The employees stored in your R/3 HR/Payroll system have dates and lots of them. They have hire dates, term dates, load dates, next review dates, last review dates, adjusted service dates, benefit dates, service dates, and so on. Infotype 41 (Date Specifications) and infotype 19 (Monitoring of Dates) can help you manage them.

Infotype 41

Infotype 41 is designed to store dates (Figure 1). As the customer, you define your date types to whatever fits with your company best. You could use the ones in Figure 1 or create your own unique date types. Infotype 41 is a useful source of accurate employee date storage. Often, other dates that are stored in R/3, such as action/event start and end dates, are not “true” dates. For example, for the hiring event in R/3, you enter a start date to initiate the action. The system recognizes this as an employee’s entry date. It stores it in the system accordingly and uses it in its standard reports. Often, this date does not represent an employee’s actual hire date, because the date entered is often impacted by other factors. Some companies enter a date on infotype 000 to initiate the hiring event that is associated with the start of the pay period when hiring employees. Similarly, sometimes a date other than the “true last day worked” is used as the start date for the termination event.

Infotype 19

Another place that is helpful for the collection of dates is infotype 19, which is set up as a date monitor or reminder— for example, for storing an employee’s next review date. Infotype 19 not only stores the date you wish to save, but it also defaults to a reminder date, allowing for date monitoring, as shown in Figure 2. Having a reminder date built in allows the system to use it for notifications. For example, if an employee’s review is due on 9/26/2003, the system can default to a particular reminder date (in Figure 2) two months in advance.

Reporting on the Infotypes

Many of the standard reports delivered with the R/3 system use entry and leaving dates that are based on actions, which, as I mentioned, may not be accurate. However, standard reports exist for date monitoring reporting from infotype 19. You can also do your own reporting from infotype 41. Because infotype 41 is a unique-looking infotype that stores the same two fields repeatedly (date type and date), many have trouble reporting off it, whether it be through straight ABAP reporting or through an additional field in an InfoSet for the Ad Hoc or SAP Query reporting tools. The problem is that multiple lines result for each employee for each date type. Figure 3 shows the code you can use to effectively report off infotype 41 without producing those multiple lines. This example includes at least seven different dates on an infotype 41 for an employee.

TABLES: PA0167. DATA: DAR LIKE PA0041-DAR01, DAT LIKE PA0041-DAT01, HIREDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, REHIREDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, LASTHIREDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, ADJSVCDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, TERMDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, SEPARATIONDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, BENTERMDATE LIKE PA0041-DAT01, KEY_DATE1 TYPE D. FORM GET_DATE USING VALUE(PERNR) VALUE(DATUM) VALUE(TYPE) CHANGING RESULT. CLEAR RESULT. PERFORM READ_INFOTYPE(SAPFP50P) USING PERNR ‘0041’ SPACE SPACE SPACE DATUM DATUM ‘0’ ‘NOP’ I0041. IF SY-SUBRC EQ 0. DO 20 TIMES VARYING dar FROM I0041-dar01 NEXT I0041-dar02 VARYING dat FROM I0041-dat01 NEXT I0041-dat02. IF dar IS INITIAL. EXIT. ENDIF. IF DAR EQ TYPE. RESULT = DAT. exit. ENDIF. ENDDO. ENDIF. ENDFORM.
Figure 3	Code for listing multiple dates for one employee