Hail payroll geeks

Before I go traipsing off to write a UDF for this, can anyone tell me a more obvious way (within a payroll formula) to discern the first period/year that an employee assignment was processed in a payroll run?

Ta much.

Edited to add: no, emp_hire_date is not a reliable indicator in this situation!

If you have some idea of what date the person was first processed, then you can use "GET_PAYROLL_PERIOD".

Thanks for your response Peter, however the problem I have is that I don't necessarily know that date either.

This issue is around someone who is hired very late on in the pay period, and thereby gets processed for the first time in the following pay period.

However, I think I have a cunning plan for avoiding the need for a UDF - in normal situations I am looking for a balance at the appropriate date, which ordinarily is the period in which the employee was hired. That balance can be relied on to be non-zero, except when there was no processing done in that period - therefore, if I encounter a zero figure in that situation, I merely have to get the balance as at the following period.

Hi CT,

How are you referring to the balance in your formula? Do you only need to determine this in the first period they are processed?

Delboy

Del Boy,

Every month the formula looks for the balance as at the start of their hire date - most of the time we use a UDF to pass in the specified period end date. The only exception to this normally is where the employee is processed for the first time in the same period as the hire date, whereupon the function won't find an in-memory balance - in this case we refer to the DB item.

Ok...I was perhaps thinking you could use ASG_LAST_PROC_PERIOD_NUMBER (The period number the assignment was last processed) in some way? But that would only work in the first month of processing.

Delboy

Correct! :-D

Actually, given that this is loosely connected with the impending Civil Service Pension Reforms coming in April, you might have a kind of interest in this yer good self like!

Aaaah...I would defo be interested. Keep me up to date with your findings.

Delboy

Will do fella. Given the somewhat 'fluid' nature of the requirement (still not agreed, and the deadline is still 1st April, how appropriate is that) we are intending to break it up into 2 bits - First, is 'steady state and new starters', second bit is 'in year changes that trigger a recalculation' (that's the bit we don't know for sure yet).

We are hoping to be 'legal' by delivering the first bit in time for April, and the rest of it will be taken care of via retropay as and when we are able to deliver.

Just been checking the DB Items, all refer to previous or last period (the same) so nothing for first period, so I think you are off to UDF territiory

Nah mate, we've cracked it without the need for a (new) UDF, cheers anyway.

Do tell

See page 1 of this thread, from about half way down!

being totally purist about this.....there is no danger that somoneone could be missed or suspended for a period

So they don't get paid period 1 so balance is zero

Is there a danger that they may not get paid in another period for some reason and the balance could also be zero in that period?

Sorry don't know the dimensions of the balance you are looking at

Hmm, you make a fair point, young man...

Basically the background is this:

Come April 2012, our Civil Service friends are being invited to cough up an extra wedge towards their pensions - the basis for the calculation in any given year is the annualised FTE salary + appropriate allowances as at the end of the previous year. So we have an annualised figure that somewhat perversely is held (on my current site anyway) as a _ASG_PROC_PTD balance; this gets recalculated every month (it's also used for the calculation of the employer's percentage every month, so has already been configured that way).

That's all well and good, but of course we need to cover new starters in-year also, who won't have a figure as at the previous 31st March - hence, we need to obtain the annualised figure as at their hire date - or, if they weren't paid in that period, then the following one.

I would think it highly unlikely (but not impossible) that someone could be on a suspended assignment their first full month, but by the same token it is possible that someone who was already an employee could just so happen to be suspended as at 31st March. So, I shall make appropriate enquiries on that matter.

As a follow-up to that post, I have now been able to confirm that they don't use 'suspend' type assignment statuses here.