Dear All,

Hope you are doing fine.

I am excited to share the new features that we are planning to deliver as part of the Best Practices package for Time Management 2H 2024 via the upgrade centre. We have some new features (new country localizations) along with enhancements for existing countries. We actually delivered a lot of new features in this release, and this is what makes it exciting for those of you who are looking for any accelerated implementations.

 Disclaimer: Please note these features are currently available only on preview. The final version will be updated on RTC or production date for 1H 2024.

Time Forms ESS (Employee Self Services)

In 1 H 2024 we had released Time Forms Content which includes pre-delivered templates for Maternity, Strike letters etc. In 2H 2024, we are enhancing the same with role-based permissions (RBP) for employees.

The employees would be able to request letters using the pre-delivered templates now.

Enhancement to Absence Counting Rule for India

In India we see customer cases who has 3 different type of work schedule day models.

1. Half Day – 4 hours
2. Full Day – 8 hours
3. Extended Day – 12 hours

Employees work 5 days / 40 hours a week. An employee can be assigned a Work Schedule which looks like something like below:

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
Week Off	Full Day	Full Day	Extended Day	Half Day	Full Day	Weekly Off

To cater to above, we have now delivered absence counting rules that counts in below manner:

1. On Monday, Tuesday or Friday – 1 day leave balance is deducted.
2. On Wednesday – 1.5 day leave balance is deducted.
3. On Thursday – 0.5 day leave balance is deducted.

For more details and to check the rules, please use the India Time off Best Practices package from the upgrade centre.

Netherlands Time Off Enhancements

We redesigned some of the accrual rules and time account types for Netherlands 2H 2024 based on the feedback received from some of our partners.  I don’t want to digress from the topic here but as a partner you can have a say in our best practices design. If you want to influence our best practices content or provide feedback on existing countries, please feel free to reach out to us on [email protected] . We would be more than happy to connect with you.

Now coming back to NLD topic, what has changed?

Group statutory and non-statutory Leaves in One bucket.

Earlier Statutory and Non-Statutory leaves were separate leave or time types. Now these are two-time account types attached to the same time type. Annual Leave is the time type mapped to these two-time account types.

Deduction order:

Statutory   TAT (Booking range 1.5 years)

Non statutory TAT (Booking range 5 years)

Statutory Time Account Type (TAT)

Example: 2024: Jan 2024 – June 2025 (within overlapping accounts ensure oldest first by validity)

                2025: Jan 2025 – June 2026

Non statutory Time Account Type (TAT)

Example:

Jan 2024 – Dec 28

Jan 2025 – Dec 29

Additional Notes:

Non-Statutory Part – Some customers do not use seniority. In terms of Hours, this translates to

160 hours => Statutory 

40 hours (5 days * say 8 hours) => Non-Statutory

The most common is above and is be used for Best Practices

A new time profile Generic Profile2 (NLD) is delivered to handle this scenario.Further we are also taking care of fixed term contracts that have a contract end date. The accruals for these employees are also prorated based on contract end date.

 

Removal of custom fields in Job Info for Accruals

We currently don’t use custom field (which was used earlier in averaging FTE for accruals). We use directly average FTE rule function in accruals rules.

For more details, please use the Netherlands Time off Best practices package from upgrade center

 

Short Term Disability for United States

We introduced content for STD or Short-term disability leave for united states which includes different disability periods as per absence pay policy. The absence pay policy and scheme is also part of pre delivered content.

With pre-delivered content, the disability period dates are automatically set based on absence pay scheme and policy whenever a STD leave is requested. The leave request along with these dates are sent to payroll for payroll processing. Different periods have different pay percentages like fully paid, 70% paid etc. depending on the payroll policies.

Here are some of the screenshots of the absence pay scheme and policy.

For more details, please use the United States Time off Best practices package from upgrade center

Seniority Calculation Policy in Accruals rules of United Kingdom or GB

We are now making use of Seniority Calculation Policy and its corresponding rule function in Accruals Rules of GB. Before this we used to make use of “Get number of calendar years” Rule function to derive the seniority of an employee

The Seniority Calculation Policy Object from EC is a more sophisticated configuration which can handle more complex use cases like excluding some unpaid absences from total seniority etc.

In the sample, we deliver a simple seniority config based on years from hire date. But it can be extended further based on your needs. Here are some of the screenshots related to the best practices content for seniority.

Accrual Rule:

For more details, please use the SAP Best Practices Employee Central Time Off (United Kingdom) from upgrade center.

Time Tracking Sweden

We have now introduced Time Tracking Sample solution for Sweden to cater to white collar employees for now. The requirements are a bit complicated, and I had to write around 100-time valuations to achieve this. Yes, you heard it right approx. 100-time valuations!!!. This is the biggest time tracking /time sheet package that we have ever built

The configurations and possible extensions with explanation of logic is present in our workbooks and you can refer them for more details.

The below are some of the requirements and explanations.

Example 1:

An employee has a works from 8 AM to 5 PM

Employee Records OT directly after the shift end i.e starting from 5 PM

There is immediate OT paid as 1.5 only for 1 hour

Example 2

Recording: 6 PM to 7 PM

So Delta is 2 hours essentially extension from 7PM to 9 PM to match min 3 HR as guaranteed hours.

So, DELTA 1.5 is 1 HR and Delta 2.0 is also 1 HR.

If you are interested to know more, please use upgrade center to upgrade Best Practices for Time tracking Sweden

Time Tracking Finland

We have also now delivered a set of Time Valuation rules to handled daily overtime, weekly overtime, Sunday, and Holiday Work for Finland.

We cover both 40 Hour employees and 37.5 Hour employees. In addition , rest period handling is also taken care. As part of rest period, the employee needs to rest for a minimum of 11 hours between two consecutive shifts

If you are interested to know more, please use upgrade center to upgrade Best Practices for Time tracking Finland.

Example :

Scenario: Recording on a week with a holiday

Weekly Overtime = (Recorded Prod Time – planned time – daily OT)

= 72-40-20

= 32-20

= 12 as seen above

These best practices add a lot of value in terms of accelerating your implementations and I wish to see more adoption from you (partners) in coming days

I wish you good luck with implementations.

In case you have feedback, please do leave a comment below.

Thanks & Best Regards

Neelesh