It is important for HR to post payroll information accurately to FI accounts. You achieve this using symbolic accounts, which tie HR wage type data to FI accounts. Many people may not realize that you should never delete symbolic accounts, even if they are no longer assigned to a wage type.

First, I’ll demonstrate the preparation involved for both HR and FI and the techniques for setting up symbolic accounts. Then, I’ll explain why it is necessary to keep used symbolic accounts active for the duration of your company’s Payroll system. In addition, I’ll show you how to detect and resolve a problem that can occur if you delete used symbolic accounts.

HR wage types are the basic element used in posting to accounting, although they are not directly assigned to FI accounts. Instead, HR wage types are assigned to symbolic accounts. In Release R/3 4.6 and mySAP ECC 5.0, HR wage types are linked to FI accounts via a two-step procedure:

Step 1. In Payroll, a symbolic account is assigned to a wage type. Think of symbolic accounts as group wage types because they are treated similarly for the purposes of posting.

Step 2. The symbolic account is assigned to an account in FI (e.g., general ledger [G/L] accounts such as expense, balance sheet, customer, or vendor).

Because HR payroll results contain information relevant to FI, the results must be evaluated to post to accounting. The posting to the accounting component performs this task in the HR module. In R/3 4.6 and mySAP ECC 5.0, this component is part of payroll subsequent activities in the SAP Easy Access menu. Posting to accounting helps the payroll administrator group together posting-relevant information from the payroll results, create summarized documents, and perform the relevant postings to the accounting components. This article demonstrates the preparation and configuration that make this component ready for use by the payroll administrator.

Designing and preparing the wage types posting characteristics is a joint effort between HR (the payroll and administration teams) and FI (the G/L team). The process of designing and preparing the wage types for posting is key to a successful interface setup. The roles of each team are explained in the next section.

Preparation

Before setting up symbolic accounts, you should lay the groundwork for the interface between HR and FI. Your coworkers on the FI side should perform similar tasks on their end. Both the HR and FI teams should create a list of all wage types in your enterprise that are relevant to the posting.

• The HR team should identify all wage types and wage type characteristics that will be paid/deducted to/from employees through a regular payroll run or off-cycle payroll run per company policy. Wage type characteristics specify and control payment and deduction in payroll. The HR team then sends the wage types to the FI team.
• Upon receiving the wage types from the HR team, the FI team specifies each wage type’s posting characteristics and corresponding financial accounts. The wage type posting characteristics control the wage type behavior during the posting process.

You need to specify the employee groupings for account determination only if you want to post the same wage type to various accounts in FI according to employee attributes. For instance, say your business has the functional requirement that the education assistance and performance bonus wage types amounts for senior (SNR) employees and junior (JNR) employees should be posted to separate G/L accounts.

In this case, you need to define two employee-grouping values (Senior and Junior) to accommodate this requirement. Therefore, the FI team should indicate this in its requirements and, accordingly, Table 1 should be changed to contain this information, shown in Table 2.

Note
The plus/minus sign determines how a particular wage type is posted. For example, assigning the plus sign (+) to HR wage types means positive HR wage types post as FI account debits and negative HR wage types post as FI account credits. The opposite is true if you assign the minus sign (–) to HR wage types.

Set Up a Symbolic Account

Now you’re ready to set up symbolic accounts. The process involves preparing wage types, creating a symbolic account, assigning the wage types to the symbolic account, and assigning the symbolic account to a G/L account. Note that wage types are country-dependent, but both the employee grouping for account determination and symbolic accounts are not.

Follow these steps:

Step 1. Define the employee grouping account determination. This step shows you how to configure the two employee grouping values (SNR and JNR) shown in Table 2.

Enter transaction S_AHR_61010529 or follow the IMG menu path Payroll> Payroll: International>Reporting for Posting Payroll Results to Accounting> Activities in the HR System>Employee Grouping and Symbolic Accounts> Define Employee Grouping Account Determination. Click the execute icon to see the selection screen shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Double-click on Employee grouping for account determination: Define values

Double-click on the first row, Employee grouping for account determination: Define values. This brings up the Employee Grouping for Account Determination window (Figure 2). Click the New Entries button to enable the entries columns and enter the Employee Grouping for Account Determination (EEGAD), in my example JNR and SNR, and their definitions. Click the save icon.

Figure 2

Define employee grouping values

Step 2. Assign the employee grouping for account determination with the employee subgroup. Define the relationship between the employee groups for account determination previously defined in step 1 (JNR and SNR) and employee group/subgroups that exist in the enterprise structure. In this scenario, I use 1A and 1B to represent employee subgroups; JNR and SNR represent employee grouping for account determination. Through this configuration, the wage type amounts of employee subgroup 1A are transferred through the JNR group account determination, while amounts of employee subgroup 1B are transferred through the SNR group account determination.

Click the back-arrow icon in the toolbar at the top of Figure 2 to return to the selection screen. Double-click the second row of the selection screen in Figure 1, Define assignment of EE char. to EE group account assgmt, to open the assignment screen (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Select the PERSK node in the assignment screen

Select the PERSK node and click the create icon. Enter the employee subgroups (1A and 1B) in the Values column and click the transfer icon. You then see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Assignment screen with employee subgroup only

To define the relationship between employee subgroup 1A and group account determination JNR, select the employee subgroup 1A node in Figure 4 and click the create icon. Enter the corresponding employee group account determination value (JNR) on the resulting screen and click the transfer icon.

To define the relationship between employee subgroup 1B and group account determination SNR, select the employee subgroup 1B node in Figure 4 and click the create icon. Enter the corresponding employee group account determination value (SNR) on the subsequent screen and click the transfer icon. Upon completion of this step, the assignment screen looks like Figure 5.

Figure 5

Assignment screen with both employee subgroup and employee grouping for account determination

During the posting process, the posting driver program RPCIPE00 uses the assignments above to distribute the amount of the same wage types to different accounts according to the employee subgroup defined in the enterprise structure.

Step 3. Define the symbolic account. Create a new symbolic account that you will use in the next steps to group the education assistance and performance bonus wage types from Table 2.

Enter transaction S_AHR_61010533 or follow the IMG menu path Payroll > Payroll: International > Reporting for Posting Payroll Results to Accounting > Activities in the HR System > Employee Grouping and Symbolic Accounts > Define Symbolic Account. Click the execute icon to view the screen shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

Click on New Entries to enable entries columns

Click the New Entries button in Figure 6 to enable the entries columns. Create and define the symbolic account by specifying the symbolic account code, description, type, and employee group dependency flag by typing in the following values shown in Figure 7:

Figure 7

Define parameters for the symbolic account

• Symbolic account key (Sym) = $EDU

• Description of the symbolic account = Education & Bonus Expense

• Account type (AAT) = C (e.g., posting to expense account)

• EG-depend. Check this box to indicate that the account determination depends on the employee grouping

Step 4. Assign the wage types to the symbolic account. Assign the wage type from Table 2 to the symbolic account defined in step 3.

Enter transaction S_AHR_61010537 or follow the IMG menu path Payroll > Payroll: International > Reporting for Posting Payroll Results to Accounting > Activities in the HR System > Maintain Wage Types > Define Posting Characteristics of Wage Types. Click the execute icon to display a list of existing wage types. Select wage type Education Assistance (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Select wage type Education Assistance

Double-click on Posting a Wage Type in the left side of the screen in Figure 8 to see the detailed wage type screen shown in Figure 9. Define the following parameters:

Figure 9

Detailed wage type screen

• Sign (V) = + (see earlier note explaining the + and – designations)

• Processing type (ProcessTyp) = Normal processes

• Symbolic account (Sym) = $EDU

Assign the wage type Performance Bonus to the $EDU symbolic account by repeating the process outlined in step 4.

Step 5. Assign the symbolic account to G/L accounts through the chart of accounts. Enter transaction S_AHR_61010644 or follow the IMG menu path Payroll > Payroll: International > Reporting for Posting Payroll Results to Accounting > Activities for AC System > Assign Accounts > Assign Expense Accounts. Click the execute icon to display the Chart of Accounts selection screen (Figure 10). Enter the appropriate chart of account or click the select icon in the left window of Figure 10 to get a list of existing charts of accounts. In this example 1000 ABC Chart of Account is selected. Click the enter icon (a green check mark). Entering the Chart of Accounts calls up the FI Configuration window shown in Figure 11.

Figure 10

Enter the Chart of Accounts

Figure 11

FI configuration window

Define the symbolic account $EDU and corresponding G/L accounts from Table 2 (5140102 for JNR and 5130102 for SNR) as shown in Figure 12 and click the save icon. Note that the system enters the Transaction as HRC automatically because you already chose to assign expense accounts (see the IMG menu path of step 5). The transaction key is assigned by the account chosen for assignment.For example, if you choose balance sheet accounts, the transaction key HRF automatically defaults.

Figure 12

Define the symbolic account and G/L accounts

You have now set up a symbolic account for educational and bonus expense that you can use to post this information to the appropriate FI accounts.

What to Do with Old Symbolic Accounts

Here is an example of why someone might delete an old symbolic account, the consequences of this action, and how to resolve it. Because of a change in your company’s functional requirements, all wage types that were assigned to specific G/L accounts through sym-bolic account $EDU were reassigned to other G/L accounts through symbolic account $XYZ.

Consequently, your IT team member Joe deletes symbolic account $EDU. He thinks that there is no longer a need to keep symbolic account $EDU because no wage types are assigned to it. What Joe deletes is the assignment of an old symbolic account to G/L accounts, similar to the screen shown in Figure 12. This deletion then becomes active in production.

Later, in your production system, two payroll periods (using current period dates) are processed and posted successfully. However, in the third payroll period (using a past period date), the posting to the G/L account fails (Figure 13).

Figure 13

Error message indicating that the posting to the G/L account failed

Why did the third payroll period post to the G/L account fail? The posting driver program tried to post an amount using an unavailable search key. When you examine the search key name, 1000HRC$EDUSNR, you find the symbolic account $EDU and group SNR at the end of the name. It refers to the deleted symbolic account assignment.

Even though this education wage type (part of symbolic account $EDU) was paid to many employees in the first and second payroll periods, the error occurred in the third period because it paid with a past date that required retrocalculation to adjust the old accounts. Consequently, the retrocalculation required a posting adjustment via the deleted symbolic account assignment.

It is best to detect errors resulting from deleted symbolic accounts at the time of document creation in simulation mode. In my example, if Joe had been working in simulation mode, he would have realized the importance of symbolic account $EDU and he could have reassigned the deleted assignment.

Mohamed Khalid Yousif

Mohamed Khalid Yousif is a certified senior SAP HR consultant. Mohamed has a master’s degree in computer science from Khartoum University, Sudan. He is currently the team leader of the SAP HR support team and also was team leader of the ECC 5.0 upgrade project at National Drilling Company, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

You may contact the author at myousif@ndc.ae.

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