Considerations for Formatting Reports

Global Payroll provides various reports and extracts to meet all of your reporting requirements.

This topic lists the options you can use to enhance payroll report performance and report outputs.

Number Formatting

Use the Unit of Measurement (UOM) option to define how numbers are formatted and how payroll reports display Balance values based on its UOM definition.

You can format precision or number of decimal values for the hours and amounts in payroll reports. Currencies are always shown as two decimal values after the separator, example, 151.25 or 130.10. The zeros shouldn't be truncated.

However, when you use the MS Excel for a payroll report output and view the output on your local computer, MS Excel does its own formatting based on the settings on your local computer. In order to maintain consistency across the various output formats of MS Excel, PDF, Text, ensure that the settings on your machine are consistent with the UOM definition.

Display All Hours in Payroll Reports

Use the Display All Hours parameter to report hours from Supplemental Earnings and other element classifications on these payroll reports.

• Gross-to-Net Report
• Periodic Payroll Activity Report
• Payroll Balance Report
• Payroll Register Report

The default value for this parameter is No and only hours from Regular or Standard Earnings and Absence Earnings are included in the report to match with the standard working hours. Select Yes to report hours from Supplemental Earnings and other element classifications on these payroll reports.

Compress Payroll Report Outputs

Compress large files of the payroll report outputs and log files before you upload them to the UCM server.

Before you run the report, create a process configuration group and add the process configuration parameter, Compressed Output Compress the report output before uploading to UCM, to the process configuration group. Use this process configuration group to run the report and compress the report output file.

Note: When you run the Payroll Costing Results Report, use the new Compress Output Files field on the report submission page to zip or compress the report output file.

When you run the report, select this process configuration group on the flow submission page. Once the flow is completed, check the ‘output file’ section on the checklist result UI for the compressed file.

XML Data Chunking

Use the XML Data Chunking feature of BI Publisher while running these reports for large volumes of data.

• Payroll Activity Report for the Latest Process
• Statutory Deduction Register for the Latest Process
• Payroll Register Report for the Latest Process
• Costing Results (Extract-based) Report

XML data chunking reduces time and the memory used for processing large volumes of data. Large volumes of report output data are split into smaller, manageable chunks to enable parallel processing. These chunks are later merged into a single report output. It is recommended that you use this functionality only for report size larger than 1 GB.

Create a payroll process configuration group to enable the BI Publisher to split high volume XML extract output into multiple, smaller chunks. Use this configuration group to run the report.

MS Excel is the preferred output layout. Although the output for each chunk is merged into a single MS Excel workbook, the output for each chunk is in a separate worksheet in that workbook.

Note: You can't use this functionality for PDF and text output of the report.

Set Job Priority for Payroll Reports

The Priority of payroll reports on the BI server are by default set as Normal and hence are processed on first in, first out basis irrespective of the report being critical or noncritical.

The jobs are executed in a serial manner one after the other. However, there could be instances when the server is unable to process a job request, as expected, due to these reasons:

• Performance issues with a previous job on the BI server
• Overloading of the BI server
• Malfunctioning of the BI server

The report job encounters an issue and remains pending until a manual intervention is done to resolve the issue. Time-bound, critical processes, like Calculate Payroll, require uninterrupted processing of critical payment jobs like EFT, Check Payments, Payslips.

To avoid interruptions, set the priority of your payroll report jobs as Critical, so that they're executed on priority. When you set the report as Critical, when there's an interruption, the critical jobs are routed onto an optional server and processed on priority.

Note: You can make this change only on the custom version of the payroll report, payslip, EFT, or Check.

Follow these steps to set a payroll report as critical.

1. Navigate to the report in the BI Catalog.
2. Click Edit and then click Properties.
3. On the Report Properties window, under the General tab, select Critical in the Job Priority field.
4. Click OK.

Setting the report as critical reduces chances of failure when there's an issue with the BI server or a performance issue with a previous report job in the process.