ERP App Store

This is an excellent post from Jiju Vengal. It is a great idea, but (there's always a but)-

At the back of my mind I seem to recall that there is something in the licence agreement for PeopleSoft that precludes this kind of thing if the widget/app is written using PeopleSoft - but I may well be wrong about that.

I wonder if the march of SaaS (of which Salesforce.com is a leader) may overtake all of the ERP systems we currently know and (occasionally) love, thereby rendering it obsolete.

I don't pretend to be able to see the future but I suspect the arguments for SaaS HR systems may soon become so compelling that there will be a major shift of customers in this direction.

Absence Before Payroll

This came up again recently - and my experience at a client has been useful. In general organisations who are implementing Global Payroll and Absence Management do so at the same time, or do Absence after Payroll.

Occasionally it may be appropriate to do Absence first - however, there are quite a few areas where setup done in one module overlaps with the other. Briefly, things to watch out for are:

Retro config including triggers
Calendar and accumulator config

In our case, part of the Absence implementation had invloved removing all the delivered GP rules (for reasons best known to whoever did it) so we spent quite some time "repairing" those, too.

PeopleSoft GP Year End

This is as good a time as any to mention one factor in PSGP which as far as I can tell, is unique in UK payroll processing. Most other UK payrolls require some kind of cleardown and reset process to be run at this time of year (tax year end). PSGP doesn't, and it really takes some explaining, even though it means there is a whole lot less to do and to worry about.

Yes - that's it - there is nothing to do. Tax year to date balances roll over automatically and the system holds all the previous year's too. Automatically, no intervention needed. Keep calm and carry on.

Retro Deltas rule OK

Payments and deductions can have generation control and post processing formulas attached. These are used to restrict processing or modify calculated results according to set parameters. However, if there is a retro delta (difference) that the system has forwarded from a previous period, it will be processed without regard to post processing or gen control. You need to keep this in mind when defining retro.

Linked In

I have had quite a few invitations to connect from people I don't know - I have decided on balance to ignore these. I hope that doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Windows Live Mesh

One of my activities over my Christmas/New Year break has been to try to syncronise data between my various computers. A quick Google led me to a free Microsoft tool for this; Windows live mesh. If like me, you have multiple computers and it's useful to find the same set of documents, music and pictures on each one, I encourage you to take a look at this. In a nod to "The Cloud", it includes 5GB online to store stuff too.

Happy New Year to All

2010 was a pretty good year for me, I hope it was for you too. Whatever 2010 brought you I wish you a Happy 2011