SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2084206 - Manage Data - Percent Keeps Changing Slightly After We Save - Successfactors Compensation Management

Symptom

  • After updating the Percentage, it reverts back to the old percentage without any error.
  • Note: This may occur in any field that contains both amount and percentage ( fields such as merit, lump sum, adjustment,  stock, etc.)
  • You may see this most frequently occur when planning for hourly employees as merit amounts are usually not full dollar values and expressed primarily as a % as opposed to dollars and cents.

 

Environment

  • Successfactors Compensation Management
  • Successfactors Application

Reproducing the Issue

Example:

  • The Below screenshot was taken from a live worksheet for a merit/Lumpsum/Promotion field.
     
  • When they enter 3.00% into merit % field box and attempt to save, but the system changes the value back to 3.01%.

     

  • This main point you must keep in mind is that the system stores merit value, NOT merit percent. Merit percent is always a calculated realtime based on the merit $$. So if you enter 3% we don't store 3% but the amount that translates to. Also keep in mind that arbitrary % values such as 3 or 5% may need to be adjusted to account for the rounding of fractions of cents.
  • So even though you may enter a specifc full number such as 3% or 5%, the system must translate that into a real dollars and cents value, which will be accurate to 2 decimal places. The Percentage merit  will always adjust to the merit amount. (merit trumps merit percent).
  • Using the above example, If you enter 3.00%, the system will perform the following actions.
     
    Current Rate * merit percentage= merit amount
     
    Example: 18.59 * 3.00% = $ .5577
     
     
  • The system will now round this off to two decimal places
     
    0.5577 becomes  $ 0.56
     
     
  • To ensure that both the percentage and the amount match, the system will now convert the percentage to the percentage equating to the rounded amount
     
    Since Merit trumps merit percent the way we store it
     
    $ 0.56/18.59 =3.0123 when rounded off becomes 3.01%.
     
     
  • This is why you are seeing the values revert.  The system works to ensure the values are consistent between percentage and amount. 
     

Resolution

  • Since the issue is dependent on the number of decimal places on the Merit amount, you may want to increase the number of decimal places for the amount fields so that it will allow for entering more precise amounts and accommodate the percentage values in turn.
     
  • We cannot however guarantee that a full percent value, such as 3% will remain unchanged even if you increased decimal precision. It will just make the issue less likely to happen.
     
  • For most clients this is not a big issue as variances of thousandths of a cent may be acceptable, however, if managers are handling millions of units, then even values being off by thousandths can add up to full dollars and cents which may be problematic.

Keywords

  • Merit
  • Percentage
  • Amount
  • inconsistent value on updating merit
, KBA , sf compensation manage data , LOD-SF-CMP , Compensation Management , How To

Product

SAP SuccessFactors HCM Core all versions