Absence and Quota Configuration Made Easy

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 dont 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 birds 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.