Balances in Oracle E| Print | HRMS Payroll mail Written by Anil Passi Sunday, 10 December 2006 We learnt Oracle Payroll

Elements and Element Links in the previous article. Now is time to discuss the Balances. Effectively, this is the next logical step before we jump onto learning Fast Formulas in Oracle Payroll. Why do we need a Balance? Lets take an example. You work at a company for stipulated 37.5 hours a week. Lets assume that you work extra hours during weekdays. At any given time of the year you would like to know how many extra hours have you worked. To work out your running total, we accumulate this in something called as a balance in Oracle Payroll. Why do we need a special thing called Balance? Why can't we simply create an Element Entry for an Element named "Weekday Lieu Stored"? Say I work 3hrs extra in one one day and 4.5hrs extra on some other day, I will have two element entries for "Weekday Lieu Stored" in each month. Can't I simply add the two figures to achieve the same result that balances achieve? Why do I then need balance? Oracle has built a generic product which works for all possible business needs. Some clients wish to track and reset balances each month some quarterly, some annually etc. Balances provide a configurable way to do such calculations, without you having to write any SQL. Fine, so in this example, I capture extra hours worked using Element "Weekday Lieu Stored". What if I take a day off in Lieu, how will the balance be adjusted? This is where the beauty of Balances lies. Before we discuss balance creation, lets touch base on Elements. STEP 1 :- DEFINE ELEMENTS We need to create/define the following Oracle Payroll Elements Element 1. XX Weekday Lieu Stored When an employee works extra hours during the weekdays, an entry of number of hours must be added. If an employee works extra 4hours and also extract 3.5Hours on other day in Jan Month, then two element entries will be created for that Employee. Element 2. XX Pay from Weekday Lieu Stored When employee requests the Payroll department that they wish to en-cash their Extra hours worked, then an Element Entry using this Element can be created. Element 3. XX Day Off In Lieu When an employee decides to take a day off, based on extra hours accumulated, then an Element Entry for this Element will be created. IMPORTANT:-Screenshots for all the steps will be towards the end of this article, as i do not wish to clutter the article with screens. I will also show the test case screenshots by running the examples cited in this article.

STEP 2 :- DEFINE ELEMENT LINKS STEP 3 :- DEFINE THE BALANCE Coming back to setup, we need to create a Balance, as below... Balance Name: Weekday Lieu balance Feeds for this balance will be:XX Weekday Lieu Stored : Add XX Pay from Weekday Lieu Stored : Subtract XX Day Off In Lieu : Subtract STEP 4 :- TESTING STEPS a. Create 2 Element Entries for Element "XX Weekday Lieu Stored" against the Assignment record of "Mr Anil Passi". b. Run the Payroll for this individual in Jan07 Month [which is the period during which above two element entries would be created] We will be date-tracking to Jan07 before doing Element Entry for the period. c. See that the Balance has been calculated by the Payroll Results d. Now, create another element entry for same person using Element "XX Day Off In Lieu". This entry is created in Month of Feb07 e. Run the Payroll again, and see for yourself the balance getting subtracted.

NOW, ASSUMING YOU HAVE READ ABOVE, YOU WILL INDEED MAKE SENSE OUT OF STEP BY STEP SCREEN SHOTS. NOTE: Some screenshots are animated, with an attempt to mimic actual screen changes.

Define your three elements

Define your three element links for each of the elements.

Now, enter the hours in HH:MM format ( Remember we defined the Input Value in Format HH:MM ( See first screenshot creafully !)

Now define a balance. This screenshot shows three steps a. Creating a balance b. Specifying its dimension c. Specifying which Oracle Payroll Elements feed to this balance and how Animated screenshot below...keep patience as it refreshes

Note on Dimension: Now lets assume we allow rollover of these extra hours worked from one year to another, Hence the dimension we select is that for Assignment level. There are various other options like Assignment Level in the year, which means the balance hours will reset itself every financial Year, meaning that if you dont encash or dont take Lieu days off, then Employee will loose all the extra hours that they had worked.

Now, navigate to the Assignment Screen and click on button Others, and select Quickpay from LOV, to run the Quickpay[effectively run the Payroll for single person] for Mr Anil Passi. In the Quickpay screen, click on Start Run

Now that we have run our Payroll, lets see the results of that Payroll Run. For this click on View Results in the QuickPay screen.

You can click on Run Result Values, and you will see that Payrolls results are directly related to our Element Entries.

As you can see, the balance is now 7 and half hours for Mr Anil Passi

To complete our test case, in the Month of Feb 2007, lets take a Lieu day off for 5hours. Create the element entry for month of Feb

Now lets run the Payroll, after Date-Tracking to Feb2007 Date Track to Feb 2007, Navigate to Assignment Screen for Mr Anil Passi, and click on Quick Pay, and run Payroll. After running payroll we will see what the balance looks like.

Click on Start Run, to run the payroll again, and lets see if balance is modified again.

Now lets view the Balance. Click on View Results again, to view the balance again.

Hurray, the balance is now 2 and half hours !

Payroll ECosting in | Print | mail Oracle Written by Anil Passi Tuesday, 19 December 2006 This article discusses how Accounting Segments are built in Oracle Payroll.

For this article, assume that you do not have Labor Distributions implemented. Also assume that you do not have OTL [Oracle Time and Labour]. I will explain the significance of those two modules in future articles. But for the purpose of simplicity, lets make that assumption inn this article. You must also read Metalink Note 69475.1 Why is costing needed in payroll? Because each employee that gets paid, their costs must be reflected in Oracle General Ledger. If IT department employs Anil Passi, then IT Departments Cost Centre will bear my cost. Effectively IT Department will pay for my salary from their budget. Every employee assignment record in Oracle HRMS is attached to an Organization. Organizations are usually mapped to cost centres. Is that true? Yes, in most cases this will hold true. If cost centre can be derived from person's HRMS assignment, then why the need of this article on payroll costing? For the following reasons:1. Cost Centre is not the only accounting segment. For example, in this article, I assume we have Company Segment, Cost Centre Segment, Project Segment and Expenditure Type Segment. Payroll Costing must be able to work out values for each of these segments for each Payroll run result. 2. IT department may not always be the only department that bears my cost. For example, if I am asked to do some enhancements or customizations to Oracle iProcurement, then Purchasing department may agree to cover my costs for say 2 weeks. Please note my assignment will remain attached to IT Organization/Department. Note:- With this example, its obvious that default Cost Centre from Organization Level must be overridden. How about the project segment? Lets assume, I work in parallel on "Oracle Apps Support Project" and also in "Oracle Apps Development Project". In this case, my costs must be split between multiple project codes.

What are the various levels where you can Set up Payroll Costing Accounts? Which levels take the highest precedence? Element Entry => Highest Assignment => Second Highest Organization => Third Highest Element Link => Fourth Highest Payroll => Fifth Highest It is obvious that if you attach a IT Cost Centre to persons assignment, that will override the Cost Centre setup at payroll level. This is confusing, why will someone ever default a cost centre from payroll level? This is why Cost Allocation Flexfield in Oracle Payroll has qualifiers. Note :- Payroll can be a monthly payroll, or weekly payroll etc. Frequency of running payroll has nothing to do with cost centre.

What is qualifier in payroll cost allocation Flexfield? By means of qualifier, you instruct Oracle which segment must be visible at which costing level. Well let me explain further...its important... You do not want to be displaying Cost Centre Segment at Payroll level. Hence you will make just the company segment qualify at payroll level. See below pictures.

Similarly, you do not want to default company segment from element entry level or element link or assignment level. Hence you do not qualify company segment at element entry or assignment level or element link.

See the screenshots above... Fine, how will payroll costing work out these details? After you have run Payroll Process, you will then run Payroll Costing concurrent program. For each Run Result in Oracle Payroll, Costing program will check if that was created for Monthly Payroll or Weekly Payroll or Other Payroll. The company segment will be defaulted from that specific Payroll. Next, it will check the Element Link related to RunResult record. In our example cost centre and project code and also expenditure type codes will be defaulted from Element Link definition. Next, Oracle Payroll Costing engine will check Costing Segments are assigned a value at Assignment Level or at Element Entry level, if so then Assignment/Element entry will overrule the values fetched from Element Link

Important EPayroll | Print | mail Screen Written by Anil Passi Saturday, 23 December 2006 I spent some weeks supporting Oracle Payroll four years ago. It was then when I fell in love with a single screen in Oracle Payroll. I call this screen the most important screen for an Oracle Payroll Troubleshooting, as this provides a starting point for your investigations.

This screen gave me the starting point to investigate following types of questions:1. Why did Oracle Payroll calculate xyz value for this Payroll Element? 2. Why did an Employee get costed for $ABC amount against XYZ cost centre? 3. What were the debug messages generated from Fast Formulas during Payroll run for this assignment? I am not saying that this screen gave answers to all queries, but it provides a snapshot of run results, costing breakdown, debug messages, balance etc...all from one screen, for any employee assignment (assuming security profiles permit). Have a look at the screenshot to appreciate this screen.

The name of this screen is "Assignment Process Results". Its under menu named in HRMS or Payroll Superuser responsibility.

To navigate to this screen Responsibility : HRMS Manager or Payroll Manager Menu : View/Assignment Process Results Alternately, once in responsibility, do control L, and search for %payroll%result%

The usability of this screen:1. You need to know the assignment number of the person. Enter that and tab out 2. You must know the payroll period name. You will always be told that xyz thing is wrong about a persons payroll run during say month of February. Hence you will know the period from there. With these two Fields, you will have the payroll run and costing etc information at your fingertips. You will begin most of your investigations from this screen.

Comments (10) RetroPay EEnhanced | Print | mail Setups Written by Anil Passi Friday, 15 December 2006 In this article, I will explain the background & setups needed for Retro-Pay Functionality. What is retro pay? Retro as a term is related to Past. Hence RetroPay is a payment made for an event of past.

What is an example of retro pay? Say in the month of Feb06 you were given "Cost Of Living Allowance" for a value 200. For some reasons the element entry did not take place correctly in Feb06 and the element entry was done for a value of 150 only. Lets say now you are in May06, and you realize that you

have been Short-Payed. You will in this event inform your payroll department to make the necessary backdated adjustment to that element entry.

The challenges are:1. Feb06 period is already closed. Hence you can not rerun the payroll for the month of February06 again. 2. You do not wish to capture that Element Entry in May06, as that can cause audit issues, and also can have tax implications as this is an Earning Element. Can we still go backwards to capture the element entry in Feb06(by date tracking)? Yes, although with we need to do certain extra setups, and also we need to run some RetroPay processes. I will try to explain all of that in the context of Oracle Payroll.

Operational steps prior to Oracle Apps 11.5.10 I think prior to 11.5.9, the payroll manager would do below steps:Step 1. Make a backdated change to your Element Entry. Step 2. Include your assignment into an assignment set. This assignment set would have included a list those people for which retro-pay must be run. Step 3. Run the retro-pay process for that assignment set. Hence you were reliant upon your Payroll Manager to remember to include your assignment in Step 2. Now in 11.5.10 onwards, the "Step 2" is no longer needed if you have implemented Advanced RetroPay. In this article, I will be explaining the setups needed for Advanced RetroPay process.

What are the setups we need to do to implement advanced RetroPay? You must refer to Metalink Note 216951.1 for the purpose. However, I would like to explain the setups in a bit more details here. Setup 1. Navigate to a screen named "Functional Area Maintenance". Ensure that the desired pre-installed triggers are visible as below. First find the screen name "Functional Area Maintenance"

Query on "INCIDENT REGISTER" in the Name Field.

Setup 2. Include your Business Group name in the "Business Group" tab, in the Functional Area Maintenance screen.

Setup 3. You need to enable your legislation too, in the same Functional Area screen. This will be the country code. I guess different countries have different rules to handle taxation of Retro pay (for example if you make backdated changes in previous tax year should payroll taxation effect your allowances of previous year or this year?)

Setup 4. Making a backdated change is an Event in Oracle Payroll. But there are various other events that can take place in Oracle HRMS/Payroll. Hence you will need to tell Oracle Payroll which events should trigger Retro calculation. Example : Your business requirement can be that a backdated change to an element triggers retro-pay calculation. However your business requirement may not require recalculation if person is given backdated promotion/grade change. By means of event groups, you tell payroll which list of events can initiate a retro pay process. Event group has a type, which in this case will be Retro.

For this Demo, I have included the following events in group "XX ANIL TEST"
Update Type Datetrack Update Datetrack Update Datetrack Insert Datetrack Update Datetrack Correction Table PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRIES_F PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRIES_F PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRIES_F PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRY_VALUES_F PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRY_VALUES_F Column Name EFFECTIVE_START_DATE EFFECTIVE_END_DATE

SCREEN_ENTRY_VALUE SCREEN_ENTRY_VALUE

Setup 5. When the event i.e. Change of Element Value takes place, Oracle registers that event in a table named PAY_PROCESS_EVENT. Entry in this table is created by means of a Trigger. I will possibly write another dedicated article to explain Triggers in Oracle Payroll. Anyway, we must ensure that HRMS triggers that record Element Entry Value changes are Enabled. I also suggest that you read Metalink note 216951.1

You need to ensure that the trigger Enabled and Generated checkboxes are checked. In case you were do retro-pay for say Grade/Position change, then relevant trigger for Position must be enabled.

Setup 6. In case you wish to feed the results of RetroPay calculations into a different Element, then you can specify that by specifying that in Recalculation tab in Element Entry.

OK that's it about the setups for Advanced RetroPay. Now some Q & A, read these if interested to drill further. We have RetroPay by Element and also Advanced RetroPay. Can we use both Functionalities together? I think you should use just one of those. The advanced retro-pay internally creates the Assignment Set automatically. In case of older Retropay process, payroll admin staff had to create the Assignment set manually. Which process do we run to initiate RetroPay processing for our backdated changes? That there can be various "Event Groups" defined(some for proration and some for Retro[event group type being retro]. All the changes pertaining to all Event Groups would have created entries in PAY_PROCESS_EVENTS. Retro Notification report will filter the events applicable to RetroPay and will populate

PAY_RETRO_ASSIGNMENTS and PAY_RETRO_ENTRIES .

What are the processes that one needs to run? Step a. You will first run "Retro-Notifications Report (Enhanced) - PDF". This will read the records from PAY_PROCESS_EVENTS. This process will insert eligible records into PAY_RETRO_ASSIGNMENTS and
PAY_RETRO_ENTRIES . Step b. Run process Retropay (Enhanced). This process will do the require calculations to differential payments. Note: This functionality is not yet available for all the legislations, but most major one's are supported.