Overview of Payroll Event Groups

A payroll event group defines the types of data changes monitored for features such as the retroactive recalculation of payroll, the retroactive recalculation of time cards, and the retropay for late hires.

There are three types of payroll event groups:

  • Proration

  • Retroactive

  • Event Action

Proration

Using proration, you can calculate proportionate earnings and deduction amounts whenever payroll-relevant data changes during a payroll period.

For example, you can calculate proportionate earnings and deduction amounts if:

  • A person joins or leaves an organization in the middle of a payroll period

  • A person's pay rate changes during a payroll period

If you want to prorate an element, such as basic salary, assign a proration event group to the element with proration points that affect a person's salary. You can use the predefined event group, or create a new one. When you create an event group, you select the events that activate proration calculation, such as changes to:

  • Hourly or annual pay rates

  • Working hours

  • Allowances or deductions

  • Assignment changes, such as grade or position

Tip: You can only select events that represent changes to element entries, calculation cards, calculation value definitions and assignments.

Retroactive

Retroactive processing ensures that your payroll run for the current period reflects any backdated payments and deductions from previous payroll periods. A retroactive event group defines the types of changes that trigger a retroactive event notification. These types of changes are Entry Changes for Retro and trigger notifications when changes are made in a prior payroll period. You can make additional events trigger the recalculation process by editing the group or creating a new event group for the element. All events trigger in real time.

Within a retroactive event group, select the events that produce notifications if a backdated change occurs. Specify the entity, update type, and attribute, as shown in the examples provided in the following table.

To disable notifications for an element, within the Manage Element UI, query the 'base' element that you no longer want to be processed by retropay and remove the specified 'Retroactive Event Group'. This prevents new events from being triggered.

Entity

Update Type

Attribute

Element Entry Value

Correction

SCREEN_ENTRY_VALUE

Element Entry

Update

EFFECTIVE_START_DATE

Element Entry

Update

EFFECTIVE_END_DATE

Element Entry

Logical Date Change

Element Entry

Insert

Element Entry

Delete Changes

Event Actions

An event action links a process to the events within an event group. When an event occurs, the process is triggered based on a set of conditions defined on the event action. You can use event actions to control the submission of features, which use event groups of type action such as generate HCM Rates and time card reprocessing. Event actions control the aspects of submission such as, if the process is automatically submitted when an event occurs or when submitted through a payroll flow.

There are two event action submission types:

  • Manual: The application processes the event action notifications using the ‘Process Event Action’ flow. Schedule this process to run on a regular basis to ensure your information is kept up to date such as your stored rate values. Also, add this task to your payroll cycle flow so it is submitted before you calculate payroll.
  • Automatic: The application automatically submits processes such as retropay late hires, each time an event action notification is generated.

There are different types of event actions, each with its own set of submission control rules such as:

  • Resubmission of time cards

  • Retropay for late new hires

  • Absence resubmission

  • HCM Rates Recalculation
  • Mexico SDI calculations

Use HCM Data Loader to create an event action.