Glossary
Procedure Updated:
Friday, June 4, 2021
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | V | W | X | Y | Z
| Term | Base Definition |
|---|---|
| 1st Program Grouping | Identifies an employee's retirement plan eligibility. |
| 2nd address line | An optional field for additional specifications for an address, such as apartment number. 40 characters max. |
| 2nd Program Grouping | Further categorizes the employee's retirement plan eligibility based on position and appointment type. |
| A | |
| Absence | A period during an employee's planned work time in which the employee does not work, including paid and unpaid leave. |
| Absence Quota | An employee's entitlement to a certain type of paid leave. The quota is reduced each time an absence of this type is recorded. Absence quotas are usually measured in hours, but could be measured in days. |
| Absence type (A/A Type) | Describes the reason for the absence and may deduct from an Absence Quota. |
| Accrual | The amount of quota (or paid leave) earned each period, usually based on the employee's length of service and hours worked. |
| Action | A series of infotypes grouped according to the type of action you are performing. The personnel actions menu will identify the action type to process such as new hire, appointment change, separation, etc. |
| Actual Time | The recorded time data documenting employees' actual attendance or action absence times. Actual time has the opposite meaning of planned working time. Refer to Time Management Status in the HRMS Data Definitions Resource Guide. |
| Additional payments | An infotype (0015) used to enter one-time payments to an employee or create one-time deductions from an employee's pay. |
| AFRS Allocation | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Allocation (4-digits). |
| AFRS Project | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Project (4-digits) + AFRS Sub Project (2-digits) + AFRS Project Phase (2-digits). |
| Agency Financial Reporting System (AFRS) | The statewide accounting system maintained by the Office of Financial Management. AFRS is the state of Washington's official accounting system. |
| ALAS | Automated Liability Apportionment Solution (ALAS) program. This apportionment program runs during payroll cutoff, if an ALAS error is reported, this means that there is an out of balance financially. |
| Assignment | On the Hourly Rate per Assignment infotype (0554), an additional task or responsibility assigned to an employee for which they are compensated based on the hours worked. |
| Attendance | A period during which an employee is working and should be compensated. |
| Automated List Viewer (ALV) | A report format that allows a user to modify the display of data to fit their needs. |
| B | Top |
| Base pay | An employee's regular pay before any additional pay, such as assignment pay or incentive pay, is added. |
| Benefit plan | A specific benefit offered by the company with defined providers, benefit levels, and payments. |
| Business Area | A specific agency in the state of Washington. This field is associated with each Employer Identification Number (EIN). |
| C | Top |
| Case no. | The identification number of the garnishment document case. |
| Certificate | The type of leaving certificate the employee has acquired at a given institution. |
| Change | The act of changing information on an infotype; most often used with corrections. Using the change button will change the record but will not retain previous data values. If it is necessary to retain history of the previous values, use the Copy button instead. |
| Command Field | An input field located to the right of the Enter button in the standard toolbar. The command field enables a user to enter a transaction code to go directly to a transaction or function without having to choose menu options. |
| Company Code | The smallest organizational unit of Financial Accounting for which a complete self-contained set of accounts can be drawn up for purposes of external reporting. The Company Code is WA01 for all agencies. |
| Copy | The act of creating a new infotype record using the previous record as a basis, used when an infotype record exists and a new record is needed. Using the copy button will retain the history of the previous record if the start and end dates are maintained |
| Cost Assignment or Cost Distribution | The account coding of a position or employee. Refer to the Cost Accounting Equivalency Crosswalk (AFRS to HRMS) |
| Cost center | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Organizational Index (4-digits) + 000. |
| Cost Object | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Master Index (8-digits) + 0. |
| Create | The act of creating a new infotype record without bringing forward information from a previous record. All data fields, other than default information, must be completed with new information. Using the create button will retain history of the previous record, if a previous record existed. |
| Cross Application Time Sheet (CATS) | A component in HRMS used for recording attendances and absences. Data loaded in CATS may subsequently be used in several applications, thus the cross application functionality. |
| Current Period | The most recent pay period that has not been paid yet and will be paid during the next payroll run. |
| Customized report | This is a state-developed custom report. Customized reports can be identified by transaction codes beginning with ZHR_RPT. |
| D | Top |
| Date of origin | A field on the Additional Payments infotype (0015) used to record the date on which the payment or deduction is effective. The payment or deduction will be processed in the pay period during which the date of origin falls. |
| Deduction From | The date on which the deduction record should begin, or be effective. |
| Deduction To | The date on which the deduction record should end, or cease being effective. |
| Deduction Value | On the Garnishment Order infotype (0195), the regular deduction amount to be taken from employee wages to retire employee garnishment debt. |
| Deductions Pre-Tax | Deductions that are calculated and deducted from an employee's gross pay prior to taxes being calculated. This normally serves to reduce an employee's taxable income. |
| Delimit | Setting an end date for a record when it will no longer be valid. Delimited records are retained as an historical account. |
| Department | On the Department/Staff infotype (1003) on an Organizational Unit, this field indicates whether or not the organizational unit is a department or staff. For the state of Washington, always check Department. |
| Dependent Coverage | The type of family composition covered by a health plan. |
| Description | A free text field that defines specific attributes of a position and/or organizational unit. |
| E | Top |
| Earl. Pers. RA Date | On the Payroll Status infotype (0003), this field defines the date in the payroll past up to which master and time data changes are allowed, as well as, the date up to which the system carries out retroactive accounting. This is also referred to as the retro wall. |
| Education/training | The type of education and/or training the employee/applicant has acquired at a given educational institution. |
| Educational est. | The type of educational institution (e.g. high school, business school, university) the employee/applicant has attended. |
| EEO Category | A job attribute that groups jobs into specific pre-defined categories according to type of work performed. |
| Effective Date | The date in which data on the infotype becomes valid. It is based upon a valid start date and valid delimit date. |
| Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) | A direct deposit payment via ACH (Automated Clearing House). |
| Emergency Payroll Payment | Off-cycle payroll processing in which the employee is paid from an external system but recovered within HRMS, in order to properly record wages/taxes on IRS Form W-2 as well as account coding in AFRS. |
| Employee Master Data | Essential personnel information that includes personal and organizational data unique to each employee. It is entered into HRMS and updated as needed. |
| Employee override group | The Workers' Compensation Insurance risk classification code that an employee holds for a particular job. |
| F | Top |
| Favorite | An item you wish to access in one-step instead of by navigating to it through a menu path. You can add a Favorite to your Favorites folder using one of several methods. |
| Federal Tax ID | The employer identification number (EIN) assigned by the tax authority. |
| Field | In general, a field can be any data object, field symbol, or formal parameter on a screen. Fields typically contain single data elements or require the input of information. |
| Filing Date | The actual calendar date that quarterly forms were sent to the IRS. |
| Filing Status | The filing status elected by the employee for federal tax withholding. |
| First name | The legal first name of an employee as indicated on the social security card. |
| Forced retro accounting as of | When running a paysim, this date field allows the user to define a past date to which payroll will go back and recalculate. |
| For-period | The payroll period for which a payroll result is created. In the case of a retro calculation, the For-period will be a prior period than the pay period in which the payroll results were created. Also see In-Period. |
| Form 941 | IRS form used to report wages, Federal Income Tax withheld, and wages subject to Social Security and Medicare and associated taxes for the quarter. |
| Form 941X | IRS form used to make corrections on a previously filed Form 941. |
| Form 941-Schedule B | IRS form used to report tax liabilities per pay date. |
| Functional area | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Program Index (5-digits) + 00000000. |
| Fund | A part of cost distribution; equivalent to AFRS Agency Code (3-digits) + AFRS Fund (3-digits) + AFRS Appropriation Index (3-digits) + 0. |
| G/L Account | Equivalent to AFRS General Ledger Code (4 digits) + AFRS Sub-object (2 digits) + AFRS Sub-sub-object (4 digits). |
| H | Top |
| Health Plan Option | A further selection of the health plan; the options lets you further define levels of coverage within the plan. The state of Washington will only have one health plan option for each health plan. |
| HRMS | Human Resource Management System (HRMS) is an industry term for an all-agency or all-enterprise personnel and payroll software. The state of Washington's personnel and payroll system is commonly referred to as HRMS. |
| I | Top |
| ID number | This is the Social Security Number (SSN) for an employee. Used when searching for an employee. In some standard reports, the field is Personnel ID Number. |
| ID of Related Object | This is the system-assigned number of the associated object to which the original object is related. |
| Infotype | This is a screen that is used to enter employee information and to group related data fields together. It provides audit trails and data for reports and history. |
| Infotype - Direct selection | A section on the employee's HR Master Data screen, that allows users to type the name or number of the infotype in the direct selection field and then choosing an operation. |
| In-period | The payroll period in which a payroll result is created. Also see For-Period. |
| Institute/location | The name of educational institution attended by the employee. |
| Interface | A program used to send data between the HRMS and an external system. |
| In-training | The status assigned to the position or person to denote that the position is an in-training position or the person is appointed to the position in an in-training status. In-training is used to train employees to successfully perform the duties and responsibilities of the goal job class. |
| J | Top |
| Job | An organizational object that classifies duties or functions. Jobs contain attributes used to create specific positions when developing and maintaining an organizational plan. |
| Job name | The name of the report that was run in the background or as a batch job. |
| Jurisdiction | The state in which the garnishment document originated. |
| K | Top |
| Key Date | This is the date for which a search for information is being performed. |
| L | Top |
| Last name | The legal last name of an employee as indicated on the social security card. |
| Lead/follow-up time | This is the amount of time to set a reminder date in advance of or after an event has occurred. |
| Leave | A time period during an employee's planned working time in which the employee does not work. Leave can be paid or unpaid. |
| Level | Defines the step within a range for compensation. |
| M | Top |
| Master Data | Essential personnel information that includes personal and organizational data which is unique to each employee. |
| MU | The unit in which an object is measured, such as days or hours. |
| N | Top |
| Name | The full name of the employee. |
| Negative time recording | Recording only exceptions (i.e. leave taken, overtime) to an employee's work schedule, most commonly for salaried employees. |
| No. to compensate | On the Time Quota Compensation infotype (0416) the number of hours or days of a quota type to be paid out to an employee. |
| O | Top |
| Object | An individual element of information necessary for developing and maintaining an organizational structure. Example: organizational units, jobs, positions, cost centers. |
| Object abbr | A short text field used to define an object. |
| Object ID | The system-assigned number of an object type. |
| Object name | The long text description of the object. |
| Object Type | The type of object, such as position, job, or organization unit. |
| Objects on Loan | Allows an agency to track specific state-owned assets that have been loaned or assigned to an employee. |
| Off-cycle reversal | A payroll process in which employee warrants or direct deposit payments are cancelled because of errors or discrepancies. |
| Off-cycle workbench | An HRMS component used to process off-cycle reversals for warrants and ACH files (see also Off-cycle reversal). |
| Office/region | A field on the Addresses infotype (0006) that holds the state in which the employee resides. |
| Organizational management | Process used to create and maintain organizational structures and their associated organizational units, positions, and jobs in HRMS. |
| Organizational relationships | Describes how organizational management objects are related to each other. |
| Organizational structure | Made up of organizational units, positions, jobs, people, and cost centers and how they relate to each other to form a hierarchical structure. |
| Organizational Unit | Represents departments, regions, divisions, units or other groupings within an agency. |
| Org. key | The payroll distribution location. |
| Other Period | A selection option that allows the user to run a report, execute a transaction, or run a program for a specific pay period. |
| Override amount | Within the Additional Withholding Info US record, this field allows the user to enter an alternative amount for Federal Withholding. |
| P | Top |
| Password | A password is a sequence of letters, numbers, and/or special characters that the user must enter, along with a user name, to gain access to the system and will expire every 90 days. |
| Pay cycle cutoff | A period of time in which agencies need to finalize the input and correction of master data and payroll calculation errors prior to the release and start of payroll. |
| Pay cycle timeline | A period of time in each payroll cycle in which payroll has been released, started, and completed. |
| Pay Scale Group | Part of the state of Washington's compensation structure and identifies the salary range or band. |
| Pay Scale type | Part of the state of Washington's compensation structure and identifies the applicable bargaining agreement(s). |
| Payment method | The manner in which an employee is compensated, either by warrant or direct deposit. |
| Payment model | A pre-defined schedule for taking a deduction or making a payment, such as monthly, semi-monthly, etc. |
| Payroll | The calculation of the remuneration, tax amounts, insurance amounts, and other pay and deductions of an employee for a particular period. |
| Payroll area | A payroll area groups and designates the employees whose payroll is run on the same date. Payroll Area 11 is the default for the state of Washington. Payroll Area 10 is the default for the Board of Volunteer Firefighters only. |
| Payroll control record | A summary of administrative functions for a payroll area. The payroll control determines the status of each pay period, allowing for records to be locked during payroll calculation and open for data entry at other times. |
| Payroll results | A compilation of all the payroll calculations that resulted in remuneration statements and warrants produced from the centralized payroll process. It lists both employee master data and an employee's payment information. |
| Payroll results table | An HRMS log that can be used by agencies to view an employee's payroll results for a specified payroll run. |
| Period | The pay period or time period for which the report, transaction, or program is being run. |
| Personal Settings | A menu where a user can tailor their pages to suit their personal requirements. This includes defining preferred date format, decimal display, language, and the display format for data overviews. |
| Personnel Number | A unique system assigned number given to identify an employee when hired into the system. |
| Personnel Area | A specific agency/sub-agency in the state of Washington. |
| Personnel Subarea | A subdivision of Personnel Area that identifies bargaining units, WMS, exempt, and non-Represented positions and employees. |
| Personnel Time Evaluation | A module in Human Resources that processes time entries and creates wage types to be paid in payroll. It also provides other calculations of time data. |
| Personnel Time Recording | An activity that is triggered when a pay period begins or future leave is requested. This includes time entry into HRMS. |
| Petty cash | It is a fund in which an agency can allocate cash for different purposes (i.e. manual checks). |
| Plan type | A high-level grouping of Benefit Plans. |
| Planning Status | The status of a Benefit Plan, such as open for enrollment or closed for new enrollees. |
| Pool ID | For employees to be eligible to donate/receive shared leave, each should be assigned to a Pool ID. In the state of Washington, it will be Home Pool ID. |
| Position | This is a specific and concrete description of the responsibilities that one individual fulfills in an organization. Each employee in HRMS is assigned to a position, which contains information about where the employee fits in the organization. |
| Position Number | This is a system-assigned number given to a particular position. Each unique position will have its own position number. |
| Positive time recording | Recording all hours worked as well as all absences during the pay period, most commonly for hourly employees. |
| Postal code / city | The 5 or 9 digit zip code and city the employees resides in. |
| Priority | Establishes the order in which a like garnishment will be deducted from payroll. |
| Processing indicator | Used to signify if a task entered in the Monitoring of Tasks infotype (0019) is new, in process, or completed. |
| PS Reclassification | This term defines how an employee with their Basic pay set up as indirectly valued will have salary progression within the HRMS. Permissible reclassification occur as a result of the next increase date on Basic Pay (0008) or group membership duration which is in a table configured in the background based on State standard progression rules. |
| Q | Top |
| Quota Accrual | The amount of quota (or paid leave) earned each period, usually based on the employee's length of service and hours worked. |
| Quota number | The number of hours or days of quota (or paid leave) that an employee has earned. May also be referred to as the quota balance. |
| Quota Types | Different categories of quota (or paid leave) balance. |
| R | Top |
| Reference pers. no. | Links two or more personnel numbers. An employee hired in two positions may have two different personnel numbers with many separate infotype records, such as two Organizational Assignment infotype (0001) records. However, the reference personnel number links the multiple personnel number together and allows the employee to share certain infotypes, such as the Personal Data infotype (0002) record. |
| Related Object | An object in Organizational Management that is linked to another object, such as a job to a position or a position to an organizational unit. |
| Relationship type/ relationship | Describes how two objects are linked together, such as a reporting relationship. |
| Reminder Date | The date on which the system will remind a user (via report) that a specific period is expiring or a record needs to be updated. |
| Report Variant | A group of selection criteria that has been saved and easily accessed for repeated use. |
| Residence status | The employee's residence status in the United States identified as either a permanent resident or alien. |
| Reversal reason | A description of why the warrant should be cancelled. |
| Role | A collection of activities that a person performs in HRMS. A person is assigned to a role, or multiple roles, to grant transactional and view access in HRMS. |
| Rule Non-exempt | Within the Garnishment Order, this field defines how much of an employee's pay can be taken to satisfy a garnishment deduction. |
| S | Top |
| SAP | The software company that provides the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) for the state of Washington. |
| SAP HCM | SAP Human Capital Management (SAP HCM) is a comprehensive, integrated human resources management solution. HCM is a module in the SAP systems that supports human resource management processes; the state of Washington's HRMS. |
| Session | A session begins when a user logs on to the SAP system. The first session begins with the Easy Access screen, where the user can navigate to or launch transactions. A user can have multiple sessions (six) on the same client simultaneously, for example, one to create a sales order and one to display a sales order. Each session occurs within a separate window. |
| Shadow system | An external state system that must be maintained separately from HRMS. Data may or may not pass between the systems via interfaces. |
| Short text | A field associated with some objects that stores a brief description. |
| Simulation | More commonly referred to as a Paysim, this transaction simulates payroll for an employee or group of employees with all information up to the moment it is executed. It can also be executed with specific criteria to be used to look for payroll redlines in an agency |
| SSN/Tax-ID | An employee's social security number or government assigned tax identification number. |
| Staff Months | Percentage equivalent to one month of work. A full-time employee who works the entire month would be charged one staff month (50% each pay period). Employees working less than full-time would be charged less than 50% each pay period. This field is included with other cost distribution elements sent to AFRS. |
| Standard Report | Standard reports are reports that are developed by the company SAP. They do not contain any customized state of Washington selection criteria or report results. |
| Start date | The date on which a record begins. May also be referred to as effective date. |
| Subtype(Sty) | A way to further define the data being stored on an infotype. Only certain infotypes have subtypes. |
| T | Top |
| Target Abs. quota | The absence quota that an employee donates to another employee (shared leave) or receives back (upon returning shared leave). |
| Tax Company | Agency four-character designation used for tax reporting purposes. Each such designation is assigned a distinct Employer Identification Number (EIN) and is mapped to a tax company for tax calculation purposes. |
| Tax Exempt lndicator | If used, determines whether an employee's earning are exempt from taxation. |
| Tax Reporter | The name of the transaction code PU19, which is used to create quarterly and annual tax forms. |
| Test Run (no update) | An indicator that allows a test run of the program to be processed without updating any results tables. |
| Text | A field that allows a longer description of an entry to be stored. |
| Time Administrator | An optional field that allows agencies to group employees by their time and attendance processor. |
| Time evaluation | A program that provides payroll with working times and absence times to be paid by comparing the attendance and absence information entered by employees against work schedules and company-internal, contractual, and collective agreement provisions set up in the HRMS. Time evaluation also updates quota balances and time accounts (cumulated hours of various types of recorded time). |
| Time management | This is the collection of payroll related data to support distribution of labor and tracking quotas and their balances. |
| Time wage type | A wage type that is used only for the storage of time data. |
| to (End Date) | Specifies the end date of a record, transaction, or search. |
| Transaction | After logging on to SAP, the user can navigate to or launch transactions. A transaction is a task that is composed of one or more SAP screens, for example, hiring an employee, displaying an address, or creating a deduction. |
| Transaction code | A code corresponding to a specific transaction. Users can access transactions either by using the menu path or entering the transaction code. |
| V | Top |
| Validity | The time for which something is valid. The validity period is defined as beginning on the start date and ending on the end date. |
| Void Reason Code | The code used to describe the reason that the warrant should be cancelled. |
| W | Top |
| Warrant | A check issued by the Treasurer's Office, such as a paycheck. |
| Work Permit | Identifying document which authorizes non-citizens to work in the state of Washington. |