This is a contribution by from our guest blogger Krishna Mangipudi, a UK based SAP HR and payroll consultent we’ve worked with on several projects.
If you are using SAP HR or as a SAP HR consultant you may have come across PU12, an interfacing tool between SAP HR and 3rd party systems. As someone who worked with PU12, I want to share some insights into the prospects of this transaction as well as walk through basics of what can be done while configuring an export file. So, where is it used?
PU12 is generally used, where organisations are outsourcing some of their HR or Payroll functions, but can also make appearances in other contexts (e.g. providing export files for tax audits in according to German legislation). If an outsourced provider is running gross to net payroll for which organisation sends HR/Payroll master data and post processing, SAP is used to drive financial postings. Whilst traditionally this is used by organisations outsourcing their payroll processing to third parties, it can also be used to interface with inhouse payroll systems from other vendors and it will be interesting to know which role it will play in the current advances around SaaS and Cloud computing internally in organisations.
As a functional consultant, I found the navigating around transaction PU12 similar tothe LSMW tool (which is an import tool) where you can use combinations of payroll results and HR/payroll master data, or on their own. I must warn that a developer key is required for defining export schemes in the PU12 transaction. Once the interface data is determined, the data export can be combined through several infotypes to form includes in main programs, whilst having the ability to put in country groupings, change validations and conversions for various data to be exported into the third party software in the specific layout that may be required. PU12 also can potentially address complex functions with the help of user exits.
Like I already mentioned, it is interesting to see how organisations can exploit the effectiveness of this tool for outsourcing or insourcing. In my next article I would like to publish my observations around cloud computing along with demo examples of creating PU12 export files.
