Introducing Time Off

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Describe Time Off.
Describe who can use Time Off.
Summarize how Time Off works.

Introduction to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off

HR administrators set up new employees with the correct time accounts when they're hired and make any necessary adjustments. Administrators need an overview of the time data for employees.

Employees need to plan their vacations and managers need to decide whether vacation requests can be approved. An organization benefits from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off with the help of tools, such as workflow configurations, team absence calendars, and Manager Self-Service time forms based in Document Generation.

The benefits of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off are displayed in an infographic.

With a time-off solution, this process can all be done without countless papers being passed around. Employees can request time off through their mobile devices or through a web browser; managers can approve or decline these requests using the same devices. With SAP SuccessFactors Time Off, you have access to traditional time-off functionality in a system that seamlessly integrates with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC). Time Off supports company-specific problems and features the EC intuitive self-service interface.

Time Off: The Bigger Picture

Employee Central offers a rich set of tools to manage absences and attendances. The absence management is done via functionally called Time Off. The basic attendance management is via Time Sheet.

Note

Time Tracking will be required to cover broader Time Attendance scenarios.

In this training, we will deep dive into the Time Off functionality and provide an introduction into the basics of Time Sheet. Before delving in, let's look at the bigger picture because there are cases and processes where Time Absence and Time Attendance are interlinked.

The Employee Central Time And Attendance data is displayed in a chart.

The image shows the three main components of Employee Central Time and Attendance Management.

The Time Off module offers a single platform for all types of paid and unpaid absence recording, including long and short-term illnesses, Paid Time Off (PTO), maternity/paternity leave, and so on. It is a flexible framework where you can configure absence management according to local laws, regulations, and customers’ collective labor agreements and other types of policies.

The Time Sheet functionality offers general/basic customers functionality to run their attendance management on the same platform. It allows tracking all attendances (working time, overtime, administrative time, business travel, and so on), allowances, and on-call duties in a single time sheet. With time recording profiles, employees can automatically receive a time sheet for positive or negative time recorders, which includes relevant company policies, such as shift premium calculation and overtime compensation. When time is recorded in the time sheet, an online evaluation is done immediately to determine straight time, overtime, shift premium, and so on. This evaluation is based on the company’s business policy and stores the result in pay types for submission to Payroll. On another hand, Time Tracking can cover broader Time Attendance scenarios.

For some processes in Time Off, the Time Tracking functionality is required. An example is Time Off in Lieu. This type of time off allows employees to record their working time. The calculated overtime can flow into a dedicated balance, which employees can leverage to take time off.

The third component is the Time Administration Workbench, which supports time administrators. This functionality is delivered within Employee Central for the analysis of recorded absences, time-account postings, creation of temporal work schedules, time forms views, and so on.

Note

Do not use Time Off to record attendances such as training courses, travel time, or working from home. Time Off is used to record absences only. It is not designed for the volume of data that arises from recording attendances, and by using it in this manner, leads to extensive performance problems. For further details, refer to the documentation on SAP Help Portal.

Time Off for Employees

Employees can access Time Off self-service through their web browser or on their mobile device. Self-service allows individuals to make or modify requests as well as view team absences.

The Time Off section of the Employee Central is displayed.

Employees have access to a mobile and an online application to record attendance and absences. Employees request absences in their time off application or directly in their time sheet. They can select the type of absence that they want to record, such as vacation, sick leave, or jury duty. Then, they can check their team absence calendar to see who else in the team is absent to determine if taking leave is appropriate. The solution offers a list of absences and attendances for which the employee is allowed to enter time against. The feature, Time Profiles, controls this list. Profiles are assigned to each employee. This feature avoids errors from employees entering time against attendance or absence types for which they aren't allowed. During this course, you'll learn how to configure these types of leave and profiles.

Time Off for Managers

Managers can use SAP SuccessFactors Time Off to approve requests for time off through a web browser or on their mobile devices as well as view and manage team absences.

The Workflow Details are displayed for an employee.

The workflow provides the context to help you understand the duration, type of leave, amount of overtime, and so on. This workflow also helps you to decide quickly whether to approve or reject the request. During this course, you'll learn how to set up such a workflow.

Time Off for HR Administrators

Employee Central enables Time administrators in an HR department to initiate and facilitate many of the time management processes.

Time Off for Time Administrators

The time-off details for an HR Administrator, Aanya Singh, is displayed.

The Time administrator can handle the following time-off tasks:

Obtain an overview of an employee’s time-off requests and time accounts.
Enter an absence request for an employee.
Make a manual adjustment for a time account.
Enter new hires into the system and set up Time Off for them.
Manage employee's transfers.
Run accrual creation.
Manage period-end processing.
Manage document generation forms in Time Off.

Overview of the Job Steps for a Time Administrator

An infographic displaying the Time Administrator - Overview of Job Steps.

The Time Administrators can do their job tasks in four steps.

Step 1: Define Policies

The first step, Define Policies of the Time Administrator, is displayed.

The Time Administrator can:

Define the employee groups based on eligibility for specific absences and attendance premiums.
In the case of absences, for example, determine if group employees are eligible for annual leave, seniority leave, jury duty, and maternity leave.
In the case of attendance premiums, for example, determine if group employees are eligible for: overtime, night shift premiums, on call duties, and allowances.

Step 1: Set Up Time Profiles

Time Administrator can:

Define dedicated time profiles per employee group.
Per profile, define which absences apply and if the employee records them via self-service or if only administrators enter them (for example, paid leave). These profiles can be country/region-specific.
Define time recording profiles that determine per employee group how time needs to be valuated based on their specific attendance policies and premiums.
Define if employees do positive or negative time recording (weekly filled timesheets based on work schedules).

Step 1: Create Work Schedules

Time Administrator can:

Create generic (country/region-specific) work schedules for employees who record work duration and based on clock times (start and end time based).
Define per work schedule the numbers of hours per day, week, month, year.
Include day models (for example shifts) and breaks.

Note

Work schedules can be made generic by the administrator. The work schedules can apply for all employees. It is also possible for a manager to define a work schedule for an individual employee.

Step 2: Assign Time Profiles

The second step, Assign Time Profiles, of the Time Administrator, is displayed.

Time Administrator can:

Link time profiles, time recording profiles, and holiday calendars to groups of employees based on organizational criteria, such as department, location, pay grade, position, and so on.
Define if employees can make amendments to their time sheets and if overtime is paid out or flows into a time in lieu balance.
These tasks can be done via mass updates or individually during workflow-guided processes such as hiring, transfer, promotion, and so on.

Step 3: Monitor Processes and Intervene Where Needed

The third step, Monitor Processes and Intervene Where Needed, of the Time Administrator is displayed.

Time Administrator can:

Leverage the Time Administrator Workbench to analyze recorded absences and time account postings.
Delete, create, or edit new absences for employees, perform time-account payouts, or make accrual adjustments to existing time accounts.
As part of localization for certain countries/regions, link related illness records together.
Access the workflow Dashboard to view information on the workflow status of time objects, track pending approvals, and view the managers involved in workflows.

Step 4: Period-End Processing

Time Administrator can:

Run period-end-processing rules to carry accruals forward and transfer remaining balances into new balances.
Create new time accounts for the next year’s leaves.
Schedule a new job for running the accruals after the new time accounts are created.

Step 4: Create Next Year’s Accruals

In conclusion, the solution helps time administrators to monitor time management-related processes and to intervene where needed. The application only allows specific absences and attendances that employees record based on their organization criteria. This process avoids false time entries and minimizes the need for corrections.

Time Off vs. Time Sheets

In Employee Central Time Management, Time Off is used to record absences and time. Time Tracking is used to record attendances. An attendance is how you record for employees actual working time, such as shift work, overtime, business travel, administrative time, home office, and other scenarios when employees are working. An absence is how you record an employee who isn't working, for example, vacation, sickness, jury duty, or other reasons.

The course explores managing time for both attendances and absences, and creating time types for many time recording scenarios. It's important to understand that Time Off isn't to be used to record attendances, and Time Tracking is to be used for recording absences. The first half of the course covers the topic of Time Off, and the second half of the course covers Time Sheet.

Time Off Usage

As time-off policies differ not only from company to company, but also within an international company from country/region to country/region, and even within a country/region or region, companies could have different time-off rules for different user groups, a highly flexible solution is needed. Employee Central (EC) Time Off offers this flexibility; however, this flexibility also means that you usually have a country- or region-specific time-off setup when necessary.

Because time off is both country- or region-specific and employee-specific, the respective time-off settings must be specified for each individual employee. The settings are specified in the employee’s Job Information portlet’s Time Information section.

Time Off in Job Information

In the Job Info - Time Information section, maintain the following three fields for each employee who uses Time Off:

Holiday Calendar: This field ensures that the country and region specific public holidays for the respective employee are considered when the employee is requesting time off.
Work Schedule: This field allows the working pattern of the employee to be defined. How many hours is the employee working each day? Which days of the week does the employee work? This information is needed to calculate the used time when requesting time off.
Time Profile: This field allows you to specify which leave types (time types) the employee is entitled to take.

The Job Info is displayed for Aanya Singh.

Time Off Work Setup

Next let us look at how you can set up Time Off.

You create a Time Type for every absence type that is needed for leave requests. A parameter like the time unit (hours, days) is time to be entered in a workflow (for example, if approval is needed).

For absences that have accruals, such as vacation, you create a Time Account Type and assign it to the absence Time Type. The Time Account Type includes parameters that define how the accruals are to be awarded:

Whether the award is recurring on an annual (year to year) or monthly basis (month to month)
Whether the time unit is in days and/or hours) of the accrual
Whether the accrual should be done automatically or manually

Time Accounts are records that contain the actual hours awarded, validity dates (the time period that the time account is valid for (for example, 1/1/xx to 12/31/xx) . They can be created automatically or manually. The manual process is done via the Manage Time Off Calendars function and the automatic is done per specified in the Time Account Type, for example, on January 1 of each year. The process to manually create the Time Accounts will be covered in detail later in the course.

You can create accruals manually as a lump sum or automatically on a recurring basis by using accrual rules. There are five types of accrual rules:

Recurring accrual rules (for example, annual award of vacation entitlements)
Hire rules (rules that award the employees their entitlements at the time of hire)
Termination rules (rules that compute remaining balances for payouts that exist at the time of termination)
Period-end processing rules (for example, carry over of remaining balances from one year to the next)
Interim rules that are used for on-time updates to existing time accounts

These rules are assigned to the Time Account Type for the generation of Time Accounts Details which are records containing the hours that must be added to the Time Account.

It is possible to schedule an automated periodic update of time accounts. The update will then carry out a specific predefined action without you having to do it manually. An example is capping the balance at a certain limit, such as on vacation accounts, so that only 10 days can be carried forward into the following year.

The employee’s eligibility status is calculated directly at runtime with the SAP HANA view. Therefore, it’s no longer required to store the eligibility status information within an MDF object.

Caution

Be aware that in the Admin Center and within Manage Time Off Structures, then Create New. Select the Time Off Configuration object and enter TLM_CONFIGURATION as the externalCode. Enter a row for each of the employee status (as Job Information Status), and decide on the Time Account Eligibility Status.

The Time Off Configuration - Eligibility Status is displayed.

Time Off Employee Transactional Data

Let us now look at how employee transactional data is created.

When the employee requests time off, an EmployeeTime object including start date, end date, and a time type, is created. If the Time Type contains a workflow, a Workflow Request is created to inform the approver for approval. For time types to which time account types are assigned, a check is done against the existing balance to make sure that the request is valid (for example, to prevent employee from requesting more time than eligible for).

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