Although SuccessFactors has emerged as the preferred system for core HR and talent management solutions, many companies still want to retain or deploy SAP ERP HCM on-premise payroll. In this kind of environment, in which core HR and talent are in the cloud while payroll processing and time management remain on premise, companies are presented with a variety of deployment options. One of these options is related to leave and absence management, as companies can select to use either SAP’s employee self-service/manager self-service (ESS/MSS) leave request functionality or SuccessFactors Employee Central’s Time Off functionality. In this article, I provide a high-level comparison of both options. However, before getting into the meat of this discussion, and comparing the common and contrasting features of the two applications, take a look at Figure 1 to review the basics of the overall process as it relates to time management for any employee.

A Comparison of SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off and SAP ERP HCM ESS/MSS Leave Request Functionalities

Overall both applications have useful functionality around leave/time-off processing, especially for salaried employees. The SAP ESS leave request or Employee Central Time Off functionalities also can be used for hourly employees to record vacations, but you have to record actual working hours to ensure they’re paid correctly. In addition to SAP’s Cross Application Time Sheets (CATS) and SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll Time Sheet, there are several third-party time entry systems available in the market to record working hours for hourly employees. In this article, however, my focus is on the features of the Employee Central Time Off module and SAP ERP HCM’s ESS leave request application.

Common Features

Both SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off and SAP ESS leave request applications are designed to support the leave/Time Off process, and both provide similar functionalities. As a result, both require the same foundational objects. These are:

1. Holiday calendar – A holiday calendar is a collection of public holidays. You can have as many holiday calendars for your enterprise as per business requirements depending upon the employee’s location and employee type. For example, you can have one calendar for office employees and another one for employees working in the field or plants.
2. Work schedule – The work schedule is planned working time for an employee. A work schedule includes the days of the week and the times of the day a particular employee is scheduled to work. The traditional full-time work week in the US is five eight-hour days. However, many employers offer part-time and alternative schedules to cover their work needs and to attract workers.
3. Leave type – The leave type is the type of leave taken by employees, such as annual leave, sick leave, jury duty, and bereavement leave. A leave type may or may not have an accrual rule. Example, an annual leave may have an accrual rule so an employee can accrue a certain number of hours or days in a specified period, and these accrued leaves may or may not have fixed validity depending upon company policy. On other hand, jury duty or bereavement leave may not have any accrual.
4. Workflow – Workflow is an essential part of the leave process as an employee’s application for vacation should be approved in advance by a manager or HR department.

These components are required to set up Employee Central Time Off and ESS leave request applications to fulfill leave-management-related business requirements.

End-User Experience

Now, let’s look at the experience of the end user. The SAP ERP HCM-based ESS/MSS leave-request processes have been web-based applications for a long time, compared to the newer cloud-based Employee Central Time Off application. However, Employee Central Time Off had the edge in terms of user experience because it is very user friendly and provides a sleek mobile app, which gives users the ability to use Employee Central Time Off on their hand-held mobile devices, such as Apple (iPhones and iPads) and Androids. With the introduction of SAP Fiori technology, however, the SAP ERP HCM ESS leave request functionality is also now available on smartphones and tablets. SAP Fiori is a platform that provides the porting of applications on mobile devices. It is based on SAP’s NetWeaver technology platform, and it enables applications to be used on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. With this new platform, both Employee Central Time Off and ESS leave request functionalities are now web-based as well as app-based, and therefore both provide similar end-user experiences.

Leave Processing

Now, let’s look at the processing of leave from a payroll perspective— as leave taken by an employee may impact his or her pay. In an environment in which core HR is in the cloud, while payroll and time are on premise, the leave details must flow into the payroll system to evaluate pay-related implications. Thus, irrespective of whether you record leaves using Employee Central Time Off or the ESS leave request application, the leave details must be transmitted to the SAP Payroll system. If you are using SAP ERP HCM ESS leave requests, approved absence details are transferred into infotype 2001 when program RPTARQPOST runs. SAP standard program RPTARQPOST transfers leave data into SAP infotype 2001. Generally this program is scheduled to run at intervals that can vary from a few minutes to several hours, depending on business requirements. If you are using the Employee Central Time Off application, then approved Time Off is replicated into SAP infotype 2001 depending on when SuccessFactors Employee Central replication takes place. You may not end up using all these infotypes for Time Off or leave request management. For example, if you are using an ESS leave request, you use infotype 2006 to record leave quotas, infotype 0416 for quota compensation, and infotype 2013 to make any corrections or adjustments to employee quotas. However, if you are using the Employee Central Time Off application you do not use infotype 2013 because corrections should be done in Employee Central, which is the primary system of record for leave, not the SAP system. Similarly, for quota compensation you may not be able to use infotype 0416 because that infotype is not mapped into standard iFlow and is not linked with balanced quota. As a result, you can use infotype 2012 and run it through time evaluation, or use infotype 2010 to process payment for a balanced leave. Quota compensation is payment to employees for unused leave balances. Quota compensation depends on statutory or company policy—some companies pay every year end for unused leave, some pay only at the time of termination, and some companies do not allow payment for unused leave at all.

Contrasting Features

There are some contrasting features in these two applications that are more technical in nature. One of the differences is related to rules. Absence and quota rules in SAP ERP HCM ESS leave request (time management) are set around a combination of the so-called big four: employee group (EG), employee subgroup (ESG), personnel area (PA), and personnel subarea (PSA). However, in SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off, rules are set in a time type profile. These time type profiles define the types of leaves (time types) employees are entitled to take from the Time Off module (as time type profiles are assigned to employees).

Example Leave Scenario

To illustrate, suppose a company has 50 salaried employees in its Houston Solution Design Center, and all these employees get 15 days of annual vacation, 20 days of paid sick leave, and five personal days (paid time off [PTO]). In this scenario, let’s assume that annual vacation is accrued at a rate of 1.25 days per month. For this example, you must first have defined Houston as the personnel area, the Solution Design Center as the personnel subarea, the employee as the employee group, and salaried as the employee subgroup in SAP Personnel Administration (PA). In SAP ERP HCM Time Management, you have one grouping for this personnel area, personnel subarea, employee group, and employee subgroup, and all 50 employees are assigned to this grouping. Also, you need to configure a time schema to set leave accrual rules for this group of employees. To handle this same scenario in Employee Central Time Off, you set a time type profile, in this example, the Houston SDC Profile. This time type profile has three time types:  vacation (15 days), sick (20 days), and PTO (five days). You also have to define the time account type, which has the rules related to leave accrual. Now let’s see how these two applications handle some variations to the policies as outlined above. Suppose there is change in company leave policy, and now employees with more than five years of service are going to get 20 vacation days, instead of 15 days.

1. In Employee Central Time Off, you have to create a new time type profile with a different time account type. This new time type profile will be assigned to employees with more than five years of service to ensure the new rules are applied for them.
2. In SAP Time Management, you change the accrual rule in the schema so that employees with more than five years of service accrue at a rate of 1.67 days per month, while other employees (with less time of service) accrue at a rate of 1.25 days per month.

In this use case example, suppose a newly hired employee negotiated with the company and got it to agree to give her 30 days of annual vacation, instead of 15.

1. In Employee Central Time Off, you simply create a new time type profile and assign it to only this employee. (If other employees are entitled to this same arrangement, you can assign this time type profiles for them too, as long as they’re getting 30 days with the same accrual rate.)
2. In SAP Time Management, it would be difficult to incorporate rules for exceptions as the newly hired employee’s PA/PSA and EG/ESG groupings are the same as for other employees. Thus, you either need to manually make this adjustment (using the quota correction infotype [2013]) or do some customization to address it.

These examples show some of the differences in Employee Central Time Off and SAP ERP HCM time management leave applications. The key difference is that Employee Central Time Off is based on the time type profile, which is assigned at the employee level. So if there is any exception, you can create a new profile and attach it to that employee. On the other side, in SAP ERP HCM Time Management, rules are set around PA/PSA and EG/ESG combinations, which set rules and standardized processes for each employee in the grouping. One-off exceptions are discouraged. Although SAP ERP HCM Time Management can still handle exceptions, they require customization or manual routing. One final point related to approvals. In Employee Central, the relationship between employees and managers is one-to-one (i.e., each employee profile includes his or her manager ID). In SAP ERP HCM, the employee-manager relationships are stored in Organizational Management (OM), and the person holding the chief position in an organizational unit is the manager for all the employees in that organization unit. As a result, when Employee Central data is replicated into SAP ERP HCM, you cannot determine the employee-manager relationship using an SAP standard process, as there is no correlating chief position. In this case, you have to ascertain the employee’s manager using the position-to-position (reports to, A002) relationship and, accordingly, workflow needs to be customized to support ESS leave request approval.