Dear Payroll Community,

I have some great news for you today: SAP just released a new version of the SAP Payroll Processing control center rapid-deployment solution! This solution provides best practice examples and documentation allowing customers to jump-start the implementation of the Payroll Control Center (learn more about the Payroll Control Center).

What's new?

The first version of the rapid-deployment solution included a set of 24 validation rules for running payroll, helping organizations to increase the efficiency of the process, reduce errors, and improve the accuracy of payroll (learn more about the first version). In this second version, we have re-engineered and extended those validation rules and added pre-configured processes and key performance indicators for payroll process execution. The rapid-deployment solution thus covers pre-configured content for the two roles supported by the Payroll Control Center, namely the Payroll Process Manager and the Payroll Administrator.

Pre-configured content for payroll process execution

Payroll Process Managers are responsible for the overall payroll process, for ensuring correctness and meeting timelines and for triggering others to resolve issues. By covering an entire end-to-end payroll process including payroll key performance indicators (KPIs), this rapid-deployment solution helps customers get quickly up to speed with the configuration of payroll process execution.

The solution provides three pre-configured payroll processes that are executed by the Payroll Process Manager: the One-Click Monitoring, the Three-Click Production Payroll as well as the Posting to Finance:

One-Click Monitoring:

• Create test payroll data
• Initiate policies
• Monitoring

Learn more about the One-Click Monitoring.

Three-Click Production Payroll (as shown in screenshot below):

• Start payroll
• Run payroll
• Posting simulation
• Initiate policies
• Monitoring
• End payroll

Learn more about the Three-Click Production Payroll.

Posting to Finance:

• Create posting documents
• Release posting documents
• Transfer posting documents
• Create pre-DME file
• Create DEM file

In addition, the rapid-deployment solution covers the six following KPIs that are monitored by the Payroll Process Manager (see screenshot below):

• Number of employees
• Difference in number of employees paid compared to previous pay period
• Gross pay compared to last pay period
• Finance period open
• GL account reconciliation (for net pay wagetypes)
• Posting documents not transferred to Finance

Pre-configured content for payroll error analysis

Payroll Administrators are responsible for ensuring payroll data quality and accuracy. The rapid-deployment solution includes validation rules for the five policies gross pay, net pay, taxation, time and attendance data, and organizational structure, helping Payroll Administrators to solve payroll issues more effectively and efficiently. Here’s a list of the 35 validation rules:   

Gross pay:

• Personnel number locked for payroll
• Employment percentage does not match utilization (IT7/8)
• Zero base payment and payment IT0014 or IT0015
• Position planned compensation does not match IT0008 Basic Pay
• Completeness check for employees appointed in the pay period
• Employees separated in the pay period
• Blocked vendor list
• Gross pay over amount
• Retro pay over amount
• Negative deductions
• Overtime payment over a certain amount
• Employees with overtime exceeding percentage of total pay
• Employees with large retrospective calculations
• Negative gross pay
• Employees with messages in the payroll log

Net pay:

• Employees missing main bank details
• Employees missing main address
• Un-Paid IT0011 records
• Overview of cash payments
• Net payment less amount
• Variance in net pay over amount
• Variance in net pay over percentage
• Employees with net pay > $5000
• Separated employees with net pay
• Active, positive time recording employees without pay
• Employee with deductions greater than gross earnings 
• Employees with claims
• Employees with positive deductions

Taxation:

• Lived-in/Worked-in (US specific)
• Employees with tax refunds

Time and attendance data:

• CATS transfers not completed
• PDC errors
• Time management status = 0 (no time evaluation)

Organizational structure:

• Active employees in position 99999999
• Employees missing SAP IT0105 records

For a walkthrough of the complete business process covered with the rapid-deployment solution, please click here, then select "Start scope-item simulation".

Benefits

The deployment of the pre-configured business content delivered with the SAP Payroll Processing control center rapid-deployment solution can help customers significantly reduce implementation time as well as project cost and risk. By providing a set of best practices documentation, including step-by-step configuration guides and detailed test scripts, SAP licensed customers and partners can jump-start the implementation of the Payroll Control Center, thereby leveraging innovative features such as the One-Click Monitoring and the Three-Click Production Payroll.

Since strong skills are required to create validation rules for the Payroll Control Center from scratch, the pre-configured rules are perceived as tremendous time-saver. Moreover, the broad coverage of different types of validation rules enables implementers to quickly gain an understanding of how to develop new rules, i.e. customer- or country-specific validation rules, based on the templates provided in the solution.

Software requirements

For SAP ERP HCM Payroll on-premise customers, the following software requirements need to be fulfilled:

• Enhancement Package 7 for SAP ERP 6.0
• HR Renewal 2.0
• SAP NetWeaver 7.4

In addition, SAP recommends the usage of SAP HANA due to the performance improvement and the ability to build complex validation rules. Nevertheless, the Payroll Control Center also runs on non-HANA databases.

Alternatively, the Payroll Control Center is deployable with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll. Please note, however, that the integration of the SAP Payroll Processing control center with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll is out of scope of this rapid-deployment solution.

We recommend you read the Software and Delivery Requirements Document that is delivered as part of the RDS for further details.

How to get started

The rapid-deployment solution comes with a supporting consulting service offered by SAP Services (learn more about the service offering here). The best practices content is, however, available for free on SAP Service Marketplace (Service Marketplace ID is required). This means that i.e. partners can download the best practices content and use it as a starting point to build their own content on top.

To access the best practices content, go to http://service.sap.com/public/rds-pccand click on the orange “Download package” button, then select “Installation” and then click on the file number in the column “Download object”. This will trigger the download of a zip-file. After saving and extracting the file to your local computer, click on the HTML file that has the word “start” in its file name. This file will open the Content Library, containing the entire set of Best Practices documentation. Note that there are two deployment options for the SAP Payroll Processing control center rapid-deployment solution: manual and automatic configuration.

Manual configuration

Manual configuration is done by following the instructions listed in the two configuration guides delivered with this rapid-deployment solution. The purpose of these guides is to describe the general configuration steps required to manually set up the configuration within the system landscape that has already been installed using the corresponding installation guides. Manual activation is recommended if you integrate the business processes in your already running and productive business environment. It is typically the safest way to activate the new business processes for an integration in your existing system.

Get started with manual configuration:

1. After downloading the package, consult the SAP Note and the Configuration Guide - Getting started attached to it for general information about the solution and for prerequisites and post processing steps
2. Install the BP-ERP add-on and implement the SAP Note 2072820 containing the check classes as described in the Configuration Guide - Getting started
3. Implement Configuration Guide “Implementing Payroll Control Center Validation Rules (FM1)”
4. Implement Configuration Guide “Implementing Payroll Control Center Process Management (1B9)”
5. After you have implemented the solution successfully, test the processes in your system by using the test scripts

Automatic configuration

Since the SAP Payroll Processing control center rapid-deployment solution contains configuration templates with ABAP Customizing, the configuration can also be performed automatically by using SAP Best Practices solution builder. The solution builder is an ABAP add-on that allows implementers to select, personalize and activate business processes in the SAP system. The Configuration Guide - Getting started describes all activities that need to be performed in order to activate the automated content, from system and tool setup to activation of automated business content and validation. Automated activation is recommended if you implement the business processes in a new system or client or if you evaluate the business processes in a sandbox environment. SAP recommends implementers activate the solution automatically, since it is the fastest way to get the business processes and – in particular – the validation rules up and running, typically within a few hours.

Get started with automatic configuration:

1. After downloading the package, consult the SAP Note and the Configuration Guide - Getting started attached to it for general information about the solution and for prerequisites and post processing steps
2. Install the BP-ERP add-on and implement the SAP Note 2072820 containing the check classes as described in the Configuration Guide - Getting started
3. Carefully follow the other instructions in the Configuration Guide - Getting started for the automatic activation of the solution
4. Refer to the two Configuration Guides for manual activities or for trouble shooting
5. After you have implemented the solution successfully, test the processes in your system by using the test scripts

If you have additional questions or if you need further support, please contact us at sap_rds_successfactors@sap.com.

Let me introduce our newest baby in the Retail RDS portfolio enhancing the planning solutions for Retail based on SAP Customer Activity Repository: SAP HANA Merchandise Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution.

The solution SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail was announced end of last year andhelps retailers perform consistent end-to-end planning, from channel financial, location to merchandise/open to buy planning utilizing real-time, what-if demand-driven forecasts that leverage performance indicators by week, product, customer, and store. Legacy planning processes and systems have to deal with varying levels of data to plan budgets by merchandise hierarchy and plan location to merchandise/open to buy. SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail enables one centralized repository for all planning activities, allowing immediate reconciliation of strategic, merchandise plans. The primary result is the elimination of large amounts of manual effort to support open-to-buy processes.

Process Flow SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail

The solution providesprebuilt, best practice planning templates based on an enhanced Excel, allowing flexible top-down or bottom-up or middle-out planning sequences/process flows, enabling features like cell, column and row locking, drag and drop and so on. Predefined planning functions, rules of precedence controls the order and priority of calculations consistent in all planning steps. Unlimited planning horizon with a rolling calendar allows the planning across fiscal years.

The rapid-deployment solution covers the following areas/scope items:

Channel Financial Planning

Channel financial planning is used in the process of developing sales and margin plans for the upcoming fiscal years and seasons at various levels of the merchandise, channel, and time hierarchies. A planner creates a company-wide channel financial plan by distribution channel and sales organization for all selling channels to build a sales and margin plan by month and week that is used to seed the merchandise planning and the open to buy processes. The test script which is part of the assets delivered by RDS describes the top-down process flow starting with Channel Mix, Channel Plan Comparable Stores, Store Area Plan, Channel Plan Multiple Stores and finally Channel Plan by Single Store. But of course also other sequences are possible.

Screenshot Channel Mix

Merchandise Planning

The merchandise planning is used to in the process of developing sales, margin, inventory, and receipt flow for the upcoming fiscal year and seasons at various levels of the merchandise, channel, and time hierarchies. Finally the planner creates Open-To-Buy, promotion and markdown budgets. Here the RDS test scripts follows the top-down approach and start with the division plan fed with the data from channel mix. The next plans follows the merchandise hierarchy and takes care of department, classes and finally subclasses. The last step is to reconcile merchandise open-to-buy plans against merchandise financial targets using conditional formatting to easily identify deviations or differences between versions. Finally with the release of open-to-buy, markdown budget and promotion budget the execution of the plans is triggered.

Screenshot Merchandise Planning Subclass Level

SAP Lumira for Merchandise Planning Report (optional)

SAP HANA Merchandise Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution supports the planner during the planning process with pre-built analytics leveraging SAP Lumira.

Channel Mix Reconciliation:

The report can be used to understand the development of sales and margin driven KPI’s (Sales at Retail, Sales at Cost, Gross Margin, Promo Sales, Markdown Sales, Regular Sales) in the different planning levels as Channel Mix, Channel Plan by Store Comparability, Channel Plan Multi-Store, Merchandise Plan as well as allows comparison to historical and actual in-season data.

Screenshot Sales at Retail Analysis Report

Merchandise Plan – Division Level Reconciliation:

The report allows the VP of Planning to understand and check the consistency of the different levels of the Merchandise Plan (Division, Department, Class, Subclass) in regards of sales and inventory key figures.

Screenshot Merchandise Plan Reconciliation

What else is important to know?

As mentioned below, the new Merchandise Planning solution is based on SAP Customer Activity Repository and uses data available in that platform. One pre-requisite to deploy the SAP Merchandise Planning RDS is that Demand Data Foundation is already configured. This can be done with the help of the SAP HANA Customer Activity Repository. In the SAP Merchandise Planning RDS we only cover the merchandise planning specific configuration.

In a customer project you can combine all three packages (Customer Activity Repository, Assortment Planning and Merchandise Planning) if applicable. They build on each other and work seamlessly together.

You might know already SAP Planning for Retail and you might ask now about the difference between the two solutions.

The first and most important change is that Merchandise planning moves to SAP Customer Activity Repository. One advantage of this platform change is, that Merchandise Planning can use the same data as SAP Assortment Planning, so it’s one single data source for on version of the truth across all retail planning apps. It benefits also from the planning engine, also predictive analytics all running on SAP HANA for real-time planning and analysis. SAP Customer Activity Repository provides real-time inventory information that is used in planning to improve visibility, to create inventory flows and to calculate weeks of supply. And of course HANA allows high performance on large data volumes – but this is not unique to SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail, you can also run SAP Planning for Retail on BW on HANA.

SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail offers also omni channel planning support, amongst others by planning sales by channel and channel contribution mix, and by fulfillment types like store fulfillment, DC fulfillment or fulfillment directly by a vendor. The background here is, that different fulfillment types impacts also differently the inventory. If the consumer buys something in the store and take it directly with him, the inventory in the store needs to be considered. Most probably you don’t want to carry a brand new washing machine with you, this kind of article will be delivered via DC – and effects only the DC inventory. Other products or product categories might be delivered directly via a vendor, e.g. a laptop with a special specification. Different is also the availability of rolling calendar, so that the planning period in months or weeks can cross over fiscal years. You can split into DC and Store inventory for better planning, purchasing and allocations. Beside new and updated planning workbooks, you can use the LUMIRA reports delivered by the RDS to get additional reconciliation reports.

You want to learn more about SAP’s planning solutions? Please check out this great video.

You can download the content of SAP HANA Merchandise Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution on Service Marketplace here.

Also an offline demo is available showing a sample process flow.

If you are interested in the SAP HANA Customer Activity Repository rapid-deployment solution and SAP HANA Assortment Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution, please check out this blog talking about the latest available versions.

Hi Friends,

we are waiting for RDS for IDM 8.0, anyone knows when SAP going to release ?

also as i am new for RDS i want to know is this service is paid ?

Regards,

Mohinder

Hi team,

I am doing research on RDS. What is the main difference of a general implementation and RDS? What are the limitations of RDS?

Regards,

Shalini

Hi SCN experts!

I'm starting to use the Solution Builder and I was wondering something, when I do the upload of the Installation Data where are those files stored?

It is possible to find them using tx al11?

Hope you guys can help me with this

Hi Folks,

I was looking for a RDS in the Quality Management space & all I could find was one for QUALITY ISSUE MANAGEMENT. This one seems focused specifically on managing the lifecycle of a Quality Issue, but doesn't seem to cover the whole gamut of QM we had in ECC.

Also, I was expecting some bit of QM (in-process, at GR, at Returns, etc) to be covered in the Plan-To-Produce RDS that SAP has, but there is really nothing there either.

Wondering if I you can guide me to the correct ones in QM..

Cheers

Hi Experts,

We are deploying the RDS package ECC 6.0 EhP7, Suite on HANA for a customer & would like to understand how & under which process/sub-process does SAP (RDS) cover label printing?

Under the Process # 145, I can see ShopFloor paper printing, but I believe that's not it. Is it SAP's expectation that the label printing will always have to be a DELTA build on the RDS deployment (coz each company would want a label their own specific way?).

Your thoughts?

Cheers

*** SAP Truck Transportation for Shippers rapid-deployment solutions V1.93 out now ***

What if you are still…?

• lacking control in transportation decisions, leading to inefficient truck utilization and high transportation expenses,
• managing constraints such as customer requirements, carrier equipment, and availability,
• lacking visibility of the transportation process, fulfillment, and connected costs, and
• struggling to verify invoices from carriers with complex freight calculation schemes?

What if … there was a solution?

There actually is: SAP Truck Transportation for Shippers rapid-deployment solution. This upgraded solution serves shippers wanting to manage the transportation with their carriers. It is a good starting point to effectively plan, execute, monitor, and settle freight cost for receiving and sending goods with truck transports. Not only can shippers better manage order consolidation, routing, scheduling and carrier selection in transport planning. But they can also handle the communication to the carrier in a more collaborative way. Ultimately, the solution includes configuration for processing and verifying freight charges of the carrier invoices.

What’s new with version V1.93?

Whereas the scope remains the same as for the predecessor version 9.1, the entire solution has been upgraded to SAP TM 9.3 which works with SAP ERP 607 and SAP PI 7.4. Additionally, the service offering has been simplified: All functionality for a fundamental truck processing has been merged: It covers a basic end-to-end process including sales order and delivery integration, interactive planning, event monitoring, and freight charging. This process can be extended further with services, such as optimizer-based planning, shipment integration, and freight tendering

Scenarios covered and roles involved in this rapid-deployment solution

Ready to get the full load of SAP Best Practices?

Check out more information right here: http://service.sap.com/rds-tm-tt

*** SAP provides an SAP Best Practices offering for an SAP EWM to SAP S/4HANA integration scenario ***

What’s new?

With the SAP Extended Warehouse Management integration with SAP S/4HANA rapid-deployment solution, SAP S/4HANA customers can expect core warehouse processes to run as a sidecar integration scenario with S/4HANA 1511. This out-of the box scenario covers country-specific settings and system texts in English and German to work with the SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA (on premise) US and Germany baseline. “ Sidecar” means that the SAP EWM system is operated as a separate system but with the required integration points to SAP S/4HANA.

The following figure shows the different deployment options now available for SAP EWM to connect to SAP S/4HANA:

This rapid-deployment solutions facilitates two different options for SAP EWM integration:

1. SAP EWM on SAP Netweaver 7.4
2. SAP EWM on the SAP SCM Server

The package has the same scope as the SAP Extended Warehouse Management rapid-deployment solution V6.93. But it facilitates the integration to SAP S/4HANA for SAP EWM customers. It offers these customers pre-defined best-in-class warehouse management processes for proof-of-concepts, demonstration, education, and training purposes.This sidecar approach may be considered as decentralized deployment solution that provides proven customer value, such as high volume data processing, risk mitigation, and scalability for large distribution centers.

For the time being, the SAP Extended Warehouse Management rapid-deployment solution still remains in place for SAP ERP customers.

More information

• Customers wanting to integrate their SAP EWM with SAP S/4HANA, find further information here: service.sap.com/rds-ewm-s4
• Customers looking for a packaged SAP offering to integrated SAP EWM with SAP ERP, visit: service.sap.com/rds-ewm
• For general information on the sidecar approach, visit the following blog.

Dear Experts

  Just now we have installed BODS 4.1 and RDS also installed now. I am in the process of exploring the RDS. I found all the migration objects is available in the form of IDOC's. Now my questions are

1. How to work on custom IDOC's. Do i need to extensively code on R/3 side to upload the custom fields. Like user exit or BADI for custom fileds
2. If yes then i would say implementation time through RDS will remain more or less same time.
3. Through BODS or by RDS migration objects is there any way without coding on ABAP R/3 side, Can we achieve migrating custom fields

  Please let me how to achieve above requirements by RDS

Thanks

Vijay Mukunthan

Hello All,

We are planning to implement SAP ERP HCM Integration to SuccessFactors RDS in our Project.

My question is..

-> We have the current SAP ERP Version: SAP ERP 6.0 EHP6 - we need to know the Compatible Version of RDS which can be deployed on our current Landscape.  (the latest RDS version : RDS_HCMSFSF_ERP607V5 can ONLY be deployed on SAP ERP 6.0 EHP7, which is not applicable, since Upgrading of ECC not an option in our project)

Awaiting for your responses

Regards

SPK

Hi All,

I have recently been learning a lot about Ariba and enrolling in some courses to further my knowledge in this space. As a next step, I would like to get hands on with a trial version of Ariba.

Can someone help with this so that I can gain access to Ariba or an Ariba sandbox environment? Thanks!

Hi,

Can someone share me the link of downloading SAP TM 9.3  RDS related to config guide . Is there any way we can have RDS for strategic freight procurement process there as per latest TM 9.3