Absence and Quota Configuration Made Easy (Part I)

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Introduction

During my initial years in HCM, I was always hoping to have some kind of ready reckoner where it tells me what the values in tables mean, what is the purpose , how to configure etc in lay man terms. Its important that it should be in lay man terms as someone who is well versed in the system would not need to refer any of these docs and so considering my target audience, I thought today to start off with making a simple document on how to configure Absence types and Absence quotas.

Considering that the topic is huge and to ensure that my readers don’t get lost with  information overload, I have decided to split the document into two parts as below.

Part I- Here we would be covering configuration of Absence types and Quotas

Part II- This would be in continuation with Part I and would be covering the topics of counting rule and deduction rules which will therefore ake the entire configuration of Absence and Absence Quotas complete.

Things Needed

• Tcode- SPRO
• Grouping Tables

Purpose	Table Name
Employee Subgrouping of Time Quotas	V_503_E
Personal Subgrouping of Time Quotas	V_001P_I
Personal Subarea grouping for attendance/ absence	V_001P_D

• Tables

Purpose	Table Name
Defining Absence Types	V_T554S
Counting rule	T556C
Time Constraint Class Table	V_554Y_B
Assign counting rule to Absence Type	V_554S_Q
Define Deduction rule	V_556R_B

• Already hired employee- Testing purpose.
• Questions to be clarified

I have split tables above into two parts mainly considering configuration and the other for convenience. For the purpose of configuring absence types and Quota we would need the configuration tables. Now SAP has helped us in making the process of configuration less complicated and to avoid duplication by providing the grouping tables.

Mainly the grouping tables helps in grouping similar functionalities so that one value in this table can be referred in multiple places during the configuration process.

The entire document would be split into 2 parts for the sake of easier understanding so that each configuration can be referred in the particular section and helpful to my readers.

Providing below an illustrative list of questions on which you should be having clarity on.

1. What are the Personal Areas and sub areas used in the organization?
2. What are the employee groups and sub groups used in the organization?
3. How many absence types needs to be configured? Of which how many would be having quotas?
4. What would be the annual entitlement for the absence quotas?
5. Which all Personal Areas and Employee groups would be having the same absence types and quotas?

Configuration Flow

Before I get into the configuration let me start with the process flow of configuration in SAP related to the Absence and related quota deductions etc.  

From a bird’s view, it is clear that an employee applies for a leave and the same is being deducted from the relevant leave type. Now how is this functionality achieved by SAP is explained with the below diagram.

Configuration would be in the below sequence

1. An Absence type would be defined.
2. A counting rule would be defined
3. The counting rule is assigned to the Absence type.
4. An Absence quota is configured
5. A deduction rule is configured
6. The Absence quota is then maintained in the deduction rule.
7. The final step would be to link the deduction rule to the counting rule to complete
   the entire cycle.

Let me also take this opportunity to introduce you the above characters who would be playing the main role in this configuration.

Absence Type- Absences are paid or unpaid planned working times during which the employee has not worked. These are the different leave types an employee in the organization is eligible for during his tenure with the organization. Eg are Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Loss of Pay etc.

Counting Rule- Duration of an absence can be counted according to the rules you define in this section. Thus, you can valuate the duration of attendances/absences differently depending on business requirements. What it means is that in case a leave is applied in the system, SAP gives the flexibility to basically change the number of hours to be considered as part of the absence. Mostly, when an employee is absent for a day and if his working hours is 8 hrs then the absence would be 8 hrs. This is determined by the counting rule. That is it ‘counts’ the hours to be considered for absence.

Deduction Rule- This essentially means that you define the rules according to which attendances and absences are to be deducted from the attendance/absence quotas. Here again you have the flexibility to decide from which quota should the absence be deducted, start and end of validity period of the quotas, start or end of quota deduction period etc.

Absence Quota- Our next concept would be absence quota which is nothing but the annual entitlements an employee is eligible approved time off by the company. Eg an employee might be eligible for only 30 annual leave in a year which is his absence quota for annual leave.

Time Constraint Classes- The time constraint class controls the system reaction if a new record in the Absences infotype (2001) overlaps with existing time infotype records. In other words, this is a functionality which decides how the system should behave when they are two types of time records on the same day. Depending upon the value we provide, the system can either give a warning msg, an error msg, allow the records to exist together etc.

Now lets get to action !!

Configuration

PART I- Absence Type

Step 1: Lets first start with grouping Personal Areas and Personal Sub Areas for whom the Absence types would be the same. This avoids creating multiple entries for each area even though they have the same absence types.

    

Table

V_001P_D

  

Step 2 (Config): This would be our first configuration step where we would be configuring the absence type- Casual Leave which would be a paid leave

Table

V_T554S

Save the entry.

Step 3 (Config): In this step, we would be defining the screen for the user and the time constraint classes.

Here we indicate if it is an Absence or Attendance, give the screen number which in our case since there would be quota deduction, we have given the value 2001. Here the Time Constraint class, I have given is ‘1’ which would mean that no two time records should co-exist in the system 

Now this would bring us to the end of the first part of the configuration where we have successfully configured an Absence type.

PART II- Absence Quota

We shall now come to the second part of the document where we would be focusing on configuring the absence quota.

The structure for this configuration would be as follows:

Firstly we would be grouping the employee groups and personal areas based on the quota types and then following it up with defining the quota types.

Step 1:Grouping Employee Subgroups and Personal Subareas for the time quotas- Which would mean that we are clubbing all those  employee subgroups and personal subareas who would be having the same time quotas.

Grouping Employee Subgroups

Table

V_503_E

Grouping Personal Subareas

Table

V_001P_I

Now we shall proceed to define the Absence Quota Types

Step 2 (Config): Defining the absence quota for the absence type Casual leave we had defined earlier

Based on the above Value of ESG and PSA grouping values of 2 and 01 respectively we would define a absence quota by giving a value and text. We also provide the measurement unit and the time constraint class values for the absence quota as shown below:

Table

V_T556A

 

Saving the above changes would result in having the absence quotas configured.

This brings me to the end of Part I of this document. Part II of the document would be focusing on the counting rules and deduction rules which would act as the interlinking pin between the Absence Quotas and Absence Types.

Part II document can be viewed in this link http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-73158 .

Happy Reading.

Thanks and regards,

Shine Sebastian Joseph