Setting up Payroll

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As per Core – HR Design, every employee assignment must have a payroll attached to it. The entity payroll, tells the system about the payroll frequency/ cycles, the valid payment methods, the check dates to which the assignment is entitled. Employees in a same payroll share the same payroll frequency and pay dates.

Payment Methods

Every organization has rules for its payment methods. Some organizations pay by Check, some by direct deposits to banks, and some even pay by cash. These methods of payments that an organization follows to pay its employees, is known as the Organizational Payment method.

Each employee of the organization may get to select the method with which s/he liked to be paid every pay period. These are the valid options that an employee can choose in order to get his salary. Some people like it on their bank account, some might like a check, and for some it could be both.

Each and every payroll clubs together a set of valid payment methods in it. So the available options can be specific to each payroll. For an example, an enterprise can define payment methods like this:

• Weekly : Check only
• Biweekly and Semi monthly : Check and Bank account (Automatic Transfer)
• Monthly: Bank account only (Automatic Transfer).

The payment methods vary with the types of banks as well. For an example, if the enterprise deals with 4 different banks, like A, B, C and D. It will need four different payment methods defined for each of the banks it deals with, even though all of the payment methods will be of type ‘Automatic Transfer’.

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Total Compensation -> Basics -> Payment Methods

Steps: Create a new record and start filling in the details. See Figure 5.15 – Payment Methods.

 

Figure 15 Payment Methods

                (Figure 5.15 – Payment Methods)

Name	Name of the Payment Method
Type	The types of payment. Like check, cash or NACHA
Currency	The currency of the payment
Third Party Payment	Checked if the payment is of type third party payment
Source Bank Country	The country of the bank
Bank Details	This is the Bank details KFF

 

Consolidation Set

A consolidation set is a methodology that is used, to group payrolls with similar timelines together. This makes payroll process and post processes easy to manage and run. Although a lot of payrolls can be part of one consolidation set; every payroll must have one, and only one consolidation set attached to it.

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Payroll -> Consolidation

Steps: Create a new row with the name of the consolidation set. We can create as many as we want, based on our requirement. See Figure 5.16 – Consolidation Sets.

Figure 16 Consolidation Sets

 (Figure 5.16 – Consolidation Sets)

 

Payroll Definition

Once the payment methods and consolidation sets are defined they can now be associated with the payroll definition, along with the time period and the costing information. So payroll definition is the screen where payment dates, check dates, consolidation set, a default payment method etc are assigned to a particular payroll.

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Payroll -> Description

Steps: Create a new record and fill in the details. See Figure 5.17 – Define Payroll.

 

Figure 17 Define Payroll

 (Figure 5.17 – Define Payroll)

 

 

Name	Name of the Payroll.
Period Type	The frequency of the payroll must be selected here. New Frequencies can be defined in.  (Navigation: Other Definitions -> Time Periods   Responsibility: HRMS Manager)
First Period End Date	The system determines the payroll dates (start date and end date) using the first payroll end date. The date is fed as an example to the system, using which it calculates all the other possible end dates. For Example, If monthly, it can be, 31-JAN-2010.
Number of Years	Signifies the number of years, for which the payroll will be effective
Check Date	Represents the numbers of days after the End date, as of which the Checks will be cut. This is an offset. So if it is -1 that means the checks will be cut as of 1 day before the payroll end date.
Scheduled Run Date	This is an Offset as well. This is the date as of which the payroll will be run.
Cut Off Date	This offset represents the date post which, no updates to the payroll data should be made.
Pay slip Date	This is date as of which the online pay slips (in self service HR) will be visible to the employees.
Payment Method	This is the default Payment method of the payroll. This will be applied if an employee does not have any preferred payment method added to his assignment. In most cases its set as Check.
Consolidation Set	The Consolidation set is added here
Costing	This is one of the screens, where cost allocation KFF can be updated.
Suspense Account	If the costing of a particular payroll / element is not costed to any account. It gets added to the suspended account. The suspended account details need to be added here.
Negative Payment Allowed	This field determines if a negative value be issued in case the deductions are higher than the earnings for a pay check
Multiple Assignments	This field tells the system, whether to process an employee, if he has multiple assignments with two different payrolls.
Period Dates	This button opens up a screen that shows the dates for each payroll cycles, along with the cut off date, check date etc. These dates can be changed (overridden) in this screen, in case the dates are to be changed for a given period.
Valid Payment Methods	This lists out the valid payment methods that an employee might choose.

 

GL Flexfield Mapping

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Payroll is all about paying salaries to employees. And the salary must be heaved from an account in the enterprise. Usually the labour cost is distributed based on different organizations that get benefited by the work. The distribution system is known as costing.

As discussed earlier, the costing information must be passed to the finance department in order to keep an account of labour cost. GL (Oracle General Ledger, a module in Oracle Financials) owns a key flex field known as Accounting flex field. Oracle financials uses the Accounting flex field to identify different accounts linked to the enterprise.

The GL Flex field mapping helps the system link different accounts setup in the HRMS system with the accounts available in GL (accounting flex field). In other words, with the GL Mapping we are going to establish a relationship between the Cost allocations KFF with the Accounting KFF. With this mapping in place, when the costing process (A post processing process) is run, it helps the system to carry the costing information to GL.

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Payroll -> GL flex field Map

Steps: Query the payroll and fill in the details. See Figure 5.18 – GL Flex Field Mapping.

Figure 18 GL Flex Field Mapping

(Figure 5.18 – GL Flex Field Mapping)

Payroll	Name of the Payroll
Period	Period type of the Payroll. This is auto populated
GL Set of Books	The set of books to which the costing data belongs
Payroll Costing Segments	The Cost Allocation KFF segments
GL Chart of Accounts Segments	The corresponding Accounting FF segments

Element Sets

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There will be many situations in payroll processing, where we need some kind of grouping to keep things in order and to keep them easy. Tools like, Element sets, or Assignment sets help us processing things easily on a group of elements / assignments, without any hassle of re-entering the Element Names and Assignment Numbers repeatedly.

To start with element sets, these are of three types:

• Customization Set: A Customization set is used, to restrict the elements that can be entered or viewed on a configured version of the Element Entries window. It can also be selected for element entry purposes, using BEE in the Batch Assignment Entry window.
• Run Set: In a situation where an Oracle Payroll user wants to run payroll for a given set of elements, rather running it on all elements; s/he can use a Run set to specify the elements to be processed in the run.
• Distribution Set: An Oracle Payroll user can use a Distribution set to define the elements over which the costs of other elements are to be distributed.

Let’s look at the steps to configure an element set.

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Payroll -> Element Set

Steps: Create a new record and start entering the details. See Figure 5.19 – Element Sets.

 

Figure 19 Element Sets

(Figure 5.19 – Element Sets)

 

 

Name	The Name for the element set
Type	The type of the see. Should be one of: Customization / Run / Distribution
Include Elements	This window helps the users to assign elements into the element set
Exclude Elements	This window can be used to exclude elements from the set, this comes handy when a user wishes to add up a complete classification but a few elements
Element Rules	This window displays all the Elements included in the set
Classification Rules	A user can select One or more Primary Classifications here to Include the elements in that classification.

 

 

Assignment Sets

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Assignment sets enable us to group a number of assignments together, and then run any process on them. Examples of its usage are, running payroll for a set of assignments, Loading Element entries for a set of assignments etc.

To create an assignment set:

Figure 20 Assignment Sets

(Figure 5.20 – Assignment Sets)

Responsibility: HRMS Manager

Navigation: Payroll -> Assignment Set

Steps: Create a new record and start entering the details. See Figure 5.20 – Assignment Sets.

 

Name	Name of the Assignment Set
Payroll	May or may not be populated. If a payroll is chosen, then assignments, only from that payroll will be included
Criteria	One or more conditions can be defined in this window, which will define the eligibility of an assignment to be part of this set. For an example, one assignment set can have the following conditions. ‘&EMP_HIRE_DATE’ ‘>’ ’01-JAN-2012’ AND ‘&ASG_EMPLOYMENT_CATEGORY’ ‘LIKE ‘F%’ So all the assignments that are hired after 1st JAN 2012 and are Full time will be included in the assignment set.
Amendment	In case there are a list of employees to be included as part of the assignment set, one can use the Include/ exclude flag and the employee numbers to define the criteria. For an example, one assignment set can include employees with employee numbers: 13662, 13663, 13664 and Exclude 13661.
Generate	The Generate button is used, to generate a formula once a assignment set is defined. We can view and edit the formula in the Write Formula window. The name of the formula remains same as the assignment set. In other hand, if we evaluate the fast formula for an assignment, it will return Yes / No based on the eligibility criteria and the assignment being evaluated.