Does SAP SuccessFactors have CATS?

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A Replacement for CATS has been Missing in SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking

SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking has come a long way since it's been created as a separate module building on Employee Central Time Sheet 3 years ago. The first milestones included capabilities that are absolutely crucial for a Time&Attendance solution like

• Time-clock integration
• "Mobile punch"
• Working time across midnight
• Approval of individual records (rather than whole weeks only)

But now, it's getting close to covering all cases the mighty (but sometimes ugly) SAP HCM on-premise Time Management solution covers: the cherished "Feature Parity" - as far as you can ever say this about a solution that allows you to change every line of code. Over and above that, SuccessFactors Time Tracking can also show some features the on-premise solution never had, including

• GPS-data for mobile clock-in/clock-out
• MS Teams integration
• Conversational AI

With the latest release (1H2024), the option to use business rules in time evaluation has also added a lot of extra flexibility (Early Adopters only - general availability in 2H2024). So, for many customers, there is only one roadblock left, before they are ready to migrate from SAP HCM Time Management to SuccessFactors Time Tracking: Does SAP SuccessFactors replace or integrate with CATS? (CATS, or Cross Application Time Sheet, is the solution to assign working time to projects, cost centres, customer orders, activity types etc.)

Yes: SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking + S/4HANA My Timesheet = CATS in the Cloud

With the H12024 release, the answer is indeed "yes". SuccessFactors Time Tracking does now integrate with SAP S/4HANA My Timesheet v4. This will allow customers to implement similar processes as they could in the past with SAP ECC HCM Time Management and CATS - just with a much better User Experience. Note: for now, the integration does officially work with S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition (PCE). There is no equivalent yet for S/4HANA public cloud and you should check individually, whether it works in your S/4 HANA on-premise system.

On 28th May, Seema Narayanan and Frans Smolders presented the integration and the process flow across S/4HANA My Timesheet and SuccessFactors Time Tracking in a webinar. I'll summarise the main insights from that webinar and other conversations.

Integration Design Between SAP SuccessFactors and S/4 HANA My Timesheet

As a rule of thumb, SuccessFactors Time Tracking is meant to determine when we work, whilst S/4HANA My Timesheet is about what we are working on. However, with integration active for an employee, working times would also be captured in My Timesheet (except for clock-in/clock-out times. We'll discuss that later). So, the division of work between the two systems will be:

SAP SuccessFactors is the leading system of record for:

• Employee Master Data including cost centre assignment of the employee
• Employee work schedules
• Absences

S/4HANA with My Timesheet is the leading system of record for:

• Cost centre master data
• Working Time records including assignment to cost objects

Employee Mini Master data and availability (work schedules and absences) as well as the relevant configuration of absence types and time types are replicated from SuccessFactors to S/4HANA via the BTP Integration Suite. Cost Centre Master data flows in the opposite direction also via BTP IS.

The time records from My Timesheet are sent to SuccessFactors Time Tracking in real time through a point-to-point (P2P) integration and valuation messages like warnings flow the opposite direction also via P2P. After approval, the finalised time records are passed to SuccessFactors Time Tracking again for time evaluation and finally processing in payroll.

The following diagram illustrates the data integration:

Time Recording Process with SAP SuccessFactors and S/4HANA My Timesheet

So, users would capture all their working time in My Timesheet and assign it to cost objects. Absences can also be captured in the S/4HANA UI, even though they are actually stored in SuccessFactors. But they can also go through the leave request workflow with SuccessFactors Time Off via the known UIs: SuccessFactors Browser UI, SuccessFactors Mobile App, Microsoft Teams or the digital assistant Joule.

The time recording process flow from employee data capturing through time capturing to payment and posting in finance is illustrated in the following diagram. Interventions by Time Administrators to amend errors etc. are not included to keep the process flow lean:

Note that line managers, who may need to approve absence requests in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (Time Off) and time records in SAP S/4HANA My Timesheet could use the SAP Task Centre as a single goto-point for both approvals (pink colouring in the diagram above). SAP Task centre is a Web Application living on SAP BTP. It may not be a good business case to implement it for these two approval types only, but makes sense in a broader scope.

What's Coming for the SuccessFactors to My Timesheet Integration?

• The process as described so far works well, if times are captured in the timesheet only. However, most organisations would be using time clocks to capture start and end times and possibly breaks. So, one planned roadmap item is allowing for clock times to come from SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking (From integrating time-clocks, mobile punch, Joule or the browser UI), so employees can distribute the clocked time in My Timesheet. This roadmap item is not scheduled yet, though I'd hope for this to happen early next year.
• Dealing with working time across midnight without tedious workarounds and automated handling of breaks is planned for the 2H2024 release already.
• The same ist true for capturing allowances in My Timesheet and accessing My Timesheet from Joule.

Subscriptions needed for this "CATS Replacement in the Cloud"

• The good news on the cost side is: My Timesheet is included in all S/4HANA subscriptions anyway (not in public cloud, obviously, as the solution currently doesn't exist there). So, no extra cost for that.

• Then you'd need SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking. But you'd have that anyway in the expected scenario.
• You could even use this integration without SuccessFactors Time Tracking, but then you wouldn't have the validation checks / messages and of course you couldn't use times captured in my Timesheet for time evaluation. So, you'd only have the Minimaster, work schedules and absences from Employee Central. We therefore recommend the scenario with Time Tracking.
• No extra subscription is required for the integration scenario, assuming a BTP Integration Suite is already in place.

A Reminder on Shift Planning / Employee Scheduling

Finally: as we are talking about integration between SAP SuccessFactors and other SAP solutions: not all customers are aware that there is a Shift Planning / Employee Scheduling component in the SAP Digital Manufacturing solution and that this can integrate with SAP SuccessFactors HCM. So, your planning process can benefit from master data, work schedules, absences and skills kept in SAP SuccessFactors. For manufacturing businesses, this can be an excellent alternative to the 3rd party shift planning apps available in SAP Store.