For the MIS/Development Team in Information Services, the start of a new financial year means SAP needs to be updated to reflect any changes to HMRC regulations.
SAP is an essential piece of software for the University, as it holds our HR and financial data. If SAP were not functioning correctly, we couldn’t pay invoices, raise purchase orders, receive payments from students, administer our staff records, or process the monthly payroll.
At the start of every financial year there are a host of new or altered regulations known as Country Legal Changes (CLC). As a result of these CLCs our systems need to be updated to ensure that we continue to comply with the regulations and meet our statutory obligations. This is also our opportunity to ensure that we are using all other SAP software updates, so that we can be sure all areas are fully up to date.
Making the updates can be quite a challenge for the team, as they have to identify potential areas where configuration or program changes will or may affect current business specific SAP HR and Payroll processes in terms of:
- Impact on current functionality.
- Introductions of new functionality.
- Improvement/greater efficiency of current processes or corrections of an existing problem.
- The determination of the areas and the volume of testing required during the application of the changes.
Once implemented, the changes need to be extensively tested to ensure that they all function as needed, and that the system is ready for use by the University. This activity also requires a significant contribution from the HR and Finance teams in order to identify issues, and ultimately to provide assurance that operations are not adversely affected.
Having completed the annual upgrade, the team cannot relax…work on the system is ongoing with a constant stream of updates being released throughout the year, all of which need to be assessed, and where necessary, implemented and tested with the minimum of disruption to services.
Keeping our systems up to date is vital in ensuring that we continue to operate and provide the full range of services our stakeholders expect. This includes Year end Processing, Absence processing, Time Evaluation processing, Payroll Accounting processing, Financial Postings, Statutory changes, e.g. Tax, NI, SSP, SMP, etc. and maintenance of employee data in Personnel Administration.
As these processes are so essential, we work closely with the business teams to implement contingency plans and carry out end-to-end testing. This helps to ensure the system runs smoothly without interruptions.
For staff who require access to SAP for HR or Finance reporting, training is available from IT Training. Please visit www.city.ac.uk/ittraining for more information.
For any technical issues with SAP, please contact the IT Service Desk on 8181 or by logging a job on ServiceNow at www.city.ac.uk/servicedesk.
