Explaining Payroll Integration

The Payroll Integration tool is used to configure how each expense type for each group is treated in the SAP payroll system. It is the customer's responsibility to complete this information and it must be completed for each group before attempting to send payroll data from SAP Concur to SAP.

The tool consists of four tabs. The first two must be completed prior to implementing and testing Payroll Integration. The third and forth are used once Payroll Integration is configured and running.

Payroll Settings

The Payroll Settings tab is used to enter the default Wage Types and Clearing Account Codes for each group. A Wage Type is a code that tells SAP how much money should be paid to the employee and how much should be withheld for tax reasons. This is important in case there are tax implications for certain expenses. A few notes:

• The customer must provide these codes during their implementation and to maintain the codes after they go live.
• All Expense Groups will appear in the dropdown, but only groups that have had the Enable Payroll Integration setting activated can be modified.
• All expense types for the selected group will use these values unless specified otherwise on the Wage Types tab.

Wage Types

If an Expense Type needs a specific Wage Type, they can be entered on the Wage Types tab.

This tab can also be used to indicate which Expense Types will and will not be sent to the SAP payroll system. A few notes:

• The customer must provide these codes during their implementation and maintain the codes after they go live.
• All Expense Groups will appear in the dropdown, but only groups that have had the Enable Payroll Integration setting activated can be modified.
• If no Wage Types for an Expense Type are entered on this screen, the system will use the default Wage Types on the Payroll Settings tab for those Expense Types.

Transfer Failures

The Transfer Failures tab displays any Payroll Documents that failed to transfer from SAP Concur to SAP due to issues related to payroll. The Payroll Administrator can select the Report ID to view the Audit Trail for that expense report to see what went wrong. They can then begin the process of correcting any errors so SAP ICS can try to resend the expense report to SAP.

Once the appropriate corrections are made, the Payroll Administrator can select the checkbox for an expense report and use the Retry Payroll Transfer button to send the expense report to SAP again.

Just like it is good practice for the customer to designate an Expense Processor to periodically check for expense reports that failed Financial Posting, it is good practice for the customer to designate a Payroll Administrator to check the Transfer Failures tab on a regular basis.

Document Status

The Document Status tab allows customers to search for and view the status of all Payroll Documents sent through SAP ICS.

Customers can search by Status, Report ID, Report Name, First Name, Last Name, Employee ID, and Submit Date.

There are also predefined search buttons for the current month and the last 30 days.

As we have just seen, Payroll Integration is configured by Expense Group. Expense Pay is also configured by Expense Group. Each user can only have one reimbursement method for their out-of-pocket expenses. So, what takes precedence if an Expense Group has both configured? In all cases except one, Payroll Integration will be used to reimburse that employee. The one exception is that any expense reports created prior to Payroll Integration, where Expense Pay was configured for the group, would be paid by Expense Pay. Any new expense reports created after, would be paid through Payroll Integration.

There are not many areas of SAP Concur configuration that impact Payroll Integration, but the ones that do exist are critical to making sure expenses are not only paid to the employee correctly, but the customer is able to make sure other items, such as payroll taxes and other legal requirements, are met.

Group Configurations

Payroll Integration through SAP ICS is configured by Expense Group within SAP Concur. This gives the customer the ability to control which users are paid via their SAP payroll system and which users are reimbursed through other methods such as AP, Expense Pay, or an external payroll tool like ADP.

To activate financial integration through SAP ICS, the Enable Payroll Integration checkbox must be selected for each group as needed. A few things to note:

• This option cannot be activated unless the Enable Financial Integration checkbox has already been enabled for that group.
• This setting cannot be activated globally, it must be turned on individually for each group.

Select the screenshot below to view the necessary setting.

Payroll Administrator Role

The configuration of Payroll Integration in SAP Concur requires at least one user in the customer site to be assigned the Payroll Administrator role. This role is a global role and cannot be restricted by group.

Payroll Integration Tool

Users with the Payroll Administrator role use the Payroll Integration tool to configure how the SAP Concur data maps to the SAP data.

The Payroll Integration tool can be found under Administration→Company→Tools.

As we can see, Payroll Integration is a quick and easy configuration, and critical to our customer if being used to reimburse employees.