SAP Payroll Insights - 12 August 2020

Welcome to the SAP Payroll Insights newsletter by Insight Consulting Partners! This newsletter is focused on SAP and Employee Central (EC) Payroll features, news, tips & tricks and general industry information.

Notes and Updates from SAP

Note 2950126 has information and restrictions on posting with personnel numbers from Payroll to S/4HANA Finance. My advice has always been not to post personnel-number detail into the accounting general ledger. Payroll has the employee-level detail and can secure that and report on it. The general ledger can't secure on employee-level detail and isn't made for that anyway. The most common reason I've heard that people want this functionality is for reconciliation purposes, which means they need help with reporting in Payroll. And there are a number of ways to do that reporting.

Seems there are some problems - short dumps and time-outs - for some customers when employees retrieve their pay statements. See note 2949946. The solution is to not have so many payroll results laying around (wrong answer), or to add an index to table HRPY_RGDIR to make the process more efficient (better answer).

There are a lot of notes lately for US Garnishments with the e-IWO process. Do a search in PY-US-NT-GR, but here are some of the latest:

Number

Title

2955513

e-IWO - Corrections to Historical Data Selection Filters and Enhanced Historical Data Period Default Dates

2951409

GARN: e-IWO - Infotype Specific Error Messages and Deduction Amount Missing Error Message

2950541

GARN: e-IWO - Remittance FIPS Code Override and Short Dump When Processing Orders

2950551

Prerequisite Objects for SAP Note 2950541

2947511

GARN: e-IWO Corrections to PDF Deserialization Error, Orders With Received Date Prior to Payment Date and Order ID as Required

2949487

Prerequisite Objects for SAP Note 2947511

2945947

GARN: e-IWO Error Creating Infotype 0195 When Processing Orders

Note 2760305 announces that support for BSI TaxFactory version 10.0 for US Payroll has been extended to April 30, 2021 - giving customers a few more months to upgrade to version 11. I think if you haven't already upgraded to 11, doing so with the year-end HR Support Packs would be a good way to do it. Most all the notes you need should be included there, and you will be doing regression testing anyway (right?).

Around The Web

The big news for US Payroll is how in the world to handle President Trump's memorandum on deferring Social Security payroll tax obligations. Employees earning less than $4,000 per biweekly pay period (or equivalent if paid on a different frequency) can defer their Social Security taxes between September 1 and December 31 this year. It states that 'The Secretary of the Treasury shall issue guidance to implement this memorandum.' Well, that's good because employers need a lot of guidance on how to do this. I've had several inquires from customers on this too. There are a lot of questions to resolve.

What if an employee doesn't want to defer their tax? Can they opt-out, or does everyone have to opt-in? Can an employer opt-out and decide not to defer taxes for its employees? How does the employee pay that deferred amount? Will the 1040 tax return be amended? Schedule 3 lets employees get a refund over-withheld Social Security tax, but I don't think you can pay more via that schedule. If someone earns more than $4,000 per biweekly period, can they still defer tax on the first $4,000? If an employee leaves the company between September 1 and December 31, is the employer liable for paying the under-withheld Social Security tax? How would this work on the W-2 form? What if an employee holds concurrent positions, each under the income threshold but together, over it?

So, yes, some guidance is needed. My advice to customers is to wait for the guidance, and know that SAP's US Payroll is very flexible and can handle these things - if we know what needs to be handled. Stay tuned.

New York has had a Paid Family Leave law for some time now, and it can be used to care for family members who have COVID-19. But, not if you have had 'non-work related trips to states with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents, or higher than a 10% test positivity rate over a seven day rolling average.' In that case, no paid leave is available to the employee.

Quote of the Moment

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.” ― Margaret Mitchell

Have a great day!

Steve Bogner
Managing Partner, Insight Consulting Partners


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