Calendars and Global Values

The calendar is a critical foundation piece to the design and build of your environment. When configuring a new implementation, the first step is to ensure that the calendar is customized to meet the needs of the organization. This means ensuring that the fiscal periods in which calculation is compensated are accurately reflected in the calendar.

Calendars are used to structure the fiscal pay periods. Each calendar is composed of a hierarchy of periods, called the period tree. The period tree represents units of time for which your company manages compensation.

The smallest or lowest level period in the hierarchy is called the leaf level period, which is usually a month or two weeks.

The most common calendar structure uses a month as the leaf level period, three months as a quarter, and twelve months or four quarters as a year. In this case, the quarters and years are the higher-level periods.

Organizations can use multiple calendars to manage different payment schedules or pay periods. Each object can only be assigned to one calendar at a time.

Let’s look at an example of a scenario in which two calendars are required. GlobeTech pays its independent dealers on a weekly basis, and pays the internal sales team on a monthly basis. Since weeks don’t fit neatly within a calendar month, GlobeTech maintains two calendars: one with the week as a leaf level period for the dealers, and one with the month as the leaf level period for the sales team. Both the dealers and the sales team would be assigned to different plans and rules.

• Ensure your calendar structure is complete before you begin any plan development.
• Ensure you have set your default period to the correct period, with the correct calendar (if there are more than one), before you begin rule development. Once a plan element is built to a specific calendar, you cannot alter it.
• Object names must be unique, despite the calendar they are associated with. For example, you cannot have two rules with the same name, with two different calendars.
• The sequence used to build your calendar periods is critical. Use the UI template to ensure it is created in the appropriate order.
• Make sure your calendar is finalized before anything is run. Changing the dates of a period, after a single pipeline has been run, can cause a disconnect in the results. You will not be able to delete a period once a pipeline is run, even if you have no plans set.
• Leaf level periods cannot overlap or contain gaps. If you need a weekly leaf level period, create a new calendar that uses weeks instead of months.
• You will only see results for a plan associated with a calendar if you are in a default period of that same calendar.

Global Values are used throughout the system to allow manual settings of specific plan, rules, elements, and values data types.

• Once pipelines are run, do not delete the existing Global Values.
• Avoid "recycling" Global Values. If the business model changes and the data needs change, create new Global Values instead of renaming deprecated Global Values.
• Define all Event Types during the initial Global Values setup.