Summarizing Time Management Functionality

SAP Time Management is a very complex component and customers will need to configure it country-specific and customer-specific.

Evaluating work performed by employees and determining employee availability within an enterprise are essential elements for a Human Resources system.

The time information is also relevant in the following areas and is a factor that influences company-wide decisions, for example:

• Information about working times is used to calculate gross wages in Payroll.
• Working times can be used for activity allocation in Controlling. Costs generated by the working times can be assigned according to their source in Controlling.
• Information from Time Management is used in Logistics to determine employees’ availability for capacity requirements planning. In Logistics, you can determine work requirements for the enterprise and plan employee shifts.

Several options are available for recording working times, including Time Manager’s Workplace (TMW), a time sheet (CATS – Cross Application Time Sheet), online menus, time recording systems, and Employee Self-Service (ESS) applications.

You can manage time accounts, such as leave and flextime, manually or automatically.

Employee planned working time is assigned in infotype IT0007 Planned Working Time using work schedule rules. You must create this infotype for each employee, otherwise you are unable to use Time Management.

Planned working time is defined as the daily working period from start to end time, excluding breaks. By defining the planned working time for your employees, you determine how long they should work on a daily basis.

The time data specific to an employee is presented in the employee’s personal work schedule. The personal work schedule contains the deviations from, and exceptions to, an employee’s working time that have been recorded.

Work Schedule

The central element in time management is the employee’s work schedule. The work schedule contains data on the employee’s planned working time. Holiday calendars and work schedules are country-specific configuration.

Calendars are delivered by SAP as examples, but they can be adjusted according to the customer’s requirements.

Also, the work schedules are delivered as examples, but each customer must configure their own customer-defined work schedules.

The work schedule is used as the basis for time data evaluation and indicates how many hours an employee is expected to work.

The work schedule is created from a period work schedule linked to a public holiday calendar. The period work schedule comprises a defined sequence of daily work schedules, which contain information on a day's working time including breaks.