4 form changing now, states that based their withholdings on it or use it as a substitute are also realigning their forms. Wisconsin is one example - we can think of more, too. So review your state forms and processes.

Kronos has a good article on 6 trends that can actually help HR and Payroll in 2020. There's a bit of marketing in the article, but overall some good points. Their research found that companies who close their payrolls faster also have fewer mistakes. Why? Because they have automated more of the process, and in my experience automation drives out exceptions and enforces standardization.

Quote of the Moment

What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day -- Phyllis Diller

Have a great day!

Steve Bogner
Managing Partner, Insight Consulting Partners


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