SAP Time Management Overview

Welcome to the SAP Time Management Overview tutorial. From a Human Resources perspective, it is desirable, if not imperative, that employees’ work schedules are planned, actual working time recorded, leave quotas generated and availed leave captured. In this tutorial, we will explain how these requirements can be mapped in SAP Time Management.

Processes in SAP Time Management

At a high level, there are three main processes in SAP HCM Time Management:

1. Time Planning

In SAP, work schedules are elements used to indicate an employee’s planned working time, daily working hours, weekly work pattern and weekly offs. You can refer to the work schedule in Figure 1 as an illustrative example. In the next few tutorials, we will explain in detail how work schedules are created, generated and assigned to an employee.

Every Work schedule is also assigned a Public holiday calendar. This calendar contains the list of public holidays that are applicable to the organization as a whole, or to individual personnel subareas of the organization.

2. Time Recording

Employee time data can be recorded by employees themselves or by time administrators, supervisors or secretaries. The type of time data that must be recorded depends on the policy of the Organization. There are two types of Time Management:

• Positive Time Management where all actual working times must be recorded. This implies that, for any day, an employee will be considered absent unless a Clock-in and Clock-out or Attendance is recorded for that day.
• Negative Time Management where only deviations from the Work schedule must be recorded. Here, for any day, an employee will be considered present unless an absence(leave) is explicitly recorded for that day.

3. Time Evaluation

Time Evaluation is an optional sub-component which can be used to valuate employees’ working times and absence times. This is required, for example, for the management of time accounts and for the generation of leave quota in accordance with the organizational policy.

Example

Let us proceed to further understand the above concepts with the help of two practical organizational scenarios.

Scenario 1

Consider a single-location IT company wherein the employees must work from 9 am – 6 pm from Monday to Friday. Saturday and Sunday are designated weekly offs. In addition, there are ten public holidays every year. Employees do not need to swipe in and out to capture their daily attendance. Every employee has a leave entitlement of 22 days per calendar year. If an employee needs to take time off, he/she must apply for leave, which gets recorded in SAP after the manager’s approval.

Let us see how the above can be mapped in SAP:

Work Schedule

A single work schedule will suffice as all employees have the same working time. This work schedule will specify the daily working time from 9am to 6pm, with Saturday and Sunday as weekly offs.

Holiday Calendar

A single holiday calendar will be created with ten holidays per year.

Leave Quota Generation

A Quota generation rule will be designed so that employees get a leave quota of 22 days per year.

Type of Time Management

Since actual clock-in and clock-out times do not need to be recorded, this organization uses Negative Time Management. Only deviations from the Work schedule are captured by recording leave availed by employees.

Scenario 2

Consider a manufacturing company with one corporate office and one manufacturing plant. In the corporate office, the employees must work from 9am – 6pm from Monday to Friday. Saturday and Sunday are weekly offs. Whereas, in the manufacturing plant, there are three different shifts:

First shift from 6am – 2pm

Second Shift from 2pm – 10pm

Third Shift from 10pm – 6am.

There are two Work schedules, each with a work pattern that spans over two weeks as illustrated in Figure 2:

If you look at Figure 2, note that the first day need not necessarily be a Monday as the shifts are rotational. Consequently, the weekly offs (highlighted in yellow) are also rotational.

In addition, the following rules apply to the corporate office as well as the manufacturing plant:

• There are ten public holidays every year.
• Employees should mandatorily swipe in and out to capture their daily attendance. If they do not, they will be considered absent.
• Every employee has a leave entitlement of 22 days per calendar year. If an employee needs to take time off, he/she must apply for leave, which gets recorded in SAP after the manager’s approval.

Let us see how the above requirements can be mapped in SAP.

Work Schedule

There will be three different Work schedules:

Corporate – This work schedule will specify the daily working time from 9 am to 6 pm, with Saturday and Sunday as weekly offs.

Plant Schedule 1 – This Work schedule will be built in accordance with Schedule 1 in Figure 2. It will comprise two different daily work schedules, that is, the First shift from 6am – 2pm and the Second shift from 2pm to 10pm. In addition, there are Off days, which are rotational and as per Figure 2.

Plant Schedule 2 – This Work schedule will be built in accordance with Schedule 2 in Figure 2. It will comprise two different daily work schedules, that is, the Second shift from 2pm – 10 pm and the Third shift from 10pm to 6am. The weekly offs are rotational and as per Figure 2.

Holiday Calendar

A single holiday calendar will be created with ten holidays per year.

Leave Quota Generation

A Quota generation rule will be designed so that employees get a leave quota of 22 days per year.

Type of Time Management

Since actual clock-in and clock-out times should be recorded, this organization uses Positive Time Management.

Integration with Payroll

We are aware that one of the main strengths of SAP is the seamless integration between business processes. Within Human Capital Management, this is best exemplified through the integration between SAP Time Management and Payroll. In many organizations, inputs from SAP Time Management are required by Payroll in order that pay elements be calculated correctly. One common practical example where this integration is required is to calculate Loss of Pay (LOP). Here, the Time Evaluation program will calculate the number of LOP days based on the employee’s time data and the company’s policies. The number of LOP days will be provided as an input to the Payroll driver, which will proportionately reduce the employee’s salary based on the LOP days.

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