In 2006, I thought it would be a great idea to write a book about SAP Query Reporting. For years, I had been storing hand-written notes on the topic of HR and Payroll reporting in an overstuffed 5 inch binder. I had developed a habit of scribbling down information and tips on this subject almost religiously. One day it was a nugget of information I received from my experience consulting for a company in need. The next day it was a piece of knowledge from a participant at an SAP conference at which I was speaking. Yet another day it was a technique that reaped dividends for my co-workers and company. Over the years, that binder had grown exponentially in size as had my desire to publish a book that accurately reflected the sum of all of my thoughts, knowledge and work experience on SAP Query Reporting. That book was published in 2006 and it was called SAP Query Reporting.
Unlike my other SAP books which were great sellers initially than slowly found their way to the bargain bin, SAP Query Reporting is still a top seller and it is over 6 years old! The funny thing about Query content is that it hasn’t drastically changed since my first SAP conference almost 20 years ago. Sure, ABAP Query is now known as SAP Query and it’s CE (Concurrent Employment) compatible and uses better indexing to get at the data. Yet at the end of the day, it still operates within the same fundamental framework. With all the amazing changes in SAP over the years, SAP Query has not changed very much. And SAP has made it clear that it does not plan on any future enhancements.
At the upcoming SAPinsider HR 2013 conference in Las Vegas later this month, I am giving a few presentations about the reporting options in SAP including SAP Query, Ad Hoc Query, where the cloud and Success Factors and BI fit in, etc. And of course I will be recommending SpinifexIT’s Easy Reporter (the only SAP-certified solution for real time HR/Payroll reporting).
I hope you are able to come to HR 2013 and meet me and the SpinifexIT team. I have at least 5 presentations that I am giving on various topics and I will also participate in the “Ask the Experts” forum on Tuesday, so there will be plenty of opportunities to say hello and talk to me about HR/Payroll reporting. Additionally, I will also be at Booth number 520 in HR 2013′s Solutions Showcase exhibit hall giving away free copies of my book. Check out the conference at hr2013.wispubs.com/. Many of the things I have learned in my career have come from the conferences and meeting other attendees, especially those who take the time to share their experiences with me. I am a richer person for it.
I hope to see you at HR 2013 in Las Vegas February 26-March 1!
In my almost 19 years of experience as an SAP HR consultant, I have seen companies use many different ways to configure the key elements of the personnel structure in an SAP ERP HCM system. Every few years, a new best practice design emerges that differs significantly from the one before.
While there’s no single right way to configure PA, there are best practices that have worked successfully in leading companies. At HR 2013, I will expound on these practices during my presentation, “Ensure Accurate and Meaningful Employee Analyses With These Expert PA Configuration Tips.” Since PA configuration is completely customizable, I strongly recommend designing a master plan before starting. A PA configuration grand design should address the following key questions:
What data do I need to collect?
What statuses do I want to assign?
What reporting goals are related to these actions?
During my presentation, I will provide recommendations to address these questions, along with useful tips on how to use the customer-specific status field to store employee statuses and classifications. I will also give step-by-step instructions with detailed explanations for customizing employee groups and sub-groups, and configuring actions and action reason codes.
Previous attendees at SAPinsider HR conferences have told me that this type of “getting back to basics” education yields great benefit in terms of data integrity and easier HR reporting. I’m excited to share the best practices and tips I’ve learned and developed over the years to help you get more value from your HR system.
I like to read. I’ll admit the reading list includes the Twilight, Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey trilogies. But I also read a lot of Human Resources books and magazines. They may not be quite as titillating (no vampires or red rooms of pain that I have found quite yet), but unlike the other books, I do learn a few things that I use in my everyday life.
And my everyday life is usually about Human Resources and technology. My latest read is HR Specialist Magazine, the Employment Law Edition, in which I learned that employees filed 99,947 charges of workplace discrimination with the EEOC last year alone (the highest ever). Leading claims include retaliation, race bias and sex discrimination.
The magazine details all of the different areas where employers need to be mindful of avoiding lawsuits and ensuring compliance. I always to try to think of ways that technology can assist in these endeavors. One article about how altering time sheets can mean a personal liability for managers was pretty interesting. It basically outlined that if you are a manager responsible for approving timesheets or signing off on alterations of time sheets, it’s not just your organization that can be sued … but you personally! The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) allows employees to sue their bosses, execs and HR professionals for personal liability for altering pay records.
How does technology help? For starters your SAP ERP HCM system can track employee time in several different ways and includes the ability for managers or HR professionals to alter time entry. My suggestion would be to insist (make it a required field, for example) for any change that is entered as an override to an employee’s time requires the entry have a note inserted detailing specifically why the time was altered. Little things like that allow you to make sure you are keeping things on track in terms of compliance. Plus, if you have a great reporting solution like Easy Reporter, you can easily report on those values as needed.
My blog posts will likely focus on these types of concerns and how technology can be used to assist. And for those curious – I am team Edward, Peeta and Christian respectively.
I have just returned from celebrating the holidays with my friends and family. I love watching everyone open their gifts but I can admit that holiday shopping is not fun. It took dozens of stores/websites to get all my gifts. If you looked at my Christmas shopping lists you would see things like a camera, train, a phone case, sweaters, ties all the usual stuff. You would think by looking at the list that a certain superstore with a bull’s-eye logo would meet my needs but it didn’t and that’s what this week’s blog is about. A single store may meet many of my needs but it certainly does not meet all of my needs. I feel the same way about SAP’s approach to reporting.
According to the article “Readers of this publication are certainly familiar with the applications of SAP Business Suite. Financials, HCM, SCM, CRM, and so forth are their “systems of record” where they house their most prized and cherished corporate information. Business analytics solutions are the applications that unleash the value of that information. Such solutions mean that you not only have a place to put your business information, but also a way to actively engage with it and extract every ounce of value therein. That’s what business analytics are all about.” I think the concept is great, like a BW type solution that houses all data so that it can be strategically reported on regardless of the module. It would be a great module to leverage to report on integrated information that includes data from HCM, Finance and Supply Chain for example. There is fantastic value in that. What challenges me though is the one-size-fits all concept. Let’s go back to my holiday shopping analogy. A big superstore is great for many of my holiday gifts and I was able to get a lot of the general gifts without a problem however I still had to go to specialty stores to get the important items on my list. Remember that camera on my list, sure superstores sell cameras but they do not sell the Nikon D7000 which my best friend wanted. I could likely find a train at the superstore but not the POW MIA Express Train Collection that my Uncle Frank wanted and that phone case had to be ordered at a specialty store to fit Laurie’s new IPhone 4S.
What I am trying to say is there is a lot of holiday presents that I could buy at the superstore but there will always be items that I need to get from the specialty stores. I feel the same way about reporting in SAP. Sure there are lots of great reports I could get from the new Business Analytics module but anything very detailed and specific to a module (like payroll and HR) still require the use of reporting tools specific to that module. Additionally the SAP HCM module is largely unique because of the heavy amounts of real-time transactional data that is processed through it and the complex relationship for payroll results etc.
For me this article reiterated the supercenter direction that SAP is moving towards. Business Analytics will certainly play a huge role in organizations and provide a large number of SAP HCM reports that I am excited about however I am still concerned that I will still have to go to a bunch of other places in SAP like Wage Type Reporter, Ad Hoc Query, HIS etc. to get at the detailed specific data I need.
spinifex IT is the creator of Easy Reporter, the only SAP certified solution that runs live inside SAP for real time HR and Payroll reporting. Check it out for yourself online at www.spinifexit.com/easy-reporter/ or contact me for a live WebEx demonstration.
When creating reports with SAP Query there may be occasions where you want to highlight or flag certain records for attention, real-world HR examples include:
Listing all associates and their salaries and flagging those that are over the maximum (or under the minimum) for their pay grade
Listing all associates and flagging those who are out on a leave
Listing all associates and their performance scores, flagging those who scored less than “meets Expectations”
Identify associates who are under (or over) a specified age (such as 18) to assist you in determining which associates are eligible for particular benefit programs or which require review
Identifying rehires who were previously terminated with a bad termination code
To do this we simply use calculated or local fields within your SAP Query. I blogged on how to create a calculated field – check it out “Creating calculated fields in your report (How to Eliminate Duplicate Line Reporting in Query Tools)” here on SAPINSIDER.
To insert a picture, only when certain conditions are met please follow the steps below. This will insert a flag for associates born earlier than 1989 as shown in picture.
Navigate to the Select Field screen (#2) of SAP Query
Add a short name for the Year of Birth field from infotype 0002 and give it a short name (YBIRTH)
Follow menu path Edit > Local field > Create and a dialog box will appear
Give your new local calculated field a short name, field description, and heading
Define the attributes of your new field by selecting icon
Select the Complex calculation button
In the Condition line, specify the expected value. You first list the short name you gave to the reference field (in the first step) followed by an operator and then followed by the value in single quotation marks.
Condition: YBIRTH > ‘1989’
8. In the Formula line, specify what value you want to output. In this case you want to output a icon, so you select the icon button to select the picture you want. The Formula line is then updated with the name of that icon (A flag in this example is called ICON_DEFECT)
9. Basically, you are saying that if the year of birth is greater than 1989, output a red flag for that record
10. To check your logic, select the Check icon
11. If no errors in your logic are found, select the green check mark icon to return to the Field definition dialog box
12. Select the green check mark icon to return to the Select Field (#2) screen
13. On the Basic List Line Structure screen (#5) be sure to add your new calculated field so that the field is included in your report output
14. Press F8 to execute your report to see your flagged records! :)
spinifex IT is the creator of Easy Reporter, the only SAP certified solution that runs live inside SAP for real time HR and Payroll reporting. Check it out for yourself online at www.spinifexit.com/easy-reporter/ or contact me for a live WebEx demonstration.
