Thanks for the question. No standard R/3 program exists to do what you ask. The way SAP has designed the HR Process Monitor (transaction PUST) requires user actions to release and execute a process. However, it shouldn’t be too hard to create your own program to do this, and then schedule it via SM37. Your custom program would have two steps. First, it would create the HR process for your regular payroll, and then it would execute that process.

I often start custom programs like this by investigating comparable R/3-standard programs. Two standard programs create and start HR processes without requiring the user to go through the HR Process Monitor. The first is program RPUOCB00, which is used for the subsequent off-cycle payroll activities. It’s the program that processes all your online off-cycle payroll activity through the off-cycle process models. The other program is OT_RUN_PROCESS_MODEL_CALL, which is used to run a process model for the R/3 Payroll outsourcing module. This second program is less complicated and serves as a better model for what you want to do because it doesn’t have a lot of extra logic for read the off-cycle transaction table T52OCG.

Each of these programs eventually calls function module HRPY_PUST_CREATE_PROCESS to create the process, as shown in Figure 1. Then they call method CL_HR_PM_PW_START_MANAGER to start the process manager for that process that was just created. Figure 2 shows the method for starting the process for the outsourcing program. In your custom program, instead of method START_INTERNAL_OT, which is specific for the outsourcing functionality, you would use method START_INTERNAL.

Report RPUOCB00 has several extra steps between the creation and the starting of the process because it has to fill each one with the specific personnel numbers that were selected from the Off-Cycle Workbench. Since you are starting a process for a regular payroll period, those extra steps can be ignored.

Figure 1

Function module for creating a process

Figure 2

Method for releasing a process

Steve Bogner

Steve Bogner is a managing partner at Insight Consulting Partners and has been working with SAP HR since 1993. He has consulted for various public, private, domestic, and global companies on their SAP HR/Payroll implementations; presented at the SAP user's group ASUG; and been featured on the Sky Radio Network program regarding SAP HR.

Steve will be presenting at the upcoming HR Payroll Seminar November 7-8 in Chicago and November 27-28 in Orlando. For information on the event, click here.

You may contact the author at sbogner@insightcp.com.

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