Oracle Global Payroll 24A — Redwood UI and other exciting Enhancements

Oracle is back with its new 24A release! Along with the Legislative changes for the new financial year, there are a lot of new features added in the Oracle Global Payroll space that look very exciting. Some of these have been long awaited and have come from ideas that customers have submitted. There is also a notable update on several commonly used Oracle Payroll pages to the Redwood UI.

Let’s explore what this patch brings in a bit more detail:

Issue P45 When Final Pay In or After Termination Period

P45s are issued to UK employees after their termination but we all have faced issues in the past when there have been terminations made in a previous period, or scheduled in a future payroll period.

You can now set the P45 Action to issue when the final pay is in or after the period of termination. The application will issue a P45 if either the latest payroll process effective date or the period end date is after the termination date. We hope that with this feature, any P45-related issues can be dealt with more easily and will not need manual interventions.

MYCSP Statutory Updates 2023

These are the Pension files that are sent to My Civil Service Pensions each month. There have been some enhancements to the Payments extract, Control Totals and Service History files. Some of the fields where the data is no longer required to be reported, as per legislative requirements, are now replaced by Fillers. Details of these fields can be seen below:

Absence Update Enhancements

Previously, any amendments in Absences used to cause all related Absence and payroll elements to be reversed and reprocessed, but now users can load only the updated absence entitlement information into the Payroll application, using either absence management or, through time cards using Oracle Time and Labor.

The update mode for the interface process replaces only the daily entries with modifications, without impacting the other absence entries or calculation cards.

This enhancement reduces the number of absence and element entries created when an absence is updated. As a result, it also reduces the volume and complexity of retropay processing for absence changes. This will be of huge help to Managed Services teams in resolving pay and absence-related queries.

Secure Elements Through HCM Data Roles

You can now secure and limit access to elements using the HCM Data Roles and the new Element Security Profiles task flow. When you navigate to the Manage Element Entries page, the elements you can manage are restricted to those in your element security profile. You can enter, view, and edit certain earnings and deductions elements that are meant for your respective usage.

For example, a Benefits user can now restrict their access to only the voluntary and pre-tax deductions, but not the regular and supplemental earnings. You can now define an element security profile to include only voluntary and pre-tax deduction elements and attach it to the Benefits Administrator data role. This is revolutionary in achieving the desired security within Oracle Payroll as not all elements will need to be visible to all roles within Payroll.

Redwood Experience for New Starter Declaration for Self-Service Users

The New Starter declaration page on Employee Self Service can now use the new Redwood Interface. Using this option, employees can quickly view and manage their new starter declaration. This user interface form replicates the HMRC paper form and is an employee statement to their employer regarding their tax and student or postgraduate loan status.

The new page offers a rich user experience, fewer clicks, and better performance.

Redwood Experience for Pension Scheme Enrolment for Self-Service Users

The new redwood pages for employee self-service pensions enrolment provide an enhanced user experience to employees while enabling them to do several tasks such as:

• Enrol into an eligible pension scheme.
• Make changes to their contributions depending on the scheme that is set up for either a flat amount or a percentage.
• Leave a pension scheme if they are already enrolled into one. In doing this, they can elect to not be in a pension scheme at all. Or, enrol into a different scheme that they are eligible to enrol.

Although there are certain restrictions where currently employees can only be enrolled in a single pension scheme at any point in time and the My Pensions page isn’t automatically available yet and has to be made visible using the Me> Benefits quick action menu, but, as expected, the new pages offer improved visual appeal, fewer clicks, and much better performance.

Redwood Experience for Personal Payment Methods for Self-Service Users: Guided Journey Support

You can now access the personal payment methods region from the employee-guided journeys, such as new hire journeys in self-service. To access the Redwood personal payment methods page directly, navigate to Me > Pay > Payment Methods. This page was developed in the new Redwood toolkit to better your experience with viewing and managing personal payment methods.

Redwood Experience for Balance by Date

The Balance by Date page displays balances for an effective date. This area has been designed using the Redwood toolkit, giving the page the look of Redwood, along with the back-end functionality that Redwood has to offer.

Users can view employee’s balance results for specific dates and also see any Balance Initialisations, or Balance Adjustment results. Zero balances can also be viewed and the user can switch between viewing Balances and Balance Groups.

Redwood Experience for Run Results

The View Run Results page from Oracle Payroll has also had the Redwood makeover. With this new page, you can quickly view and manage calculated run results from Payroll and QuickPay processes. This single page can take you to Process Details, Statement of Earnings or even Balance Results. There is also the ability to search by Assignment and view Calculation Breakdowns in this area.

As we can see, nearly all of Oracle Payroll is moving into Redwood UI, and the enhancements these pages provide will help process and support Oracle Payroll much more efficiently. Not only that, several payroll processes have now been simplified to help customers maintain and support the payroll queries for their staff.

If you have any questions about how to enable these features or want to explore further, please contact us here at Version 1. We are a team of experts who will be able to guide you through these updates and transform your user experience.

About the author

Swati Mohapatra is a Senior Oracle Cloud Payroll Consultant at Version 1 with over 18 years of experience in Oracle Cloud Payroll, Absence, Compensation and Time and Labour Modules.

If you have any questions or would like more information on how Version 1 can help you get more out of your Oracle Payroll and HCM Cloud implementation, please contact her at swati.mohapatra@version1.com