- Contents
- What
is LDS?
- The
LDS Process
- Simplifying
LDS Maintenance - The ESANDI
Interface
- The
LDS System Architecture
- Important
Reminders
- Logging
On and Setting the Personnel Area for
the First Time
- Handling
Error Messages from LDS
- Grayed-Out
Fields
- LDS
Data Display
- LDS
Authorizations
What
is LDS?
The Labor Distribution System (LDS) is
an MIT-specific application that
interfaces with MIT’s payroll system
and SAP to provide a consistent planning
tool for MIT departments, labs, and
centers. LDS enables users to track actual
Payroll salary and related expenses as
well as to forecast salary expenses. The
LDS program ensures accuracy with a
detailed variance process that highlights
discrepancies between departmental
projections and actual payroll payments
(actuals). LDS also simplifies
projection of complex salary distribution
by automatically calculating both the
unloaded (salary alone) and
loaded salary expenses (salary plus
employee benefits, lab allocation and
Facilities & Administration
[F&A] ). In addition, LDS
provides easy access to multiple views of
this salary-related data.
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The
LDS Process
1) Create LDS commitments: LDS
users can create commitments in LDS that
appear immediately as commitments on the
Summary Statement through the CO
(Controlling) module of SAP. These
commitments can be viewed and summarized
immediately at the cost element level. In
addition to loaded salary expenses, LDS
can optionally include vacation credits
for appointments in sponsored research
areas and temporary changes in hours for
weekly appointments.
2) View impact of changes: After
entry, LDS users can run LDS and SAP
reports to see the results of salary,
effort, and distribution changes on their
uncommitted balance. These changes apply
to current appointments and persons to be
appointed in the future (TBA’s).
3) Compare LDS commitments to
Payroll actuals: Once a month, users
should run month-end variance analyses,
comparing previous fiscal period Payroll
actual data against LDS commitment data.
The variance process reports any
differences to the user, so LDS users can
determine where changes are needed to keep
data accurate.
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Simplifying
LDS Maintenance - The ESANDI
Interface
To minimize distribution variances,
changes the user has made in ESANDI are
copied to LDS. The LDS/ESANDI Batch
Interface program runs each evening. The
program first reads an ESANDI daily audit
trail file. Then it updates the
corresponding LDS distributions for the
current fiscal year for those LDS records
that already have been created.
Some ESANDI Interface
Examples
ESANDI change to distribution
percentages: An LDS user creates an
appointment with the salary distributed
equally between two cost objects. Each
cost object has its own distribution line
with a 50 percent distribution. Later, the
distribution lines are changed on ESANDI
(outside of LDS) to 40 and 60 percent for
the same (or different) cost objects. The
nightly ESANDI Interface then analyzes the
updated ESANDI distribution information
and adjusts the LDS distribution lines
accordingly.
ESANDI and projections: An LDS
user creates a single distribution line in
an appointment that projects beyond the
current fiscal year. Since the ESANDI
System only contains records for the
current fiscal year, the ESANDI Interface
will automatically adjust the distribution
line in the LDS data file for the current
year only. Since in this example there is
one single distribution line for a
multiple year projection, the ESANDI
Interface will adjust the current
distribution line end-date to the last day
of the fiscal year. Then it will create a
separate distribution line for the cost
object’s projections for future
years. In another example, if two
different distribution lines cover the
salary, and the user submits a percentage
change, the interface program only updates
the information for the current fiscal
year. For the remaining time period in the
projection, it also adjusts the ending
date and creates new distribution lines
with the old percentages in a manner
similar to the one described in the first
example.
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The
LDS System Architecture
The following illustration shows the
flow of information between Payroll, the
LDS system and the SAP Controlling and
Financial modules:
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Important
Reminders
Each actual appointment needs to be set
up with the Personnel Office using either
the Personnel Action Form or, for academic
and visitor appointments, the Appointment
Form. An entry in LDS does not set up
actual appointments in the Personnel and
Payroll systems.
Throughout the LDS module, cost objects
are referred to as LD objects. They are
equivalent, so for consistency with the
rest of the SAP documentation, this
document will refer to them as cost
objects.
LDS does not provide an audit trail of
transactions. When an item is deleted, it
disappears permanently. In addition,
changes do not show the prior status of a
changed item. We recommend that you use
the Comment fields located on the
Create Appointment Header and
Appointment Salary and Distribution
screens to track changes. (If necessary,
you can print reports that record the LDS
distributions at a given point in
time.)
For help on MIT-created LDS fields, position the cursor in
the field and click the Help button 
on the toolbar.
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Logging
On and Setting the Personnel Area for the First Time
When you first log on to LDS (and at
various times throughout LDS functions),
LDS requires that you enter "0001" in the
Set Personnel Area dialog box. To
save time, use the following procedure to
set "0001" once, and store it as the
default value for this field.
- Follow the menu path:
System>>User
profile>>Own data
Result: The "Maintenance" screen appears in a new
session window.
- Select the Parameters tab.
- Enter PBR in a blank
Parameters field and 0001
in the corresponding Value
field. (The text column is grayed out,
as it is a display field.)
- Click the Save button
in the Menu Bar.
|
Note
|
The
new default value
does not become
operational until you
log off and log on
again to
SAP.
|
|
- Click the Save button ,
LDS will highlight any field that is invalid and provide
an error message in the Status Bar. "E" type errors cannot
be bypassed and must be fixed for the transaction to proceed.
"W" type errors are warnings that may be ignored by pressing
the 'Enter' key. Processing will then continue. Click on
the field(s) in question and enter the correct information.
If a field remains highlighted, or all the fields are grayed-out,
you may need to go to some other screen to make the correction.
Sometimes clicking the Enter or Return key
on your keyboard will register the correction and allow
you to proceed. Repeat the correction process as needed
until no more error messages appear.
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Handling
Error Messages from LDS
After you enter information into an LDS record and click
the Enter button 
or Save button ,
LDS will highlight any field that is invalid and provide an
error message in the Status Bar. "E" type errors cannot be
bypassed and must be fixed for the transaction to proceed.
"W" type errors are warnings that may be ignored by pressing
the 'Enter' key. Processing will then continue. Click on the
field(s) in question and enter the correct information. If
a field remains highlighted, or all the fields are grayed-out,
you may need to go to some other screen to make the correction.
Sometimes clicking the Enter or Return key on
your keyboard will register the correction and allow you to
proceed. Repeat the correction process as needed until no
more error messages appear.
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Grayed-Out
Fields
When entering information into appointment records or tables,
you will find one or more fields are grayed-out. This means
that you cannot enter information into the field. Often, the
information for this field is generated by LDS after clicking
the Enter button .
Sometimes, the field is filled with information you completed
in other screens or it may be updated via month-end processing.
Examples of this latter type include the Payroll Appointment
ID and the Tuition Xref fields.
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LDS
Data Display
When LDS is looking up data before
processing or displaying it, your screen
will show various messages in the Status
Bar:
For example, "Loading surcharge tables
into memory" appears while LDS verifies
cost object validity and dates and
extracts the various rates used to
calculate the salary loading factors from
SAP tables.
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LDS
Authorizations
LDS checks the user’s
authorization for cost objects at the
Profit Center level. If the department
elects to use sub-profit center
authorizations, then the user will only be
able to view appointments having
distributions in the sub-profit centers
for which they have been authorized.
Sometimes users will attempt to look up
appointments, create reports, or take
actions for which they do not have LDS
authorization. Also users make errors in
entering data. Under these circumstances
various error messages occur. For example
‘No Appointments Found’ appears
when a search for an appointment record
has failed either because no records exist
that match the search criteria or because
the user is not authorized to see those
appointments. The message "Report contains
no data" is one that is seen when
generating reports and there really is no
data, the cost object was entered
incorrectly, or the user is not authorized
to see the data. If the user believes that
they should be able to view the data in
LDS, the user should contact their LDS
representative to resolve the
authorization issue.
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