SAP SuccessFactors Compensation system allows for several standard validations, such as, soft/hard stops related to merit, extra, lumpsum, and promotion guidelines, force-comment functionality for raises/adjustments, and budget-related hard and soft stops.
Admins can also create a standard validation to editable numeric and string custom fields:
- Set Value Range validation allows administrators to define a range of acceptable inputs; when users enter values outside the range, the system displays an error.
- Set enumerated range validation, allows administrators to define drop-down values for users to choose from.
However, some administrators want to create additional validation specific to their business processes.
Customer-driven logic would allow you to define your own true/false formulas that would trigger messages of hard and soft stops to improve the quality of planning.
These options include:
- Adding a custom drop-down reason for an adjustment
- Adjustments limited to certain amounts
- Combinations of adjustments that are not allowed (for example, merit adjustment or lumpsum, but not both)
Creation of Validations
By using the column designer, admins can specify the type of validation that occurs when the administrator's defined conditions are met. The types of custom validations include:
- Warning - which displays an informational message.
- Error - which displays a message and does not allow the worksheet to be saved until the condition has been corrected.
By using a custom formula, administrators can add a custom logic that will trigger a warning or error message when violations are made. For example, admins might want to make sure an employee's promotional salary increase is not allowed until their pay grade has been changed (a hard validation), or might want an informational message displayed when you enter an employee salary adjustment that is higher than a pre-defined maximum (warning).
In the following figure, you can see how the Validation column was created. The formula, if(lumpSum=0,"Ok",if(customField1="No Reason","Error","Ok")), defines the field output when the conditions are met while the custom validation formula, if(lumpSum=0,"TRUE",if(customField1="No Reason","FALSE","TRUE")) defines how the error message is triggered. In this example, the end user will get an error message when a lump sum award is given to an employee without choosing a lump sum reason (customField1).
Reminders when using custom validations include:
- Validations can only be applied to Custom/Reportable/Read-only fields.
- A maximum of 5 validations per template are allowed.
- Only FALSE or False values in validation formula will trigger the validation.
- Any custom fields with supported operations and equations can use custom validations.
- Validations are supported in stand-alone Compensation plans and Total Compensation plans.
- Be mindful of dead-ends. Don’t create a hard validation that the end user can’t resolve which would prevent saving.
- Avoid using custom validation as part of cross-tab formulas.
Salary Validation Rules
Salary-based validation rules may be configured for the standard merit, lump sum, lump sum2 & extra fields on a Compensation worksheet.
You define rules to compare amounts using either compa-ratio or range penetration benchmarks. Configure what action the system takes when amounts exceed threshold percentages for lump sum amounts or fall below or exceed threshold percentages for merit amounts.
