Entry and Flow of S/4 HANA CATS Time Records

[renee_robicheaux2]

Hello! I recently worked on a project that used CATS time entry in S/4 HANA. We created CATS time entry interfaces to and from SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC), to Controlling (CO) Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and Cost Centers, and to Fieldglass.

The system of record for Project time is CATS. The system of record for Non-project time is SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC).   Absences were entered in the EC timesheet and interfaced to S/4 CATS. Attendances were entered in S/4 CATS for hourly and salaried employees and contractors. Attendances interfaced to the EC timesheet for hourly paid employees. Both systems contained all Absences and Attendances for all hourly paid employees. Attendances for Salaried paid employees were not interfaced to EC.  EC time records were used for employee payroll. S/4 time time records were used for Fieldglass Contractor Vendor invoices, and Controlling WBS and Cost Center postings.

I will explain the entry of the time records in S/4 and the flow of the time records to or from each of these SAP systems.

CATS Time Entry

Before time can be entered for an employee/contractor, initial data setup must be completed. By totally minimizing customizations and sticking with SAP delivered, this setup can be completed is a relatively short period of time.

1. The S/4 HANA employee mini-master must be populated through data replication from SuccessFactors Employee Central. This includes infotypes 0, 1, 6, and 7.


2. Time sheet default infotype 315 should be populated.


3. Data Entry profile should be configured.                                                                                                                                       Cross-Application Components > Time Sheet > Specific Settings for CATS for service providers > Set Up Data Entry Profiles


4. Holiday Calendars should be configured.                                                                                                                                     Time Management > Work Schedules > Define Public Holiday Classes


5. Configure Attendance/Absence types.                                                                                                                                         Time Management > Time Data Recording and Administration  > Attendances/Action Working times > Define Attendance Types                                                                                                                                                          Time Management > Time Data Recording and Administration > Absences > Absence Catalog > Define Absence Types


6. If posting to Project Systems, at least one project is released with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).


7. Cost Centers are defined in Controlling.


8. If the employee is a contractor, the contractor must be set up in Fieldglass.

 

Attendance Time is entered in S/4 HANA CATS. Absence time flows from EC to CATS:

In this example Attendances are keyed for WBS - C.000001.01.13.10.01.01, Attendance type YA01, and 8 hours to 7/5, 7/6, 7/7, and 7/8. An Absence has transferred to S/4 HANA CATS from EC to Absence type YU73 for 8 hours on 7/4.

Contractor

CATS Time Entry

Employee

CATS Time Entry

After the Attendance time has been entered and approved, either by the manager or through auto-approval, the time entries will reside in the CATSDB table in S/4 with a status of 30. Absences are transferred from EC as a Status 30. The absence was already approved when it was entered in EC.  Status 30 means that the time has been approved and is eligible to be transferred to another system.

Our project required CATS Attendance time records to flow to SuccessFactors Employee Central, Controlling Work Breakdown structures and Cost Centers, and Fieldglass.

CATS Time Record Interfaces

Flow to/from SuccesFactors Employee Central (EC)

Attendance Time entries flow from S/4 to EC for Hourly paid employees. Absence time entries flow from EC to S/4 for all employees. Both S4 and EC contain all time entries for hourly employees so the total number of Attendance/Absence time can be seen in both systems. This avoids any confusion about whether or not the employee has any missing time when reviewing time in either system. Attendances for Salaried paid employees are kept only in S/4.

Inbound Absence Records -

EC timesheet -->  CPI run every 5 minutes --> ABAP Function module -->  CATSDB

Outbound Attendance Records - 

CATSDB --> ABAP extract program run every 15 minutes --> CPI  --> EC timesheet

 

With the frequent run of the Inbound Absence and the Outbound Attendance interfaces, both EC and S/4 CATSDB are updated near real-time.

Flow to Controlling WBS and Cost Centers

Using program RCATSTCO, CATSDB time records flow to Controlling where they are posted to the employee/contractor's home Cost Center and to a WBS.

Variant

   Spool

CATSDB records are transferred to CATSCO

 

Records have been transferred to Controlling in CATSCO with the 'Transferred' flag set. At this point, the time records have been posted to a WBS and the employee/contractor's home cost center.

Records have posted to a Cost Center -

Records are posted to a WBS -

Flow to Fieldglass

CATSDB time records can also be sent to Fieldglass for contractors. Once the time records reach Fieldglass, an invoice is automatically generated, enabling the contractor to be paid.

There is no standard delivered SAP program that creates the Fieldglass interface file. Our team wrote a custom program to extract the CATSDB records and put them in standard XML Fieldglass format.  The records are sent to CPI. From CPI, the records are reformatted to .csv and are submitted to Fieldglass. In our project the time records are posted to the Contractor's home cost center.

Timesheet records are pulled from CATSDB in the following XML format.

Timesheet records are converted to .csv format in CPI and submitted to Fieldglass. Once the records are loaded to Fieldglass, Fieldglass automatically triggers an Invoice for the vendor in Ariba, so that the contractor can be paid.

Thank you for allowing me to share how the CATS time records can be entered in S/4 HANA and be integrated into your SAP applications!

[brandontoombseic]

Renee-

 

This is excellent!  Wonderful explanation of the workarounds necessary to connect the dots between these systems. Just to confirm, the CPI interfaces between EC and CATS (both ways) are custom, correct?

Thanks,

Brandon

[renee_robicheaux2]

Hi Brandon -

No - CPI for EC to CATS and CATS to EC were both standard. For Absences, we only added the mapping of EC to CATS Absence codes in CPI along with the list of Absences to pull from EC. We also had to add the trigger of the custom ABAP function module to load the Absences to CATS.  For Attendances, we had a custom ABAP program to pull the attendances from CATS, but the CPI load to EC was also standard.

Thanks for the comment!

Renee

 

[brandontoombseic]

Renee-

 

That's great news!  Can you point me to where to find those? They're not visible in the help.sap.com EC>SAP integration area so they're probably somewhere else.

Thanks again for the great blog.

 

Brandon

[renee_robicheaux2]

Brandon -

CPI is definitely not my area of expertise.  I did find this link that explains the API for the Timesheet.

https://api.sap.com/api/API_MANAGE_WORKFORCE_TIMESHEET/overview

This link contains all of the standard API requests.

https://api.sap.com/package/SAPS4HANACloud/all

Thanks for the interest!

Renee

[former_member184386]

Hi, we are soon to implement EC to CATS on our ERP-ECC system. What do you mean by the custom ABAP function module? Is this something you developed during your project for both the Absences and Attendances?

Thanks!

Ricky Orea

[renee_robicheaux2]

Thank you for your interest! The custom ABAP function module was used to load the absences pulled from EC to S4 CATSDB. It was not used for Attendances, since Attendances were not entered in EC. Attendances were entered directly to S4 CATSDB by the employees.

 

[Pankaj1383]

Hi Renee,

Thank you for the blog, it provides an overview of entry and value flow of time records in S4 hana. On another note, did you have any requirement of timesheet related billing on wbs/projects?

Best Regards,

Pankaj

 

[renee_robicheaux2]

Yes! When the time entries are posted to a WBS in CATSCO, they are attached to a project - since the WBS is attached to a project.

[former_member861554]

@renee.robicheaux2,

 

Thanks for detailed information about.

Can you please clarify how the time sheet booking effectively used by Inter Order (CO) Vs WBS (PS)?

 

Which approach would be effective way?

 

Thanks

Muthuraj CK

[renee_robicheaux2]

Hello! Thank you for your question. I am not an expert in SAP Project Systems, so I'm sure there is more detail than what I am telling you here. In my screen print, I show that the time can be posted directly to a WBS within a Project Plan. This enables the project manager to report on the total labor cost for each WBS in his project. Of course, not all projects have WBS defined, so time posts to only a cost center.

In our project, we reported to both the cost center and WBS. It is done simultaneously using program RCATSTCO.

Once the time/costs are in Project Systems, it can be used for many things in managing the project - including report estimated vs actual costs and billing.

[former_member861554]

Dear Renee,

Thanks for information.

We know that through CATS we can track time through Cost center or WBS wise.

The clarification here whether through Internal order can we track the time booking.

Is there way to track and book time with Internal order?

Advance thanks for your time and support

 

Thanks and Regards,

Muthuraj CK

 

[mgallardo_tsp]

Hi Renee, great blog, thank you for taking the time to share your experience.  Just out of curiosity, what was the reason for sending the absence data from EC to S4 CATS?

Thanks.

Manuel Gallardo

[renee_robicheaux2]

H Manuel - This is a great question!  There is no system reason for Absence data to be sent from EC to S4 CATS. The reason it was sent was to enable the employee to see his full week of time on the timecard if he has both absence and attendance time in the same week.

Renee

[renee_robicheaux2]

Hi Muthuraj CK -

I have heard of Internal order, but have never used it. My guess is that it may be possible, but do not know any details. Thanks again for your interest!

Renee

[uchrist]

Hi Renee,

maybe you can answer my question: we have to replace SAP CS Modul by the S/4 Hana Service, where we will use the Service Orders. It it possible to book CATS based on S/4 Hana Service Orders instead of an CS-Order?

thanks a lot Ursula