By Florentin Navarrete Manager Solutions
The new H1 2022 release is here, and as always there is a lot to analyze and test. Remember that from the SAP SuccessFactors «What's New portal» you can get complete information on all the new features of this release and previous ones, with the possibility of adding different filters that simplify the search.
The overview provided by SAP for the Time Management area is as follows:
Time Tracking Features in Time Management
- Time Tracking Usage Reporting:
Helps to count in your company user number for which time tracking features are configured - Check tool Check for Time Tracking Usage:
Provides a quick glance at the numbers of employees for which time tracking features are configured, but provides less detailed information than the above-mentioned report - Late comer detection:
Allows to detect late comers and raise alerts on this - Alerts based on time collectors:
Allows to raise alerts to employees, time admins or managers based on the value of a time collector or counted event. You can for example now raise alerts when an employee was more than 3-times late in a month, or when he has performed more than 10 night shift - Clock in / out availability in all data centers:
General availability for this service in each data center - Clock in / out location capturing:
You can get the geo coordinates added to mobile clock in / out events - Clock in / out proxy management:
The manage clock in / out app to administer clock in / out punches now supports the proxy functionality to use it as a different user - Multi-language support for Clock in / out:
Translation possibilities of the clock in / out events and clock in / out group - Allowance recording in different units
Allows not only to record allowances in hh: mm, but in a generic decimal format. You can now record for example kilometers, mileages, amounts…. - Allowance recording with deviating cost center:
Allows to add a deviating cost center to an allowance time type and hence do a cost allocation for this record via the payroll system
Time Off Features
- Parallel Absences Gener al Availability:
Some countries need 2 active absence types existing in parallel. Was in last release Early Adopter and is now generally available - Termination End Handling General Availability
Provides more features to support a terminate and rehire process. Was in last release Early Adopter and is now generally available - Early Adopter: Support of eAU process:
This enhancement is now only relevant for Germany
Provides the “exclusion reason” field in EC Time off absence record to support eAU process in EC Payroll or SAP HCM Payroll - Check tool check for time profile
Checks for inconsistencies in time profile
Other Features
- Call for action:
Do not use absence requests for home office, business travel or any other attendance. Some customers use absences for attendance recording. This can lead to major problems. - Call for switch to new Time Sheet UI:
Upgrade to new Time Sheet User Interface - Different Time Sheet workflow based on time valuation result s:
Not new, but many did not know that this is possible: approval of time sheet when overtime below 5 hours to approve A, when above to approve B - Alert Configuration with custom fields:
Allows you to add context information per time valuation alert type in the Admin Alert UI - Mandatory custom fields for allowances:
If you ever wanted mandatory custom fields for allowances - now you've got it - Reporting enhancements (join and workflow details):
Allows you to add workflow details for time sheet and employee time reports - Further useful information
Some additional blog posts that might help you
The new features that we are planning to deliver as part of Best Practices package for Time Management 1H 2022 via the upgrade center are currently available only on preview and are in planned state. The final list would be updated on RTC or production date for 1H 2022.
We dive into the news in the Time Off section:
Parallel Absences General Availability
This feature is on Early Adoption with H2 2021 release only in few countries (Netherlands, UK and Spain).
Update: Since H1 2022, the feature is generally available for all countries.
SAP announces that the Early Adopter Parallel Leaves feature has been advanced to general availability. In some countries it is necessary to have two valid absence records at the same time:
- In Spain it was necessary to be able to report some situations such as the case of legal guardianship (reported in the system as absenteeism according to the first KBAs provided by SAP ), combined with other absences such as vacations.
- In the Netherlands it was also necessary since it is possible to be on vacation and sick at the same time.
This feature is available for all countries but has been fully tested and validated for the UK, Spain, and Netherlands countries only. You can also use it for other countries, but you need to self-assess (very especially payroll implications) and validate if this feature works for your requirements (time off take rules for example).
For more information on the configuration steps please consult Priyanka's blog on concurrent absences.
Termination End Handling General Availability
SAP has improved the “Termination End Handling” feature, it is now for general availability and can be used by any customer. This enhancement better supports the process of termination and rehiring during the same time account accrual period.
An example provided by SAP : There is an annual time account accrual period and you terminated an employee on 30. June, but rehired him on 1st September there was a conflict with the time accounts. This feature now triggers an automated clean-up of time account postings, time accounts and absences beyond the termination date. You can automatically close time accounts for example. This avoids issues during the rehire process.
Configuration can be done from Manage Data via the new object «Time Management Termination End Handling Configuration»
Check tool check for time profile
The information coming from the SAP product is that they are working to introduce time dependency in our configuration objects.
The main idea is that the Time Profile object is going to be the candidate for configuration, but this will not be confirmed for now until development is complete. SAP cannot publish it in version H1.
With this new verification tool, SAP wants you to be able to validate your time profiles on data inconsistencies. You will be able to search for absence types, attendance, shifts, assignments that are in the system, but are no longer assigned to a time profile. This can happen when you set the time types to «inactive», but the employee has already used them for future dates.
Or you can check time profiles that you have set to inactive but are still assigned to employees. And you can even check accrual postings without an accrual period ID.
So all in all it's a useful tool to get rid of inconsistent data. Those of us who have had problems with massive modifications in the time area and have become accustomed to the old SAP time module have high hopes for this tool.
Do you want to know more about the latest news in SAP SuccessFactors or about Time Management? Then you are more than welcome to get in touch.