This blog post was written by Mike Timm, founder and managing partner here at Integrated Consulting Group.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been posting about the Philadelphia Seminar and tips for attending seminars. During the Optimizing Payroll in SAP, several different areas were discussed, and I’d like to provide some follow up information that I feel attendees and others might find useful.
As mentioned in the seminar recap blog post last week, BSI 10.0 was talked about at great length during the seminar with many having struggles to get it up and running. Sources of information about installation and configuration are available at the SAP Community Network:
- A very timely series of blog posts have been released by Matt Fraser about installation tips and tricks.
- Hemanth Jamithi provides an overview to using the new BSI interface with screen shots to help you familiarize yourself with the program.
- Finally, the BSI Tax Factory 10.0 forum thread covers many struggles and resolutions people have been finding during installation and configuration.
Tip: If you are having difficulties with reciprocity, maintaining table V_T5UX9_COUWH may be what you’ve been looking for.
A second area we discussed heavily during the payroll seminar was streamlining and automation of processes:
- Payroll process models can provide a significant amount of automation that follows the step-by-step manual process.
- Stop points can be placed at strategic points to allow validity of data and then started up again.
- Simulations, reports, and custom programs can be added easily.
- The flexibility when developing process models is great, and in the end will reduce how often someone needs to check whether the next payroll step needs to be started.
- If you aren’t ready to make the jump to payroll process models for regular payroll, the creation of an area menu keeps focus on the step-by-step process.
- The area menu is just like the SAP menu, but you get to define what transactions are seen.
- Put your step-by-step manual process in an area menu and the transactions you have it point to can pull in program variants automatically. This takes away the need for the user to enter the selection screen parameters or search for the correct variant.
Tip: We’ve seen the area menu significantly improve the payroll process consistency from one pay period to the next, especially when a payroll department has turnover. Knowing that the process is outlined exactly as it should be run in the area menu takes guessing out of the equation.
If you missed the Philadelphia Seminar, check out ICG’s Mike Timm and his recent podcast on SAPinsider regarding FICO integration and payroll year-end. And, on November 5th, SAPinsider will host Mike Timm for a live online Q&A to discuss SAP Payroll Year-End. Make sure to join in and get your questions answered.
Do you have any questions about Philadelphia’s seminar or the areas Mike touched on in this blog post? Please drop us a comment or reach out to us on twitter: @MikeTimmSAP and @SAPinsiderHR. We’d love to hear from you!
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photo credit: photosteve101 via photopin cc