System behaviour between EC and Compensation Compa-Ratio

[RamyaRaja]

We do know about the option of integrating EC Salary Matrix with Compensation to generate Compa-Ratio. And then there is a possibility of a minor code change to make compensation module to calculate compa-ratio in a similar way as that of Employee Central for less than 1 FTE employees. But what happens when there is a business requirement to have default values when all attributes are unavailable. Will Employee central and compensation module work in a similar way? Let’s find that out.

Scenario 1: The Pay range table as shown below has all values maintained in the attributes and the Compa-Ratio works fine both in EC and Comp.

Pay Range Values:

All attribute values maintained in the Pay Range Table

EC Comp Ratio:

Correct Pay range getting picked up in EC

Compensation Form:

Correct Pay Range getting picked up in Compensation Form

Scenario 2: The Pay range table as shown below has some values missing in some of the attributes and a default value is maintained at the bottom. In such case, the compa-ratio in compensation form works fine and EC appears to pick up a random value. In this scenario, EC picks up the first possible choice by removing the last attribute and does not look for the default value maintained at the bottom of the table.

Pay Range Table

Few attribute values missing in the table

EC Compa Ratio:

EC picks up the first possible value of GR-08 and not the default value.

Compensation Form:

Compensation Form picks up the correct (default) value.

Scenario 3: The Pay range table as shown below has some values missing in some of the attributes and a default value is maintained at the top of the table. In such case, the compa-ratio in compensation form picks up random value while EC picks up the correct (default) value.

Pay Range Table:

Few attribute values missing in the table

EC Compa-Ratio:

EC now picks up the correct (default) value.

Compensation:

The form picks up random values.

Workaround Solutions:

1. The best possible solution to manage the situation is to have all attribute values maintained in the Pay Range Table. Even, if we would like to manage the table with default values, we need to understand that every time we update the Pay range values, it is going to distort the order of the records, or a full purge is required in order to maintain the correct order in the Pay Ranges table.


2. If it is practically not possible to maintain values for all possible combination, then it is preferred to have the salary range table maintained separately in Compensation (Action for All Plans) and calculate Compa-Ratio separately in EC and Compensation


3. If the compa-ratio values are not required to be displayed in the Employee’s compensation information section, then the EC pay range values can be maintained with default values at bottom of the table and integrate it with the compensation Module.

If anyone else has any other possible solution to manage the situation, please share it in the comments section.

[pmacgovern]

Hi

Thanks for this. I have always said that getting EC Pay Ranges to work consistently in Compensation is somewhat an art. I enquired with the product team once about it and while it might seem random, the effective date also plays a role in the matching - basically, if multiple records match, it pulls the most recent (I believe this is part of the EC logic, not the Compensation).

That being said, the consultants within SAP have been lobbying hard for years to make sure that the logic used by compensation and EC to match a pay range is identical. We may be making some headway, but until then, I am sure some people will be helped by how you have laid it out here.

Phil

[RamyaRaja]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for pointing that out. We did notice that the EC pull out the most recent record (which becomes further complicated with incremental load instead of full purge). I have now updated the blog post appropriately.

Ramya

[xavierlegarrec]

Great blog, much needed ! I made a presentation about this when I worked with the compensation product team as a fellow in 2021. The goal was to understand the logic EC uses to select the next closest value in the Pay Range list when some attributes are missing so that we can facilitate the EC team work to realign EC behavior with Comp (because it's fundamentally EC that uses this random logic and not Comp). I was not always able to identify a clear pattern (does it take the top of the list once it finds a pay grade, or the most recently updated, etc...). My conclusion were not always aligned with the logic in your comment Phil unfortunately, I found cases where it didn't do that. For example when only the Pay Grade is matching, a blank first attribute and then a match on the second attribute if I remember correctly. Will try to find these slides !

One additional comment : customers that want to keep blank attributes in their EC Pay Range table for specific business cases (for which the EC compa ratio behavior shown above was built) can use the workaround of mapping the CompaRatio standard field of the comp worksheet to EC Compa Ratio field directly to keep EC and Comp worksheets Compa Ratio permanently aligned (but they lose compa ratio coloring and other standard features that can be replaced by custom validations). Not recommended but always an option.

[RamyaRaja]

Hi Xavier,

Thanks for sharing your insights. From what we experienced, the system picked up values from top of the row with matching attributes, but once you update the table on an incremental load, it completely messes up the order and it becomes too difficult to find a pattern. So every time, we had to opt for a full purge. Even then, the logic of picking up the values are completely opposite in EC and Comp.
And thanks for sharing another possible work around solution, that’s a great option as well.