Australia Localization H1 2020 - Advance Payments in EC Cloud Payroll (ECP)

[eeshwari]

Introduction

Advance pay is a concept in Australian payroll that allows an employee to ask for his net payment to be made for a future period, in the current period. Here's the catch. The advance payment is made for a future period upon an employee request based on a leave approved and submitted into the system in that future period. So, in essence, it is payment made to the employee in advance for a period in the future during which time the employee is on leave.

Clients have certain absence types flagged for advance payments. Lets assume that a client has decided to make recreation leave as a valid absence type for which an advance payment can be requested by the employee.

Now, consider this example. One of the client's employee has his birthday coming up. He plans to visit a foreign locale and spend some time off hiking in the mountains. But this vacation will incur expenses while he is on leave. The employee decides to sponsor his expenses by requesting an advance payment for the duration of his leave that spans from say, 03.08.2020 to 31.08.2020.

In this scenario, the concept of advance payment comes into picture. With this concept, the duration of the leave and the entire period for which the leave has been applied (partial or complete) will be paid in the current period along with the current period payment.

A] EC to ECP Replication of Eligible Absences

First and foremost, the employee has to convey to the EC system that he would like to apply for an absence and express (optionally) that he would like to get paid in advance for it. Secondly, only when the employee is applying for leave in the future can he request for advance payment, not for retro application of a leave. Thirdly, the leave type being applied has to be an absence that has been created as one that is eligible for advance payment.

Consider the following steps for replication of an advance payment eligible absence from EC to ECP:

Step (1) : Set Up of Time Types for Advance Payments (Private and Public Sector)

1. A time type in EC is created with the field "Request advance pay" which can be set to "Yes" or "No". Lets say this time type refers to recreation leave subtype in the ECP system under IT 2001.


2. The time type created in step (1) also has an additional field of "Split Across
   Financial Year Allowed" that can be marked as "Yes" or "No". This field, however, is only applicable for Australian Public Sector companies.

Step (2) : Set Up PTP replication configuration 

1. Create a data replication configuration object in EC


2. Map the absence types from Employee Central to Employee Central Payroll. In the ECP system, follow the below path and map the time types to absence types using the data type TIME_TYPE to indicate the EC time types. The path is : SPRO -> Personnel Management -> Integration Settings for SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll -> Assignment of Code Values -> For Point-to-Point Replication -> Maintain Code Value Mapping.


3. Since we have performed steps (1) and (2), we will need to tell the ECP system that the absences mapping has to be performed based on customer table. This can be done in the following path: SPRO -> Personnel Management -> Integration Settings for SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll -> Assignment of Code Values -> For Point-to-Point Replication -> Maintain Properties for Code Value Mapping. For Mode, select Mapping via customer table or identical mapping.

Step (3) : Application of Absence by employee for advance payments

1. Once the set up in Step (2) is completed, the employee can search for the time type with "Request for advance pay" option enabled and apply leave in EC. He may / may not use the option to split the advance payment across financial years. (Note: This option is only available for Australian public sector company employees) 


2. Based on the usage (or non-usage) of the "Request for advance pay" option, the method of triggering the process of calculating the advance payment can be adjusted in ECP system post replication.

B] Configuration of Australia - Advance Payments in ECP System

Process flow for advance payments in EC Payroll

1. Customers need to provide the list of absences for which the advance payment can be made.


2. Based on the input in IT 2001 and the fact that the customer belongs to private or public sector, the report for advance payments is run. The report for private sector is RPCADVQ0 while for public sector, the report to be used to create the Q3 cluster for advance payments is RPCLADQ0.


3. This report creates the Q3 cluster with the advance payment information for the current pay period for the future periods in which the absence is applied. Advance payment is made for the entire future period irrespective of whether or not the absence covers the whole of the future pay period.


4. After the successful run of the advance payment report. the regular payroll for the current period is run. The details of the advance payment stored in Q3 cluster are checked in QADVI function for payment during the payment run. In case of the reversal run, i.e. the run wherein the absence actually occurs, the wage types already paid for in advance are created with reversals. This reversal logic also makes use of the information in the Q3 cluster containing the advance payment information.

How does ECP system know which absences are eligible for advance payments? 

The configuration in the table V_T7NZLS will be used to tell the ECP system on which absences are eligible to be paid in advance. If the absence that the employee has applied in EC with the "Request Advance Pay" indicator checked but the absence is not entered in this table, the payment will not happen - either for private nor for public sector Australian customers. For all the allowances, earnings, payments and deductions that need to be paid out to the employee in advance should be set up with the correct option in processing class 65 for those particular wage types.

How do we check the creation of the advance payment cluster?

In order to check if the advance payment results have been generated by the report RPCADVQ0 (private sector) or RPCLADQ0 (public sector), SAP has provided another report called RPLADVQ0 for the view as well as deletion of the Q3 advance payment results.

Which function in the payroll schema processes the advance payment cluster generated by the advance payment report? 

The function that is central to the whole advance payment process in the payroll schema is the QADVI. It basically imports the advance payment cluster Q3 and processes it based on the parameters assigned. During reversals as well as payments, this function picks and processes the Q3 cluster to perform the required action. The parameters used in the payment section can vary as S, 0 etc. and based on client requirements, we will use the right parameter to get the desired results.

Configuration Flow For Private Sector:

Australia Private Sector Customers - Advance Payment Process Flow

Configuration Flow For Public Sector:

Australia Public Sector Customers - Advance Payment Process Flow

Conclusion:

With the enhancements to the reports for private and public sector customers, the generation of advance payments for ECP customers has become simpler and straight forward. The removal of the dependency on IT 573 is a great step towards bringing consistency between public and private sector customers from a configuration perspective. The additional information included in EC for the time off inputs is also another positive step in the right direction for Australia advance payment localization.