SAP HR INFORMATION

Info type Number Important Info types
0000 Actions(to capture hire to retire information)
0001 Organizational Assignment(capture employee’s positions)
0002 Personal Data
0003 Payroll Status ( automatically maintained by sap)
0006 Address
0007 Planned Working Time(Store planned working hours)
0008 Basic Pay
0009 Bank Details
0014 Recurring Payments/Deductions(periodic)
0015 Additional Payments/Deductions(one time)
0016 Contract Elements
0041 Date Specifications
2001 Absences
2002 Attendances
2005 Overtime
2006 Absence Quotas
2007 Attendance Quotas

The above infotypes together in the same sequence form a part of the Hiring Action.To make you understand this better just try and recollect the contents of your offer letter which your organization might have given you. It would possibly readWe are delighted to offer you the position (IT 0001) of ______. You will belong to ______ department (IT 0001). Your joining date will be ______(IT0000)and you will be paid a salary of ______ (IT 0008). You will be paid monthly allowances ______ (IT 0008 or IT 0014) and we are also offering you a joining bonus of ______ (IT 0015). You will be eligible for annual leave of ______ days (IT 2006) and sick leave of ______ (IT 2006).You will be on a probation for six months from the date of joining (probation date & confirmation date in IT0016). Your working hours will be from ____ hrs to ____ hrs beginning Monday to Friday (IT 0007) and we look forward to your presence on date ______(IT 2006)….. I hope this gives you some idea of what an infotype is.This must have raised a question in many minds that “Hey ! I got the offer during my recruitment so how come this is being referred to after hiring?” Well thats simple – this is because all your relevant data that was captured during recruitment was transferred to the the master (called HR master data)during the hiring process.So how was it captured in recruitment?Well, this was captured using recruitment actions like shortlist candidate, for interview, make offer, offer accepted till you join the organization and sign the joining letter when your data actually gets transferred from the Recruitment module to the Personnel Administration module.Again this data was captured in recruitment infotypes.So we can now get an idea that in SAP HR ,all data is captured in infotypes.

INFOTYPES CATEGORISED

Infotype 0000-0999 – Personal Administration
Infotype 1000-1999 – PD objects (for OM)
Infotype 2000-2999 – Time Management
Infotype 4000-4999 – Recruitment
Infotype 9000-9999 – For Custom Development

If you closely observe that many of the recruitment infotypes are clones of personnel administration infotypes.I hope this gives you some idea of what an infotype is. Lets look at what we mean by subtypes. A subtype is sub-categorization of an infotype. Not all infotypes are sub-categorized and hence only some required infotypes would have subtypes.Lets take the case of Address Infotype (IT 0006). Now we would like to use the same screen template to store different types of addresses like permanent,Temporary, Office etc.This is because we would be capturing the same type of information which would require the same fields like Street No, City, Country, Pin Code etc to capture different address types information.SAP handles this by using subtypes for the Address Infotype (IT 0006). So to store any Address Information we would need to specify both the infotype and subtype. Certain other infotypes with subtypes are Dependents (0021), ID Data (0185) etc.

DATA AND AUTHORIZATIONS

When it comes to data these are the things that we can do to it

Create data ( in sap hr we do this by creating new records )
View data ( by viewing the records created)
Maintain data ( by changing/deleting records)

To be able to do one or three of the above , the sap hr user needs to be authorized to do so . This is a part of data security handled by sap using what is known as authorizations. Authorizations in sap hr are handled through roles ( such as payroll administrator, training administrator , time administrator where these roles are given create/maintain/view authorizations for combination of hr objects/hr infotypes& subtypes /hr transactions/hr reports/hr clusters)called role based authorizations or a combination of role based authorizations and the hr structures (like organization structure, training calendar etc) called structural authorizations. These roles and structural authorizations are assigned to the sap hr user based on his job profile.Data security is the key andits important to know that you would see,create and maintain data based purely on the tasks you perform in your organization as a sap user.So do not get upset if your colleague can see more than you and does not divulge information as the authorizations would be based on his/her job profile and remember that company confidentiality & professional ethics are the most important qualification for any sap user.Coming back to authorizations (this is for the configurators) , I mentioned earlier that authorizations can be purely role based or a combination of role based and structural authorizations . Lot of hr consultants state thatwe do not need structural authorizations as we can use theorganizational key ( a field used for authorizations available only in IT 0001-Organizational Assignment).However, one must clearly note that further authorizations using role based authorizations can be provided by using organizational key field and that the organization key does not replace the hr structures

ORGANIZATONAL KEY IN AUTHORIZATIONS

The organizational key is a 14 character code which is restricted to a combination of certain fields of the organizational assignment infotype -0001 like organization unit, personal area, personal sub-area, etc. Organization unit is a part of IT0001 and it is often used as a part of the organization key. For most organizations, the organization key suffices. However, when complex authorization requirements arise than organizations with sap hr opt for structural authorizations. If you want an employee to have authorizations to certain employee data of 5 sub-ordinate organization units you would probably have to maintain all the five organizational keys in the role assigned to the employee which means more maintenance. This increases authorization role maintenance and authorization errors ( if there is data inconsistency),which is realized by organizations who are implementing or in a process of implementing structural authorizations.If you want to restrict the sap hr user access on the basis of training calendar or other hr structures then you would need to use structural authorizations and cannot use role based authorizations unless you do some custom development( which is not recommended, when you have standard sap meeting your requirements). I would give full credit to SAP for having understood that many organizations deviate from the normal practices and have their own specific practices for which wherever appropriate,Business Add-Ins also known as BADI’s have been provided to handle such scenarios.For more detailed information and whenever in doubt, always refer to your experienced sap hr colleagues for guidance and help. Refer to appropriate sap documentation provided by sap or its authorized education partners/vendors such as for ex. [1]. Please note that this wiki is purely a discussion and not an education guide or a for formal sap hr training. The assumption here is that all reading this wiki are young sap hr consultants who are looking for advice or a forum to share their skills and knowledge.

TRANSITION OF DATA TO INTELLIGENT DATA

Coming back to the discussion on data ( i would be visiting this time and again) one needs to understand the transition of data with the advent and advancement of information technology.Data started as drawings during stone age times , then came the paper and we have text,numbers and language and with computers we had the database systems storing data in structured format or we can call it structured data. With the erp systems such as sap we advanced to Logical data and with the Business Warehouse we further advanced to strategic data. Then came business intelligence and we are now in a quest for intelligent data.Its important to note the transition of data from need driven to business driven and a continuous quest to improve data.Companies who spend and invest in IT need to move with times and SAP has really helped countless organizations achieve this transition. Companies are realizing that good IT systems means enhanced business returns, staying above competition and opportunities for growth. Of course for this we need Human Resources ( i still do not like the word human capital , i would prefer it to be called Human Talent)

LOGICAL DATABASES

For every sap hr consultant it is important to understand HR logical databases in sap hr. A layer above the physical database lies the hr logical databases called PNP, PCH and PAP. Logical databases contain data tables from sub-modules of sap hr.

depends on specification of object type
Logical Database Infotypes Logical Area
PNP 0000-0999, 2000 to 2999 HR Master Data & Time
PAP 4000-4999 Recruitment
PCH
Infotypes of specified object type else all infotypes

Note: You should know when to choose between the PNP and the PCH logical databases when building your report or query and the key is whether you want the primary key for selection to be the personnel number or the object type.If the primary key is to be the PERNR (personnel number) then you should select the PNP logical database and if you want it to be any object type like O – org unit, S- position, C- job ,L- Business Event Group, D- Business Event Type E- Business Event….etc, then you should select the PCH logical database. And PAP when the primary key must be the applicant numberThis means if you want to query by employee the business events attended, you choose PNP, and if you want to know for certain specific business events who are the attendees, you choose PCH logical database to build your query,program or reports.To conclude,we can say that to build an sap hr query ,user & standard sap programs or reports the preferred option and sap standard too, we use logical databases. I have used the word preferred and not the only option because querying also allows you to directly reference the physical tables without using logical databases but this is never recommended by sap due to problems that it creates in hr authorizations and would overlook error handling provided by sap for the infotypes. All sap hr queries, programs & reports should use the logical databases.Hence if an sap user does not have authorizations for that object or infotype which the program, query or report references, then it would throw an error for the user.Please refer to the exhaustive sap help documentation for more information on sap hr logical databases, infosets , reporting and querying.

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS

Deviating from the question and answers, I would like to highlight a story from the Indian mythology. A teacher teaching his student archers asked them all to shoot an arrow at a clay bird perched on the top of a tree and hit the eye of the bird. All the archers shot at the bird but only one of them managed to hit the eye of the bird. When the teacher asked all the student archers what did they see when they shot the clay bird,some said they saw the bird on a tree,some said they saw the bird perched on the branch. The archer who shot the eye of the bird was quiet. When he was asked by the teacher as to what he saw , prompt came his reply “I saw the eye of the bird”.What I am trying to highlight here is that it is very important for an SAP HR consultant to understand what the customer requirements are and be focused on those requirements only.

PROJECT SCOPING

All projects are time defined based upon agreed business requirements. Delivering what has been agreed upon is what the consultants need to focus upon. Do not try to deviate from what is defined unless agreed upon by the customer and the project team. Save the frills, fancies and anything extra for the enhancements.SAP projects cost a lot of money and the estimation is based on work to be done. A project’s success depends on meeting the objectives, goals and requirements for what the project endeavor was carried out within the defined time lines. If the project deviates in cost, quality and time , it indicates that what was defined as required by the customer is not being met. Deviations to projects makes the project team loose motivation and interest, disturbs human resource planning for other projects when they are to be released from the existing projects and begin work on the other projects. In short it creates a chaos besides financial losses.Many of us are in consulting and we need to understand the bottom line- time is money. If your projects make profit, your company makes profit and you too profit. This should be your motto.So remember and drill this in your mind that requirements for an sap hr project are to meet the company’s goals and objectives in initiating the project and clearly not what the sap hr user or even for that matter the sap configurator fancies or wants.The success of the sap hr project is only when the project sponsor states that it is a success.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

INFOTYPESI have decided to answer all the questions directly to begin with now that you have some fundamentals explained and then go ahead with more discussions1.What are info types ?Infotypes, known as information types are units of human resources information formed by grouping related data fields together. These are represented in the sap hr system by a unique 4 digit number eg. Personal Data (0002), Address (0006) etc. All customer infotypes fall in the number range from 9000 to 9999. The fields in the infotype would vary based on the country grouping for eg. if any employee belongs to country grouping 10 then he would have the SSN no field in the Personal Data infotype which would not be seen in same infotype for country grouping 99.

Infotype no SAP HR sub module
0000-0999 Personal Administration (HR Master Data)
1000-1999 PD Infotypes ( OM etc)
2000-2999 Time Infotypes
4000-4999 Recruitment Infotypes

PERSONNEL ACTIONS& HIRING ACTION

2.What are personnel actions? What is the transaction for executing personnel actions?Personnel Actions are the events of an employee’s employment history within the organization beginning from hiring an employee to termination of the employee.Each of these events need specific information to be captured. This is achieved in sap hr by grouping together infotypes called as infogroup which appear one after another in sequence to capture/change information in the infotypes whenever the personnel action is executed. Personnel Actions are executed by transaction pa40.3.What are the important info types for a hiring action?The important infotypes for executing a hiring action are.

Infotype Number Hiring Action Sequence
0000 Actions
0001 Organizational Assignment
0002 Personal Data
0003 Payroll Status ( automatically maintained by sap)
0006 Address
0007 Planned Working Time
0008 Basic Pay
0009 Bank Details
0016 Contract Elements
0041 Date Specifications
2006 annual leave & sick leave

Note ->0003- Payroll Status ( this is automatically maintained by the sap system and not required to be maintained in the info group for hiring)
Note ->0007-Planned Working Time should always be maintained before infotype 0008 Basic Pay)
Note-> It is the hiring action that allows you to assign an employee to the hr structures.IMG & PROJECT IMG

4.5. 6 What is IMG? What is its importance? What are the functions you can execute using IMG?
What is customizing? What does customizing support?
How do you create a Project IMG? What are project views?IMG means the implementation guide. The configurators would customize the sap hr system as per the customer requirements in the img. In the img you can create project img’s which limit the customizing nodes to the requirement of the projects and for each project img you can create multiple views like MM,SD,HR etc to get more specific. To go to the implementation guide or img from the sap easy access menu ,you have to enter transaction spro in the command line.

ENTERPRISE & PERSONNEL STRUCTURE

5.What is an enterprise structure?The enterprise structure is one of the HR structures. The HR enterprise structure composition depends upon the hr administrative, time and payroll functions for that company. It comprises the client, company code, personal area, personnel subarea and the organization key. The hiring action assign an employee via infotype 0001- Organizational Assignment to the enterprise structure. The enterprise structure is the enterprise perspective of an employee.6.What is a personnel structure?The organizational personnel structure describes how the employee is positioned in the organization. This is an individual perspective of an employee in an organization. It comprises of the employee group, the employee sub group and the organization plan (org unit, position, job) for that employee. The hiring action assigns an employee via infotype 0001- Organizational Assignment to the personnel structure.7.What is the highest level of the enterprise structure?
The client is the highest level of the enterprise structure.
8.What is company code? Is it defined in HR? If not where is it defined?The company code is an organization unit(this is different from the hr organization unit. Different modules like SD, MM, etc have their own organization structures with their own organization units) which has its own balance sheet and profit and loss account and is defined in the FI module.9.What are personnel areas and its functions?Personnel (( Please note the spelling -> its Personnel (group of people)and not Personal(Individual)) Area is the sub division (understand these two words) of the company code and can represent a functional area or geographical location.These play a very important role in the time and payroll configurations. Each personnel area is unique to a company code (mark these words) and is represented by a 4 character code.10.What are personnel sub areas and its functions?The further divisions (understand this word) of a personnel area are defined as personnel subareas. The functions are similar to the personnel area. Each personnel subarea too is unique to a personal area (mark these words) and is represented by a 4 character code.Hi everyone, i would be continuing with the answers to the rest of the questions as an when i get the time and try to keep this going till completion.11.How is an employee in the HR Master data linked to a company to which he belongs?“EMPLOYEE—>PERSONNEL AREA—>COMPANY CODE—>COUNTRY GROUPING–>CLIENT”12.Can a personnel area be assigned to many company codes?No. A Personnel Area can be only assigned to one company code. Many personnel areas can be assigned to the same company code but the vice versa is not true.13.What are the indicators defined by personnel sub areas?The indicators are all personnel sub area groupings for hr, time, payroll which are very critical to the sap hr implementation. They are also used tolimit HR authorizations.14.How do you categorize the employee groups?Employee groups are categorized based on employee/staff regulations of work and pay such as
1. Active
2. Retiree/Pensioner ….. and so on.
These are also used to limit HR authorizations.15.What are employee subgroups and what are the indicators set up using employee subgroups?Further division of the employee groups are called the employee subgroups such as under employee group 1-Active you could have employee subgroups such as AA–Hourly wage earner, AH–Salaried Employee …. And so on.The indicators are all employee sub area groupings for hr, time, payroll which are very critical to the sap hr implementation. They are also used to limit HR authorizations.16.Employee groups are two character and employee subgroup are two character representations in the IMG. Do you support this statement?False. Employee groups are one character and employee subgroups are two character representations.17.In the HR Master data where are planned working times for an employee seen?
IT 0007- Planned Working Time using transaction pa51 – Display time data18.Do I need to give country assignment to personnel sub areas in customizing? If true support the statement and if not what’s true?No. You do not need to give country assignment to personnel sub areas directly, however when personnel subareas are assigned to personnel areas, the contry grouping gets inherited automatically through the associated Company code. You also have an option to give country assignments to the employee subgroups on assigning to employee groups in the enterprise structure.

HR MASTER DATA & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

19.What are the various objects in an organizational plan?.1. Tasks
2. Job
3. Position
4. Organizational unit
5. Cost Center etcHow does any company use an organizational plan?The company organization structure and reporting structure is represented through the organization plan. The active plan version is the current plan version and the other plan versions are considered as various planning stages.Used for manpower planning. Normally plan version”01″ is always made the active plan version.12.How do you integrate OM and PA? If integration is active what happens when a position is entered in IT 0000.? What else does the system default? Can these values be changed? What is this called?Integration of OM and PA is possible through the integration switch setting in table T770S which is PLOGI ORGA 1. If the integration is active and the position is entered in IT0000 during a hiring action , than in IT0001 the following are automatically defaultedPercentage
Job Key
Org. Unit.
These values are greyed out and cannot be changed. This is called account assignment.13.Are cost center assignments hierarchical? Where do you assign these in OM?Cost center assignments are hierarchical. You assign these in the account assignment for OM objects. If your org unit in the lower hierarchy does not have a cost center assignment , than it will be assigned the cost center of the upper hierarchical org unit till one is found. For a position, if the cost center is not assigned, it will be assigned the cost center of the org unit to which the position belongs and if not found here, than it will be assigned the cost centre of the upper hierarchical org unit till one is found. These assignments can be overridden by the cost distribution (IT 0027).14.What are attributes of objects? Is vacancy a common attribute for all objects?

Attributes of an object are the properties of the object by which it is described. The OM objects have some common attributes like Description, Relationship, Account Assignment , Work Schedule etc and some unique attributes like Vacancy assignment which is only for the OM object position.15.What are the other additional organizational assignments?The other additional organizational assignments are assigning the employee to administrators in org assignment infotype 0001.16..Name the three administrators? How do you default these in IT0001?.The three administrators are
1.Personnel Administrator
2.Payroll Administrator
3.Time Administrator

Besides these the employee can also be assigned to

4.Group Administrator
5.A SupervisorThese are defaulted through the feature PINCH.17.What is organizational key? How many characters does it constitute? How can it be defined? What is it mainly used for?An Organization key is a 14 character code that could be formed by the combination of parts/whole of certain field values in the org assignment infotype (0001) eg employee group, subgroup, personnel area, sub area, org unit etc. It is used for authorizations.18.What are employee attributes and how are they classified?The employee attributes are all the information pertaining to that employee. They are typically classified according to the HR structures to which the employee belongs such as organization structure, pay structure, and are stored in form of well defined and related information called infotypes.

FEATURES

19.What are features? What is the transaction for features?Features are objects those that default values by quering different enterprise, personnel or data structure fields. The transaction code for features are pe03.20.What are the features to default and in which info type ?
1. Work Schedule Rule
2. Pay Scale Data
3. Wage Type Model
4. Administrator groups

Work Schedule Rule SCHKZ – IT0007
Pay Scale Data TARIF – IT0008
Wage Type Model LGMST – IT0008
Administrator groups PINCH – IT0001

21. Number Range Intervals NUMKR( which infotype??You try and answer this one)22. What is ABKRS?
ABKRS is the feature that defaults payroll area23. What are the two ways of maintaining features?)The two ways of maintaining features are use using the table method or the tree method.The experienced sap hr consultants prefer the table method of configuring a feature whereas those who worked on 4.6 and later prefer the tree method.24.What is the infotype to store personal data for an employee?Infotype 0002 – Personal Data is used to store personal information of an employee. In some countries you could use infotype 0077- Additional Personal Data.25.Where are the default values for working hours per period taken from in IT 0008?Taken from Infotype 0007- Planned Working Time. (Try and answer from which field???)26.Maintaining a feature or its structureIn the Development(DEV) Client, use transaction PE03 to change a feature’s decision table. You can use either a tree structure view or a table view. For a beginner the first one is easier to understand.A feature provides a return value based on the decision tree using the values at the time of execution. It is similar to a PCR (or a payroll calc rule) or a decision table which many people would be familiar with.A feature uses a data structure which is populated by the program before calling the feature. A feature may use all or some of the fields in its structure. You can see which fields can be used when you go to change/maintain a feature and then navigate to the structure. The feature / structure screen shows the usable fields highlighted. If you need to use a field not used currently, then highlight or select it. Then save it and regenerate. Then the feature’s decision table can be changed to use the new field/s. The same applies if you want to use a different structure. The program that uses or calls the feature will fill the new structure, provided the data is available in the program / module / function / routine.After changing the decision table and saving it in a transport, generate the feature. Generating the feature is required when you change it manually. Then move the transport to Quality Assurance(QA) or User Acceptance(UAT), Production and other clients. Moving transports to another system/client will automatically result in generating the feature in the target client. In older SAP versions like R/3 3.0 it was required to generate after transport.In Test or Prod system, sometimes the feature may not have been generated; this will result in incorrect processing. This can be corrected by re-generating the feature in the relevant client.Some features use another feature. This is indicated in the function part having ‘FLDID=xxxx’; here xxx would be the secondary feature being called by the primary feature. With such features, it is possible that the subfeature is copied from client 000 when the main feature is generated. If you wish to force the feature to use the one from the config client, a trick is to change the one in the config client with an insignificant change, save it and then regenerate the main feature.Feature is a client dependent object though it generates a program and client dependent customizing transports (not workbench transports) are used. For example, if you have a Development System with separate Dev clients for different companies, then it needs to be maintained in the development client for that company.One development system is used for Company A client 100 and Company B client 110. Then the features need to be separately maintained in the relevant system and transported to the corresponding QA & Prod clients. In many customer installations, there are multiple clients for a Development system – e.g., 010 for Dev (ABAP objects), 100 for config, 200 for Dev Test. If you have separate client for employee/org data, then in the Test client you need to copy the transport from the conifig client with SCC1 transaction, then generate the feature.Generating a feature will result in generating a subroutine pool member. This subroutine is called by the calling program in real time. For example, LGMST feature will result in /1PAPA/FEATnnnLGMST, where nnn is the system client number.

PAYROLL

26.Why is employee subgroup grouping for pcr significant for payroll?
27.What does collective agreement provision determine? How do you depict different payments in the system?
28.What does employee subgroup grouping for CAP allow you to assign?The Personnel Calculation rule allows one wage type to be processed in different ways in payroll and these different ways are through the ESG for PCR and ESG for CAP. The ESG for PCR classifies which employees are to be paid on an hourly or monthly basis. The ESG for CAP further classifies these employees based on their Collective Agreement Provision as industrial workers or salaried workers (based on their worker/union agreements.)Try and understand the esg grouping for pcr and esg grouping for cap and how basic pay infotype behaves for these hourly, periodic and monthly agreements.29.What is payscale type and payscale area?

These are used to assign the collective agreement types and areas to an employee via infotype 0008- Basic Pay. For example, payscale type “01” -> Metal Industry and payscale area “01” -> North Region30.You assign payscale types and areas to which object
1. Company code
2. Payroll area
3. Employee subgroup
4. Personnel subareaYou assign payscale types and areas to personnel subareas under the node in the IMG, Check Assignment of Pay Scale Structure to Enterprise Structure31.What are wage types? How wage types are broadly classified?
32.How do you set up wage types?
33.What are slash wage types?
34.Why are wage type groups used? Give some examples of wage type groups.
35.What is transaction PU95?
36.Where in the IMG do I ensure that the wage types are associated with the enterprise and personnel structure.?
37.Where are all wage types stored?
38.Are all wage types permissible for all infotypes? If Yes or NO support statement?
39.What are the wage type characteristics that can be defined?
40.How do you valuate wage types? Where do you configure this in the IMG?
41.What are module name and module variant?
42.Explain significance of TARIF , SUMME and PRZNT in regards to indirect valuation?Wage types are payroll objects used to store payroll components which include the amount, number and rate. SAP has standard model wage types for different country versions and depending upon your payroll implementation you should copy model wage types from the correct country versions only.The wage types are broadly classified into primary/dialog and secondary/technical or slash wage types. Dialog wage types are those in which you can store values in the wage types through the permissible payroll infotypes. The technical or slash wage types are those wage types that are create during the payroll run only eg /101 – Total gross amount, /550 – Statutory Net, /559 – Bank Details.Wage types are permitted to be stored in payroll infotypes only if these are added to the wage type groups. Eg Basic Pay IT0008 has wage type group 0008. Please note that not always do Infotype no = wage type group.Transaction pu95 is used to edit wage type groups. You need to assign the wage types to the respective employee sub group groupings and personnel subarea groupings wherever configuration permits for the wage types to be associated with the enterprise and personnel structure. All wage types are not permissible for all infotypes( refer wage type groups concept).The wage type characteristics are attributes of the wage type as to what is permissible and not permissible, what are the maximum and minimum value limits , what are the units permissible, whether they are to be valuated directly ( values entered) or indirectly ( values as a reference to other wage type values).You valuate wage types directly or using indirect valuation. You configure these in the wage type characteristics and the corresponding indirect valuation tables where the corresponding wage types from where the indirect values are figured out(these need to exist). Module names are names given to different types of modules that valuate wage types according to certain criteria eg TARIF, PRZNT etc. Variations in the module valuation process are further provided by the specific module variants. For eg for TARIF module the variants could be A, B, C and D. TARIF provides valuation according to payscale group or/and level, SUMME & PRZNT are valuation using the basic pay(IT0008)wage types . The ‘SUMME’ module corresponds to the ‘PRZNT’ module except that the value of the wage type to be valuated indirectly is always the entire basic pay. KEEPING FIT-MUST FOR SAP CONSULTANTS

The answer to my non sap question is … Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman was the inventor of the smileySince its Xmas time and the New Year 2008 arriving in a few days, I am not going to post answers but share a story with you. Now this time of the year is when you gorge on food and maybe add a few kilos too. Well what the heck we are all supposed to have fun this time of the year.Coming back to the story (I cannot confirm if this is true since it has been told to me) there is this CEO cum owner of one of the biggest private corporations in India ( I will call him CEO X) who had gone overseas for some round of negotiations to formalize a contract worth several million dollars.The CEO of the company that was tendering the contract (We shall call him CEO Y) was there too and he made CEO X walk across the plant and climb a few stairs which left the Indian CEO sweating and panting for breath. Now came the moment of signing the contract and CEO Y took CEO X aside and told him in private that he was signing the contract mainly due to the business acumen of CEO X but was really in two minds of taking that risk looking at the fitness of CEO X. CEO X immediately realized that not only was this contract at stake but even his company was at stake due to his fitness. He promised to get in shape in a few months and fulfilled his promise to become one of the fittest CEO’s of the Indian corporate world.I was also reading the other day and I quote “Good Looking People Get More Frequent Promotions” or something similar like that. I would like to replace the Good Looking with the words “Fitter” & “Well Groomed”.This story applies very much to sap consultants too who are under constant pressures to meet deadlines and have abnormal times of brunches, lunches and dinners coupled with odd hours of sleep. Exercising in some form or the other to keep fit is a must, whether it is laughter therapy, simple old fashioned walking or a hitting the gym for a six pack. If you are hitting the gym for the first time make sure you are exercising under the able guidance of a fitness expert.AdvertisementIt not all about sap that makes one a sap consultant folks.Happy and Prosperous 2008.

PAY INCREASE IN SAP HR

Welcome back and lets get back to answering the rest of the questions for the remaining posts i make before i close this wiki from my end and let you all take over by adding more questions and answers and carry this forward.43.Briefly explain the two different ways to perform pay increase? In dynamic pay increase what are variants A, G, D, E, T , C and R?
The two ways are
1.Simple pay scale increase using report RPU51000 which increases the wage types in customizing
2. Standard pay scale increase where the wage types entered in IT0008 can be automatically increased and the history of the wage types in IT0008 are also updated.

Variant A Increases a wage type in IT0008 to an absolute amount
Variant G Increase total pay in IT0008 to an absolute amount
Variant D Increase by a difference by value or percentage.
Variant E Valuate according to another pay scale group
Variant T Add a new wage type to IT0008
Variant C Delimit an existing wage type in IT0008
Variant R Replace one wage type by another in IT0008

Only one variant can be defined for a wage type. You need to maintain table V_T510D in the customizing and run the program RPITRF00 to carry out the standard pay scale increase.Make sure that you test your configuration and the execution of the report RPITRF00 only in the test system, run payroll test cases and take user acceptance before transporting these changes to the Production. It is highly recommended that you always do this in the supervision of a senior consultant with good sap payroll experience.

INFOTYPE ATTRIBUTESHello once again.Moving to the next question on infotype attributes.44.What are the info type attributes?The attributes of the infotype are

The Text describing the infotype
The fields that make up the infotype
The subtype for the infotype whether mandatory when creating the infotype
The time constraint for the infotype
The retroactive accounting triggers for time and payroll
Entries in the payroll past are permissible or not
Org assignment(IT0001) check for the employee required or not.
Date settings for creation and selection of the infotype e.g. the infotype should always be created with end date equal to 31.12.9999.
Technical details of the infotype such as single screen no, list screen no, activate list entry or not, the dialog module, structure and consultant database table connected to the infotype and something which we do not notice and that’s the field Applicant (database)TAB which contains the name of a database table for an applicant infotype.
Infotype views
Country assignment/assignments of infotype

These are all defined as per requirements in the standard infotypes provided by SAP but when you are defining custom infotypes in the 9000-9999 series range you need to make sure you correctly define the attributes required for the custom infotype.Before we end for now just checking on whether have we all made our New Year Resolutions??? Any resolution for SAP????I was watching an advertisement of a sitcom and there an very emotional and an upset mom was asking her teenage son and I quote “Do you really care for me?,do you love me son? The son replied with all innocence on his face and truth in his eyes and I quote again “ Of course mom, is that a question to ask, I do love you ,I do love your credit card” So would your SAP resolution be something like I love to work on sap and would continue doing so because ……… ( don’t expect me to fill in the rest, its your resolution folks).Welcome back. My sap resolution is to finish answering the questions at the earliest and this is forced since the coffee bills are beating the food bills at home.Lets now understand something about the sap front end and what dynpro’s is all about.47.What is DYNPRO ?In the SAP HR module,

You execute a transaction by either entering a transaction code or by selecting a branch from the SAP Easy Access tree for e.g.take the transaction pa20- Display HR Master Data.
Then you select the infotype and click display to view the infotype. Each Screen in the sap hr module is typically made up of a screen which is identified by a unique screen i.e. 2000 and contain screen fields

.A screen program is called as a module pool program.

Eg infotype 0001 – Organizational Assignment screen is the module program MP000100.
Your transaction pa20 and selection of infotype 0001 is to display specific data for an employee. In this process this module program is connected to the back end database through a corresponding data structure PA0001 by this program and the data is read into the screen fields.
This is only possible provided the user authorization to access data is determined *The GUI status for this is maintained as display where there are controls maintained at screen level to make sure that changes to this infotype are not allowed.You can see this when you go to the infotype 0001 in the display mode and press the key F1 and then read the technical information where the information is mainly broken into three parts.

.Screen Data – Where the module pool program MP000100 and screen number 2000 is seen
GUI status – You see the module pool program MP000100 and the status DIS (Display)
Field Data – Information on the data base field on which you pressed the key F1.

In case of the transaction pa30, the data entered in the fields would first be checked by system controls like data type, length, user access etc and than on save would the data be transferred from the screen to the database through the data structure connected to the screen. The technical information would read

Screen Data – Where the module pool program MP000100 and screen number 2000 is seen
GUI status – You see the module pool program MP000100 and the status MOD (Modify which means create or change)
Field Data – Information on the data base field on which you pressed the key F1.

Looking at the above we can now conclude that the sap screen, the interface programs and controls of data flow from the screen to the database through the appropriate data structure and vice versa could be called a dynpro. In case of creation of custom infotypes , you will notice that the dynpro is a component of an ABAP program that is created using the screen painter of the ABAP Workbench.

Advertisement DESIGN

I was reading some material on design and its very interesting to note that there are recommended standards on web design. However, what my opinion is that whatever standards are applied to software, you know your design is a success in all aspects if you have many users viewing/creating maximum data in the shortest span of time.This indicates that the users like to use the system time and again because the design features are liked by them and meet there requirements,the system is easy to understand and use without complications and the output created/viewed by them (data in this case) meets there requirements.Coming back to the answer on DYNPRO, you can now realize that the major advantage of this design is that it separates the application from the database. There are error checks built in the application level which do not permit syntactically incorrect data entries and try and keep the data in the database as clean as possible. That is why whenever we load data to the sap system through BDC programs in these BDC programs the ABAP consultant first records the screens for data capture and makes sure that the data is loaded through the screen/module pool programs and never tries and writes directly to the database. Then why do we always find sap hr data as incorrect and not meeting the requirements? In my analysis the hr data is always changing for every employee in the organization and this data has to correctly reflect in the sap hr systems which is not happening or is getting delayed. One of the primary causes is because the employee is not being given the ownership of his or her own data to maintain and the process of gathering this data from the employee has not fully evolved in many organizations. SAP realized this early and has come up with the Employee Self Service interface. But this is not enough. For strategic HR data we need to integrate the sap hr system with the other sap modules/systems and give more value to the hr data.

CHANGING HR DATA AND IMPACT

Some questions you ask yourself? How good is the HR administration in your organization? Do you consider HR as a service industry? How come it felt by many that HR folks come across as arrogant and rude? Is this due to lack of proper processes, information and systems, lack of manpower or lack of initiative?My answer to the question is that it is a combination of all factors and companies are paying attention to all but the last factor and that is initiative.Do not companies pay the sales personnel huge bonus/incentives for achieving their targets?Are not the employees in finance paid incentives for closing the year balance sheets on time? Than why is there no bonus/incentive for the HR folks for doing a good job such as meeting recruitment targets, managing retention and an evergrowing requirements of employees doubling their count every year and much more?This needs deep thinking ? After all HR folks are human too. But than again as HR folks lets try and keep our cool and not let our stress and frustrations rub on the employees. Lets try and give our best and hope for the best.My warning to the companies is if you do not give the HR folks what they truly deserve, you would loose students choosing the stream of HR and looking at the requirements of HR which are ever increasing with times these predict dangerous times ahead.

BACK AGAIN TO INFOTYPES

Welcome back and now we are in the fast track mode.61.What naming conventions are the info types subject to?
62.Where are the info types relevant to retroactive accounting for payroll and time management defined?
63.What are the significance of field triggers in retroactive accounting?Infotypes are defined by 4 digit numbers and follow the following naming convention

0000-0999 PA Infotypes
1000-1999 PD infotypes ( which includes OM)
2000-2999 Time Infotypes
4000-4999 Recruitment Infotypes
9000-9999 Customer defined infotypes

So whenever you are searching for a customer defined infotype make sure your search is restricted between 9000 -9999.The infotypes relevant to retroactive accounting for payroll and time infotypes are defined in the
IMG . Personnel Administration–>Customizing Procedures–>Infotypes–>Define fields relevant for retroactive accounting–> Retroactive accounting relevance for payroll and time per ITUnder this node you define for each infotype the following:-
1.Check if no organizational assignment exists for the employee in IT0001-Organizational Assignment and throw an error, warning or no message.2.Maintenance of this infotype is permissible, permissible with warning, or not permissible after the employee has left the organization (employee in inactive status).3.Entries in payroll past are permissible, not permissible or check for entries in the payroll past are infotype specific.4.Infotype is not relevant for retroactive accounting, change in the infotype triggers retroactive accounting or retroactive accounting is field-dependent according to table T588G where the fields whose change in values should trigger retroactive accounting are defined. Hence you can see the significance of field triggers in retroactive accounting where retroactive accounting for a given infotype can be restricted to changes in the past to certain fields of the infotype.64.What do you need to do in the IMG to specify certain info types for certain countries only?SPRO–>Personnel Administration–>Customizing Procedures–> Assign infotypes to countries

PHOTO IN HR MASTER DATA

65.Where can you store a passport photo of an employee? Where do you do the settings in the IMG?
You can store passport photos of your employees in the infotype header in infotype Header Definition view (T588J).In the System Table view T77S0),determine the document type with which you want to enter the passport photos in the optical archive. The settings can be done at
SPRO–> Personnel Administration–> Customizing User Interfaces–> Change Screen Header
Again folks do not try this on your own but under the guidance of an senior HR consultant and test this thoroughly in your test systems before moving to the live system.

TCLAS-THE CONCEPT

TCLAS=A Transaction Class for Master Data (Personnel Administration)
TCLAS=B Transaction class for Applicant Data (Recruitment)

66.What is TCLAS = A and TCLAS = B?

This transaction class has confused a lot of functional consultants and you just need to understand that whenever you write a dynamic action, if you are writing one for Master data then use TCLAS=A and if for Recruitment use TCLAS= B before you begin writing the code for the dynamic action. Let us compare the Personnel Administration(PA) infotypes and Recruitment Infotypes.

<PA> IT0000 Personnel Actions
<PA> IT0001 Organizational Assignment
<PA> IT0002 Personal Data…and so on
<Recruitment> IT4000 Personnel Actions
<Recruitment> IT0001 Organizational Assignment
<Recruitment> IT0002 Personal Data…and so on

If you can see above both the personnel administration and the recruitment modules use a lot of the similar infotypes to store data . You can verify this by going to the PA infotype through pa20 , choosing IT0001 and choosing any field and that press key <F1> to view technical details and you dothe same when you go to display applicant master data under transaction data through pb20 where you choose any applicant , select and view infotype Organizational Assignment (IT0001) and than press key<F1> to view technical details.In both the cases you will see the same tech specs for IT0001 of Personnel Administration and IT0001 for Recruitment. So how should your dynamic action, BADI or any program know which infotype 0001 to choose , whether Personnel Administration or Recruitment. That is where TCLAS comes in use.When you choose TCLAS= A you are referring to all infotype tables PA0001, PA0002 ,… PA*
And when you choose TCAS = B you are referring to all infotypes tables PB0001,PB0002,… PB*Now my friends I am sure you folks will never forget what TCLAS is all about. Sometimes when lost in deep thought, it helps scratching you head)might activate your grey cells)

UNDERSTAND SAP AND DONT CRAM TABLES

There is another story I would like to tell you and most of my Indian readers would be familiar with this.Whenever a mother complained about her school going child (typically boys since girls are kind of more sincere at that age) that the child is not studying and only playing. The father(who may not have done to well in his studies) will ask the childfor his exam marks and what he has got in Maths. The son replies 70 on a 100 and the dad asks his son a question on Maths tables such as “Whats 11 * 12 equal to and the son is taken aback for a while and fumbles while replying.The father concludes with a thundering voice “You are not studying at all since you do not know your Maths Tables”.We surely have a fixation of learning things by heart and a greater fixation for tables and this carries with us for life, but trust me whats more important is understanding what you learn. This even goes for sap as I have given interviews for some big companies and more than wanting to know what I understood about the business, there was more interest in knowing how many sap tables I could rattle off. To give you an example,if I ask you about how an absence quota is configured, a typical reply would be go to spro node so and so … and there you can do absence quota configuration. What I feel is more important is what attributes I could configure like I would first define a quota type for a quota, than define its quota values … and assign it to a deduction rule which is a part of the counting rule which would be assigned to an absence and so on.Even if you spent 15 mins in the spro under HR you would be able to locate the node under Time Management.Therefore, its not so important in making it a point to forcefully remember sap hr tables or img nodes. With projectsand experience, they would be remembered by you without any force.Whats most important is what can you deliver in sap hr and even if you do not have immediate answers you need to sit an explore like a research scientist and this never ends. Every time you look at the sap system , you may just discover or learn something new.

UGR,INFOTYPE MENUS & INFOGROUPS

Welcome back and lets continue. I think i covered question 67 before and i am skipping to 68.Q 68.What are infotype menus or info menus? Are they user group dependable?.
Q 69.What setting do i need to make for a SAP user to see that he has the relevant infotype menus?Infotype menus are menus that you see when you

Display HR Master Data (transaction pa20)
Maintain HR Master Data (transaction pa30)

Infotype menus are user group dependable and you can have different infotype menus for different user groups.To make sure that a user is able to see the appropriate infotype menu you need to make sure that in the user parameters of the sap hr user (use transaction su3), you maintain the user parameter UGR=<usergroup value>. Typically in most of the implementations you may see that the UGR = <usergroup value>=<country grouping value>, however there is no hard and fast rule for that states that this applies everywhere.To make it more simpler, the sap user 1 may see different infotypes in display /maintain master data than sap user 2, or to simplify it further lets consider we are having a global implementation and for countries like Germany( country grouping/user group value 01) and USA (country grouping/user group value 10). We could have same/different infotype menus with ame/different infotypes required to be accessed and maintained by a sap hr user in Germany than a sap hr user from USA. In this we will assign UGR=01 to the sap hr user from Germany and UGR=10 to the sap hr user from USA.As functional hr consultants, whenever sap hr roles and authorizations are assigned to sap hr super users, coordinate with the basis team to ensure these parameters are assigned before you ask the super users to start testing or go live in production. You could make a mention of this in the sap hr user manual and train the sap hr users on setting the user group parameters.

RETRENCHMENT OF EMPLOYEES

Hi, friends, maybe i spoke to early about some companies not retrenching but that was a scenario that existed before. Jobs with good organizations meant stability and security for the employee and his family. Life was peaceful and people were smiling more often. Business ran and no one ever got fired for any reason unless it was an ethical issue. Todays world is different. You walk in the office and you just hope you do not see a pink folder on your desk. Profits rule the world and then any individual. My advice to young sap consultants is that save for the rainy day. Take good insurance coverages to cover for your health and your families. Keep fit and learn to say “NO” when asked to work for indecent no of working hours because it is these same organizations who can throw you at the drop of a hat for being physically incapable to work. Finally keep updating your skills to meet the market requirements.To companies and the Bosses who rule, do not forget you guys are human and dealing with humans. My personal opinion is that retrenchment is not the answer . In bigger organizations with so many locations and departments, relocation in job function, department and location is very much possible and should be given as an option to the employee before deciding to show him/her the door.

TIME MANAGEMENT

Hi folks welcome back. I decided i would like to keep trying posting to this wiki irrespective of time constraints (the non working hours busy with the IPL cricket matches for now), however these posts would not be at regular intervals. Time Management in SAP HR/HCM is all about recording all of the employees times, working and non working relevant to the organization , specific union agreements which decide the working hours of the employees, their breaks, their off days , their holidays , their overtimes , their compensatory offs, their leave entitlements and leaves etc. In a typical factory environment which has thousands of employees, you can picture employees coming in shifts, swiping their smart cards or punching buttons into sophisticated electronic clock systems or the older clock systems with punch cards to record their every movement when they enter the plant or leave it. You got a time office which monitors these times and analyzes these times to make sure that the employees follow the time rules and regulations as per their union agreements or contracts. In many countries time records are stored as archives for a decade or more to settle labour disputes when these records need to be produced in the labour department or the law office so make sure that you have a correct archive strategy for all old time records and dont dispose them away.Before i end for today , i would like to comment that SAP Time Management is an ocean in itself and i do not think that there could possibly exist any time management package that could deliver so much that this does with its seamless integration to almost all areas of sap. It is absolutely flexible and meets the requirements of all possible scenarios that exist with organizations which is why i am fascinated with this sub module of sap hcm/hr. When we meet the next time i will talk about what SAP Time Management contains and than go about answering the questions.Before i get into more details of sap time management i wanted to describe the todays scenario of time management.Picture a Maintenance Engineer working in a service organization and performing maintenance tasks for different customers carrying a PDA or a mobile phone. Once he or she completes the task immediately charges the working times through these modern devices with he click of a few buttons. These times are integrated with the invoices/orders charged to the customers for payment in sap .If the work in done for another department in the same organization to which the maintenance engineer belongs, then through internal orders etc.He/she is has a dentists appointment which they have managed to get with great difficulty for 2 hours. The leave is applied again through this device, reaches the bosses PDA or computer for approval, which once done get recorded into the sap hr system as an absence.Yes times are changing fast, so is the technology so you better change too.Today devices like mobiles etc with newer versions and technology are coming into the market at the speed of at least one per year per manufacturer. Like i said before and i repeat HR/HCM consultants cannot claim not to be techno savvy anymore. HR/HCM needs to be tightly integrated to other verticals. In fact they should actually push for more and more integration once the base HR/HCM systems are up, settled and running and take note that the technologies for integration are becoming more sophisticated, better and faster.Make sure you spend time keeping abreast of which new technology is becoming a part of sap, at least what can be applicable to the HR/HCM module. You however, do not need to worry about the technical specifications of these devices unless you get into a project using these.

INFOTYPES IN TIME MANAGEMENT

Time Management in SAP HR is mainly categorized into :-
1. Negative Time Management (Time Management without clock times being captured)
2. Positive Time Management(Time Management with clock times being captured)Time Management have a number of applications for recording times and the important ones are :-1. CATS or the Cross Application Time Sheet : This application is available as a web service on the portal ( mostly through ESS) for capturing service times against an HR object like absence or other FI/CO or logistics object like cost center, work order , etc where these times may or may not be approved by supervisors and posted to various modules like HR, MM-SV(Services), or other logistics modules. 2. XSS(ESS & MSS) .The Employee Self Service and Manager Self Service also have a lot of time management handling where employees can see there time accounts and manage their leaves and attendances( e.g. training/on site work) and manager’s approve or reject these and subject to approval records in appropriate time infotypes are created in SAP. 3. Time Manager’s Workplace : On of the very good applications provided by SAP but not effectively used is the Time Manager’s Workplace. This application is ideally meant for time administrators to manage employee time accounts and error handling. 4. Shift Planning :This application is a typical of a factory environment used by the floor or factory manager /supervisor. It is used to optimize employee times on various shifts. Different input criterion like employees being on leave, substitution, etc help build a shift planner. The main purpose of these interfaces is for capturing times for :-

1 Paying wages and bonuses
2 Paying Overtime
3 Absences and Loss Of Pay
4 Attendances like Work Hours, Training , OnSite etc
5 Quota Compensation

Before I come back to to this discussion I would like to explain the basic info types used in Time Management which are– Planned Employee Times

0007-Planned Working Time ( The most important info type)

Actual Employee Times

2011- Time Events (Automatic recording through time recording machines)
2002-Attendances (Manual Entries)

Positive Time Infotypes

0050-Time Recording Info
2002-Attendances
2011-Time Events
2012- Time Transfer Specifications
2013 -Quota Corrections

Deviations to Employee Times

2001- Absences
2002-Attendances
2003-Substitution
2004-Availibility
2005-Overtime

Entitlements

2006-Absence Quotas
2007-Attendance Quotas

Time Related Payments

0416- Time Quota Compensation
2010- Employee Remuneration Info

Just try and read about these info types and the next time I will explain that’s so special about info type 0007 (Planned Working Time).Hi Welcome back. I hope you folks out there are enjoying the Euro Cup and managing to stay awake at work( just kidding !).What do we mean by planning or planned?Sounds very simple but try deciphering it and you realize its not that simple to explain. The nearest that I felt I could get was “Building a framework (plan) of what is to be done in the future using resources over a period of measure (such as time)”.A plan could be a sequence of instructions, a drawing, a map etc.People, Infrastructure, Machines & Capital could broadly qualify as resources.Planning is done by individuals, teams, departments, organizations, nations and even groups of nations.What is done now could be an execution of a plan of the past. What is done in the past is history. What could be possibly done in the future is a forecast.AdvertisementWhat is the manner in which the execution of the plan is heading considering, the past, present and the future is a trend and this is very significant for any organization for strategic planning whether it’s the sales, production, employee retention or costs.To be able to define a trend its very important to have accurate data for the past and present and for this again we need good information technology systems of which HR Information systems such as SAP HR play a very important role.

PLANNED WORKING TIME(INFOTYPE 0007)

So what do we mean by planned working time? Split the words as “planned” and “working time” I am sure you will be now be able to come up with this answer.Planned Working Times are working times which are planned for an employee in advance such as the shifts the employee is to work, the breaks the employee gets during these shifts, the off days (such as weekly off days) and the holidays applicable to the employee. These planned times are stored as work schedules which are generated through what is known as the work schedule rule which includes all the recipe or rules for generating these planned times. The work schedule rule is assigned to the employee in infotype IT0007(Planned Working Time) or defaulted using the feature SCHKZ. The recipe includes :-

1>The daily working times(including flex i-times) with break times stored in the Daily Work Schedule
2> The pattern of daily work schedules to be followed repeatedly over a period of time such as days or months stored in the Period Work Schedule
3> The Holidays that fall on those days which the employee is eligible due to his/her union or collective agreement stored in the Holiday Calendar. These holidays can be movable or fixed. The Holiday Calendar is assigned to the personnel sub area grouping to which the employee belongs.
4> The Day type and the selection rule (or recipe making rule). The day type indicates what type of day is that employees daily work schedule i.e

Day Type Description Details
0 Work/Paid A Regular Working Day and paid for that off day
1 Off/Paid An Off Day and paid for this day
2 Off/Unpaid An Off Day and not paid for this day
3 Special Day Special Day like a on off anniversary

The selection rule XX helps you to build a rule such as you want all days from Monday to Friday be of day type 0 and all Saturdays and Sundays declared as of day type 1 when you are generating the work schedule for a work schedule rule that includes this selection rule XX.Once all the above are defined and assigned to the work schedule rule( the recipe), generation of the work schedule (the final dish ) is carried out . This could be for a period of months or years . Normally work schedules are generated for a few years in advance.To know more about shifts refer to the wikipedia which gives some good information about what shifts are, their history etc.For more details on the configuration of work schedules refer to sap helphttp://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/22/72369adc56d11195100060b03c6b76/frameset.htmBefore we end the discussion on planned working times and work schedules, another question to ask ourselves isDo we generate the work schedules for individual employees?The answer is typically No. The work schedules are generated for the employee sub group grouping and personnel sub area grouping for work schedules. These groupings and the assignment are a part of the img. However, there could be an exceptional case of only one employee belonging to one employee subgroup and one personnel sub area (naturally) which could be again grouped into only into one employee subgroup grouping and one personnel sub area grouping. <./p> Another few questions for which I will not provide the answers but for you to derive?

1.Can we assign the common work schedules to different employee sub grouping

and personnel sub area grouping? Think real hard.

2.Is it alright to create the Basic Pay infotype (IT0008) before creating(IT0007) Planned Working Time ? Does your payroll run for that employee?

ACTUAL TIMES

What do you mean by actual times?
Where are these stored for an employee?

<p align=”justify”>Actual times means real times or times that are recorded as true.In sap hr the actual times are recorded in the info type (IT 2011) called Time Events.Mark the word Event since this is important to identify movement or the employee in the organization such as when did the employee come in (called clock in) and left for lunch(start of break) came back from lunch(end of break) and left for the day(clock out) .In case the employee applies for absence at the time recording terminal than he/she would select an absence/attendance reason linked to an absence or attendance. If I did not have the events and only the times would that make any sense to me? Actual times are also recorded as number of hours in the Attendances Info-type(IT 2002). I would be continuing this section in parallel to the new one on project management so this is definitely not the end for the question and answers from me.Hi i thought of saying something urgent since i mentioned technological advance. If you are the pilot driving your project through SOLMAN (Solution Manager) a sincere request is please do not sleep over 30,000 ft of documents in the cockpit. Do not sleep over a technological advance but whats more important for heavens sake is don”t sleep with it.Sleeping in the cockpit became headlines and who is to blame is the question? But the answer is do we have to blame someone? There could be a lot of questions like why did the cockpit not be programmed to sound a buzzer 30 mins before destination is reached? Was this a failure of design? Did fatigue have to be carried to the cockpit? I think there are answers to it all which can ensure that these problems do not occur in future rather than playing the blame game. In the above case the object would have continued to Timbuktu till fuel ended since autopilot is a very proven technological advance.Lets be honest we are humans and we make mistakes so it time to say ok it was a mistake, lets plug it and move on.Welcome back and coming right back to the question and answers, we saw that actual times are recorded either in infotype 2011( Time Events )or in the Attendances infotype (2002).When do we decide which infotype should we choose to capture the actual times?The answer is it depends upon whether you want to capture the actual clock in and clock out times for the employees and use them for processing in time or payroll ,then you can use infotype 2011.If you are integrating your time recording terminals to the sap system, then you need to have CC1 certified time recording systems which can talk to sap .Data such as personnel time events and employee expenditures are passed from sap to these terminals and vice versa through the CC1 interface (Communication Channel One interface). CC1 interface is an sap certified interface and all vendor time recording systems claiming to integrate with the sap system need to be CC1 certified. These systems transfer data to the sap systems and vice versa through the ansynchronous ALE transfer in form of IDOC’s or real-time using BAPI’s.The sap certified interfaces are :-

CC1- HR (Human Resources)
CC2 –PP (Production Planning)
CC3-PM (Plant Maintenance)
CC4-PS (Project Systems)
CC5-PP-KAN ( Used for Material Planning using KANBAN)

What happens when you have time recording systems but not CC1 certified and you want to integrate to sap ?Well provided that these are not punch card systems, and are electronic time recording systems that record the time events into a computer database/file such as access database or excel, then these can be periodically uploaded through batch jobs into the sap time events infotype 2011 using an abap conversion program to convert the data to suit the sap system.I will stop the discussion on the communication channels here and not complicate matters. However, I felt the need to discuss this since when you visualize a solution you should be able to see end to end.If you are not really worried about processing the clock in clock out times and are more interested in gathering the number of hours that the employee has spent at work , his overtime hours and other attendances then infotype 2002 (Attendances) is used.So what happens in an employee is absent or on training ?We will take this up the next time.Sriinivas

DEVIATIONS IN TIME MANAGEMENT

What do you mean by deviations? Where are these stored for an employee?A deviation in simple English means “doing different from whats planned” . You promise your spouse a movie and our boss whose married for ages and probably does not watch movies and only thinks work makes you sit late. You “deviate” your plans and you change your plans to dinner in a fancy restaurant (if its not the end of the month) or maybe the roadside food stalls with a walk on the beach.Similarly, when you are deviating from your planned working times( defined in IT0007) such as going for training or simply being absent ( you called in sick) or you got up in the morning and just did not have the energy to go to work or your in laws are to be picked up from the airport ( you took a casual leave/half-day leave and your boss is shaken but not stirred ( Bond I apologise) .You store all of these in time infotypes ( training – attendance infotype (2002) , casual and sick leave – absence infotype(2001), Substitutions– infotype (2003))These deviation times get superimposed on the planned times of the employee and become his/her personal work schedules. Substitutions are typically shift substitutions or position substitutions where the differential payment could be made to that employee working on that shift or position.With this background I will talk about negative time and positive time. I am honest to admit that this is the most ridiculous words coined for time management and I prefer to avoid using this and use time evaluation or no time evaluation instead. We will talk about this the next time.Till than, have a great weekend and don’t deviate . (Bosses have a heart folks)

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE TIME IN TIME MANAGEMENT

Hi, Welcome back.Before I move to negative and positive time let me ask you a couple of questions?

Is Overtime (recorded in IT2002/IT 2005) a deviation? When do you record overtime in IT 2005?
Lets say that you have recorded the clock times of an employee using time recording systems and he/she has come and gone as per planned times for that day of work than do you superimpose these times on the planned times?

Think hard and I will give you the answers next time.Coming back to positive and negative time, let me ask you another question. This is for those who would be implementing time management in sap.Are you going to use time recording systems to record employee clock times and upload to sap(IT 2011 Time Events) ? I hear an equal number of ayes and nays

Those who say ayes. These are the folks implementing positive time recording (or so called positive time management).
Those who say nays. These are the folks implementing negative time recording (or so called negative time management).

So what’s positive or negative about the time management ?? The ayes and nays…..The answer that look at the time management status = 0 for negative time recording is not exactly accurate. What do we than say about time management status = 7 or 9?? where time management status TMSTA is maintained in infotype 0007 (Planned Working Time) . These employees who have time management status 7 or 9 still assume that their planned times in IT0007 are their working times (besides the deviations) and do not have their clock in clock out times recorded in IT 2011 but however, they use time evaluation to generate absence quotas or shift differential wage types, overtime wage types etc.In other words you still have negative time recording but you use time evaluation.That’s why I prefer to stick to differentiate employees as those that have time evaluation and the others that don’t to make life simple.

TIME EVALUATION

Coming back to those two questions the answers are 1. Overtime is a deviation since it is not a part of your regular working hours. IT 2005 is used to record approved overtimes.2. The answer is does it really matter since both times are the same so you would compare(mark this word very carefully) these recorded times with your planned working hours for that employee on that day and say “Hey, there is no difference. Lets leave things as they are” This comparison is the principle of time evaluation. If the times go different on comparison ( recorded times being more or less than planned times) you want to know the followingfor e.g . If the Overtime hours are worked on a weekday – than pay 1.5 times the regular hourly pay rate
if the Overtime hours are worked on a holiday – than pay 2 times the regular hourly pay rate
If the Overtime hours are worked on a weekend – than give time off credits ( via absence quota)
if the Overtime hours are worked on a holiday and weekend – than pay 2 times of the regular hourly pay rate and give time off credits too
and if no Overtime worked and employee not absent – pay regular rate if employee absent … and so onYou build these rules in the customizing tables as well as payroll and time schema’s which call functions which in turn call pcrs or personnel calculation rules. The personal calculation rules build the processing logic using operations and operators. The schema’s are called by driver programs ( payroll driver programs for payroll which are country specific and RPTIME00 for time evaluation). Time evaluation programs are run before running payroll so that the time credits and time wage types created which these get valuated in the payroll run.When the TMSTA status = 0 in IT0007, this means no time evaluation is permitted. When the TMSTA status = 1 in IT0007, this means time evaluation is to be carried out. When the TMSTA status = 7 in IT0007 , than time evaluation is used just for absence quota generation. This status is similar to TMSTA = 0 , the only difference being that time evalution is permitted for absence quota generation.
There are other TMSTA status but the above ones are the significant ones.The typical time evaluation schema’s areTM00 Time Evaluation with Personnel Time Events ( used with TMSTA = 1)
TM01 Time Evaluation for Work Schedule Deviations ( used with TMSTA = 9)
TM02 Time Evaluation for External Services Management ( used with TMSTA = 8)
TM04 Time Evaluation Without Clock Times (used with TMSTA = 1 when times are recorded in IT2002)
TQTA – Generate Absence Quotas( used with TMSTA = 7)Time evaluation is a subject on its own and this forum is for beginners so we do not want to add more complications here.This is for your information
For help on payroll and time schemas refer transaction code : pdsy in the sap r/3 system
For schemas – transaction code pe01
For PCR’s – transaction code pe02
For functions and operations – transaction code pe04
Those interested can refer to sap help website which is http://www.help.sap.com

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