2511923 - What is Effective Dating? - Employee Central

What is Effective Dating?

Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental. 

• SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
• SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite

How does Effective Dating work?

Some HRIS Elements in Employee Central and Custom MDF are controlled by Effective Dating. Whether a HRIS Element is effective-dated or not is defined by the system (hard-coded).

Effective Dating means that information records in Employee Central capture time as part of the data record that is stored in SAP SuccessFactors.

In the application, the HRIS fields “start-date” and “end-date” are used to capture the Effective Dating of the date (what date period is the data recorded for).

The HRIS field “end-date” does not appear on the UI but is used for reporting purposes (and can be viewed via Ad Hoc or Advanced Reporting features).

For example, if you change an effective-dated field such as Pay Grade and set the date when the change should be effective to 01/01/2015, the system records 12/31/2014 as the end date in the background. If you run a report on the pay grade in the time from 01/01/2014 until 12/31/2014, the pay grade value that was valid in that time frame will be shown.

UserA is hired into the system on 01/01/2017. During the Hire process, certain Effective Dated data is created, such as Job Information, Compensation Information, Personal Information, etc. They are all created with the start-date "01/01/2017". This means the data in the Effective Dated elements are effective from 01/01/2017. For example, the Job Information would have these dates -:

The above indicates that the Job Info record is effective between 01/01/2017 and 12/31/9999 (the end of time).

If we then insert a new Job Information record on 05/05/2017 with some changes (such as we change the Department, Division and Job Classification for an employee) then the previous record's end-date would be updated to indicate when its effective period ends. For Example -:

The system adapts the existing record (with start-date "01/01/2017) to end the day before (05/04/2017) the new record becomes effective from (05/05/2017).

How does Effective Dating - Multiple Changes Per Day - work?

For certain Employee Central HRIS Elements (such as Job Information, Compensation Information, Pay Component Recurring, Personal Information) you can maintain Multiple Changes Per Day. This means that you can have more than 1 record on the same date. Employee Central uses the "Sequence Number" (seq-number) to determine the record order on that given date. For example -:

What is the importance of Effective Dating?

Effective Dating allows you to control not only the effective period of the data (to ensure the correctness of data being consumed by other systems such as Payroll or modules such as Performance Management) but also for the rest of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite, via the HRIS Sync feature.

For example -:

EC > Compensation Integration - The Compensation Form will be configured to pick up the "current" EC Compensation Information record as per the effective-date configured in the Compensation Form. For example, the form is configured with effective date "06/06/2017". For our example user, their Compensation Information data is as such, and the system will select the highlighted record that is effective on this date -:

How does this impact the rest of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite?

Employee Central uses a feature called HRIS Sync, to synchronize changes in Employee Central data, to Employee Profile (Basic User Data /UDF) - this keeps the Effeective Dated System (Employee Central) and the Non-Effective Dated System (rest of SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite) in sync. Without it, when data changes in Employee Central (such as Job Classification or First/Last Name) it would not synchronize to other modules in the suite - meaning data becomes inconsisteant. This is how Employee Central maintains being the "Core" of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite.

• For more information on HRIS Sync, please refer to KBA 2080728 - Employee Central: What is HRIS Sync?
• For more information on Downstream Impacts of HRIS Sync, please refer to KBA 2507190 - HRIS Sync: Downstream Impacts

FAQ - Additional Information

Q) Where can I get information on this from the Guide?

A) Guide:Implementing Employee Central Core

     Chapter:Employee Central Effective-Dated Entities Permissions

• 2469087 - How to set effective dates auto-filled in Employee Central ?
• 2080728 - Employee Central: What is HRIS Sync?
• 2507190 - HRIS Sync: Downstream Impacts

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