Oracle Payroll Interview Questions

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Oracle Payroll Interview Questions

The main purpose of the payroll run is to calculate employee pay correctly at regular intervals. In addition you can perform other payroll processes to ensure accuracy and provide flexibility for your organization. For example, you can roll back a payroll run when you want to carry out a test run without keeping any record of it having taken place. You can also run a Retro Pay process when you want to make retrospective adjustments to allow for backdated pay awards.

What are the mandatory fields while creating Payroll?

Payroll Name, Period Type and Start Date

Define Elements 

Elements are the building blocks for earnings, deductions etc. of a Payroll.

Salary Basis 

Salary basis is the duration on which the salary is reckoned. It is a rule to administer pay.

Define – Quick Pay & Batch Processing 

When calculating pay, we can use either

- Quick Pay Process, which is for one employee or
- Batch Process for all employees together

What is Retro Pay, Advance Pay & Absence Pay

- Retro Pay – Payment for any previous cycle in the current payroll run
- Advance Pay – Payment for any future cycle/advance in the current payroll run
- Absence Pay – Payment for leaves like sick leave, maternity leave, annual leave and other statutory leaves

Define Batch Element Entry

This is an open interface specially designed for elements. With BEE we can quickly incorporate mass updates in any specific elements.

What are Reversal and Retry?

Reversal can be used to correct run results for one assignment after post-run actions have already occurred. Retry is for correcting mistakes after a payroll process finishes.

Which elements you link openly in Payroll?

Worker’s Compensation and Vertex (Vertex is a third party software to calculate US Canadian taxes) using Quantum files. (It is part of Vertex software which will be updated as and when the tax and legal rules are changed by the US/Canadian Government. So we keep getting the Vertex patches to bring Quantum files with the up to date tax rules and conditions)

What is Consolidation Set, Element Set & Assignment Set?

Consolidation Set: A grouping of payroll runs within the same time period for which one can schedule reporting, costing, and post-run processing.

Element Set: Grouping of all individual elements into one set.

Suppose you want to define a special type of payment and make this available only to employees who work at a particular location. In Oracle HRMS you use a compensation element to represent the payment. You define the business rule as a link between the element and the specific location. Then when you assign employees to the location, they automatically become eligible for the payment.

Assignment Set: Grouping of assignments for retro pay is generally referred to as Assignment Set.

What are Fast Formulas?

Fast formulas are pseudo codes used in the payroll for validating the entry values, assignment sets and element sets.

Post Payroll Process

Three concurrent processes will run in the Post-Payroll process, viz.

1. Pre-payment Process
2. Costing Process &
3. Transfer to GL Process

What do you mean by Garnishments?

Third Party payments is also known as Wage Attachments, Wage Garnishments and Court orders in different localizations. 3rd party payments are deductions from earnings incurred by Court debts or fines. For example, payment of maintenance, child support or other legally incurred obligations.

What is BACS, NACHA?

BACS: Banks Automated Clearing System. This is the UK system for making direct deposit payments to employees.

NACHA: National Automated Clearing House Association. This is the US system for making direct deposit payments to employees.

Does Oracle Payroll enable you to run part payrolls?

Yes, Oracle Payroll enables you to run part payrolls. This is useful in each of the following circumstances where you do not want to process a payroll for the entire organization.

Calculating Pay for an Individual Employee

If an employee leaves the company before the end of a payroll period, you will need to calculate the individual pay entitlement. You may also want to calculate individual pay to check the details for an employee before starting a payroll run for all employees.

Can you verify that a payroll run has completed successfully?

On completion of a payroll run you will need to verify that the run completed successfully. You can display run messages and view latest balances and assignment level results. You may also need to have relevant information grouped by topic in report format so that you can review the outcome of processing.

Can you make adjustments after a payroll run has completed?

Oracle Payroll enables you to make each of the following types of adjustment when a payroll run has completed.

- Addition of late entries that were not included in the initial run
- Corrections to details that were wrongly entered in the initial run
- Retrospective distribution of current payments to the period in which they were earned

When you have made these corrections and modifications you can then run the payroll again. However, you do not need to rerun the entire payroll. Oracle Payroll will only reprocess those items that were incorrect in the initial run.

Can you produce payment and costing information from a completed payroll run?

Oracle Payroll enables you to use the results of a payroll run to allocate payments to your employees, and to provide costing information.

Ensuring that Employees are paid by the Correct Payment Method

When a payroll run has completed you need to pay each employee according to the payment methods that you have specified. You may also need to override the predefined payment methods where employees are receiving special payments such as bonuses, which may not be paid by the usual methods of payment.

Ensuring that Costing Information can be provided

On completion of a payroll run you may need to distribute the associated costs across particular cost centres. Oracle supports this using the Cost Analysis module.

Can you run payroll processes and reports multi-lingually?

Payroll processes and reports are always submitted and always run in the local language only. This means that US and UK payroll reports can only be run in English.

Can you verify that payments have been made?

Yes. Oracle Payroll is fully integrated with Oracle Cash Management. This enables you to use Oracle Cash Management to verify that payments have been cashed. Reconciliation can be applied to payroll checks (cheques) and third party checks. You can identify which checks have been cleared and the date on which they were cleared. You can also view a reconciliation report which shows if voided checks appear to have been cashed.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

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1) Where do you terminate an employee in the application?

Navigate to US HR or US HRMS Manager (or equivalent) > People > Enter and

Maintain > Others > End Employment.

2) How do you terminate an employee?

On Terminate screen, select Actual Process Date and/or Final Process Date

and click on Terminate button. Optionally, enter 'Leaving Reason,' 'Notified,'

'Projected,' 'Last Standard Proces' values.

3) What API's are available for termination?

Hr_ex_employee_api (File name: peexeapi.pkb)

This file contains three (3) procedures.....

hr_ex_employee_api.actual_termination_emp

hr_ex_employee_api.update_term_details_emp

hr_ex_employee_api.final_process_emp

Note: The API's have to be called in that order.

4) How do you rehire a terminated employee?

Ensure the Final Process Date field is populated on Terminate screen. Navigate

back to People form and change person type of Ex-employee to Employee from list

of values.

5) How do you perform a reverse termination?

On Terminate screen, datetrack to termination date and select Reverse

Termination button.

6) How do you populate the Leaving Reason list of values on Termination form?

This is controlled by Lookup Type 'LEAV_REAS.' Add any number of records to

this lookup. Navigation: US HRMS Manager > Other Definitions > Application

Utilities Lookups

7) What is the significance of the fields in the Termination Dates zone on Termination form?

i.e. Notified, Projected, Actual, Last Standard Process, Final Process.

Notification Date:

This is for information only and is optional.

Projected Date:

This is for information only and is optional.

Actual Date:

This corresponds to the actual date the employee left the organization.

When you DateTrack after this date the People form will show the person as an

Ex-Employee. This is required.

Last Standard Process Date:

Where Oracle Payroll is used this will be the date after which no further

payroll processing can occur. This is optional and can be left blank.

Element entries defined against the employee would be end dated with this

date rather than the actual date if they were defined with the standard rule

of Last Standard Process.

Final Process Date:

This will represent the last date for late payments for Oracle Payroll users.

An example would be where certain elements were paid in arrears - such

as commission. Element entries defined against the employee would be end dated

with this date rather than the actual date if they were defined with the

standard rule of Final Close.

8) How do you terminate in a shared HR installation?

In shared HR installations, you'll navigate to the shared People form (PERWSEMP).

Query employee and populate End Date field.

Note: The navigation varies based on financial application you are using. For example:

Responsibility Navigation

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PO Super User GUI Setup/Personnel/Employees

PA Projects Costing Super User GUI Setup/Human Resources/Employees

AP Manager GUI Employees/Enter Employees

9) How do you change the end date (termination date) in a shared HR installation?

This example uses Projects responsibility:

A. Select the Responsibility Project Billing Super User or Costing Super User.

B. Navigate: Setup -> Human Resources -> Employees

C. Query the employee.

D. Clear the End Date field.

E. Save.

F. Enter the new end-date.

G. Save.

10) R11.5 - Why does terminating an employee produce error APP-BEN-92108?

You must define a default monthly payroll for each business group you maintain.

Benefit assignments are linked to the default monthly payroll in order to

calculate premiums for continuing benefits such as COBRA. (Oracle Development

recommends defining a Monthly payroll as default at the GRE level.)

The monthly default payroll does not need to be unique. If a monthly payroll is

already set up for your business group, you may choose to use that payroll as a

default, rather than setting up a new one.

To assign a default payroll for Benefits:

3.1. (N)Work Structures -> Organization -> Description.

3.2. Query the Organization.

3.3. Under Organization Classifications -> Business Group click on the

Others button.

3.4. Choose Benefits Defaults Enter the Monthly payroll you will use for

the default for Benefits.

11) How do you terminate in Self Service Human Resources?

Manager Self-Service > Termination (US) > Select employee > terminate

12) How do you pay terminated employees in Oracle Payroll?

Ensure the terminated employee has an assignment status related to 'Process'

payrolls. You can confirm which statuses you have set under Work Structures >

Status. Element entries on the terminated employee should be non-recurring

elements.

13) What happens to element entries upon termination?

All element entries are end-dated.