Time and Labor/Absence Management Integration – Part I

 This is the first part of a two part article dealing with the integration of PeopleSoft Time and Labor and Absence Management as well as implementation considerations to reduce ‘time’ leakages between the two modules. This series is published by HRoi Consulting and sponsored by Accu-Time Systems’ Cesium Solution. - Time clocks for PeopleSoft Time and Labor.

Prior to the introduction of Absence Management as a standalone module, customers who wanted a complete Time and Attendance solution in PeopleSoft were limited by choice. Time and Labor was of course designed to handle ‘worked time’, but did not have specialized capabilities to handle absence management requirements. It lead to most implementations using either the Monitor Absence module in Workforce Administration or Leave Plans in Benefits to handle the absence management requirements. Needless to say, these were not optimum solutions and often entailed heavy customization to make these modules work like a true absence management module.

The Time and Attendance system design in PeopleSoft took a critical turn with the introduction of Absence Management. Now, customers could use specialized modules for handling both ‘worked time’ as well as ‘absences’ and it meant that sites could now implement a comprehensive Time and Attendance solution using PeopleSoft Time and Labor and Absence Management. It is noteworthy to mention here that the Time and Attendance solution got re-inforced in version 9.1 with the out of the box integration to Oracle Workforce Scheduler (OWS).

Overview of the integration

The integration between Absence Management and Time and Labor can be broadly classified to fall under the following categories:

1.  Integration of absence reporting and approval on Time and Labor timesheets. 
2.    Integration of absence management and time and labor data in the various MSS Schedule views.
3. Integration of absence event data in Time Administration processing. 
4.   Integration of absence management and time and labor data for payroll processing.

The nature and extent of the integration is primarily dependent on the payroll system attached to the employee in Workforce Administration. This integration is only supported if the payroll system is either Payroll for North America or Global Payroll. This means that if the payroll system is selected as Payroll Interface, you lose the ability to integrate these two modules in an effective manner. This is indeed an important decision point in the design of the entire solution for an implementation having a third party payroll vendor.

Let us examine the integration details with Payroll for North America and Global Payroll as the pay systems.

Global Payroll:

With Global Payroll as the pay system, the following integration points are possible for Time and Labor and Absence Management:

1.      Report and Approve absence requests on Timesheet.

2.      Absence Event data brought over to payable time by Time Administration process.

3.      Absence Management and Time and Labor data available as an integrated view in the various MSS scheduling pages like Manage Schedules, Monthly Calendar, Weekly Calendar etc.

4.      Payable time data integrated back to Global Payroll as positive input for payroll processing.

The diagram below gives a high level overview of the various integration points between Time and Labor and Absence Management using Global Payroll as the pay system.

Payroll for North America:

When using Payroll for North America as the payroll system, the integration points between Time and Labor and Absence Management remains almost same as that for Global Payroll but with the difference that absence management data is brought over to Time and Labor for payment in Payroll for North America. In this case, absence management related positive input that is generated in the GP_PI_GEN_DATA table is sent over to Time and 

Labor by the “To Payroll for North America” conversion process at Absence Management side. The conversion process populates Payable Time table with data from Absence Management and this is further sent to Payroll for North America when the “Load Time and Labor” data process is run in the Payroll for North America module. The other integration points like absence event entry in Timesheet, integration to the various scheduling views etc. remain the same as that for Global Payroll. Thus, the various integration points between the two modules with Payroll for North America as the pay system can be summarised below:

1. Report and Approve absence requests on Timesheet. 
2.   Absence Event data brought over to payable time by Time Administration process. 
3. Absence Management and Time and Labor data available as an integrated view in the various MSS scheduling pages like Manage Schedules, Monthly Calendar, Weekly Calendar etc. 
4. Absence Management positive input paid through Payroll for North America after being first brought over as payable time in Time and Labor.

Handling the integration with a third party payroll system

With payroll outsourcing gaining popularity, a common configuration is to have PeopleSoft Time and Labor and Absence Management with a third party payroll system. As mentioned in the article earlier, the integration between T&L and Absence Management is not well supported if you select “Payroll Interface” as the pay system of the employee. In this case, what are the options available for integration?

1. Consider if you can use “Global Payroll” as a dummy pays system. Even if you are not actually using GP, you can select Global Payroll as the payroll system for an employee. This decision gives you the added flexibility to turn on the Global Payroll related integration points between these two modules. Note that this may not be possible if the customer is using the Payroll Interface engine to generate files for third party payroll systems.
2. The second option is to choose Payroll Interface as the payroll system and then customize the system to make the delivered integration points work for Payroll Interface. A good cost benefit analysis will have to be done to ascertain the exact benefits of this customization before treading this path.

In this post, I have tried to give an introduction to the various integration points and possibilities with Time and Labor and Absence Management. The next post will deal with unique challenges in implementing an integrated Time and Labor and Absence Management system, especially with regards to reduction of payroll leakages.

This post is sponsored by Accu-Time Systems’ Cesium Solution. -  the latest Oracle certified Time Clock vendor for PeopleSoft Time and Labor.

This post is authored by HRoi Consulting  - the PeopleSoft Time and Attendance experts.

Another one in the Oracle hat - TALEO

In another significant move at consolidation of the HR Technology space - Taleo announced three days back that it had entered into an agreement with Oracle to be acquired by the latter. Leaving the 'cloud' argument aside, what excites me most about this acquisition is that the Oracle HCM suites will now have a leading ATS to offer their clients. Over the last few years I have seen customers sideline the entire PeopleSoft e-recruitment module and opting to implement a specialized recruitment software like Taleo or SuccessFactors. The Oracle HCM solution offering will surely be more comprehensive by this acquisition and that is indeed good news for all Oracle HCM customers!