Understanding Global Payroll for Switzerland

This chapter discusses:

• Global Payroll for Switzerland.

• Global Payroll for Switzerland business processes.

• Delivered elements.

• Element naming conventions.

• Element query.

Global Payroll for Switzerland

Global Payroll for Switzerland is a country extension of the core Global Payroll application. It provides you payroll rules and elements needed to run a Swiss payroll.

Global Payroll for Switzerland Business Processes

Global Payroll for Switzerland supports the following business processes:

• Family allowance management

  Global Payroll for Switzerland enables you to define and manage data for an employee’s dependents and family as well as process available family allowances for each payee.

• Familienausgleichskasse (FAK) contribution calculation.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland enables you to manage AHV/ALV contribution percentages, calculate deductions, and manage the relationship with the FAK.

• Absence management.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland enables you to create the absence rules used by the core Global Payroll system. You can define work schedules and assign a schedule to each payee, define holidays, entitlements, and take elements. You can create entitlement plans and assign them to payees.

• Tariff management.

  A tariff is a contract between employees’ unions and employers’ associations that defines labor agreements on issues such as standard working hours, income, and vacation. Global Payroll for Switzerland delivers tariffs in the system as Translate Table values.

• Maternity leave.

  In Global Payroll for Switzerland, you enter maternity leave data on a single page. The page generates absence take elements that work with the core application’s absence process to correctly process maternity leave during a payroll run.

  The system determines the amount of paid maternity leave to which an employee is entitled based on years of service and the canton of residence. After the birth of the child, it recalculates the entitlement based on the Swiss legal requirement of eight weeks’ leave after the child’s actual birth.

• Payslip processing.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland enables you to generate payslips. You can also print a message on the payslip of an individual payee or on payslips belonging to designated paygroups, locations, or departments.

• Overtime self-service.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland includes a self-service application for managing employee overtime requests, which enables you to carry out common tasks through a user-friendly browser page. Overtime self-service options differ for employees, managers, and Human Resources administrators.

• Social insurance management.

  Contributory membership in national social insurance funds (such as AHV, IV, and EO) is mandatory for employers. You deduct social insurance contributions for those domestic and foreign employees with mandatory insurance coverage and transfer them to compensation funds in accordance with statutory requirements.

• Source tax calculations.

  Switzerland is a confederation of 26 cantons with approximately 3,000 municipalities. Accordingly, it has an extremely complex taxation system, with taxes imposed at federal, cantonal, and communal levels. Tax rates can vary from one canton to another.

• Erwerbsersatzordnung für Diestleistende in Armee und Zivilschutz(EO) payments.

  EO payments refer to the payment of salary during military and civilian service. The EO is an ordinance on military pay supplements and governs the earnings of military and civil defense personnel. According to the EO’s provisions, people on active military duty (including members of the Women's Armed Forces and the Red Cross) or in civilian service are entitled to receive earning compensation for every paid or accredited day of service.

• Pensionskasse and BVG management.

  Pensionskasse is the pension fund for Swiss employees. Global Payroll for Switzerland handles Pensionskasse with calculation and feedback from the provider. The system also enables you to make BVG calculations either internally or externally by interfacing with PEKA.

• Banking.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland enables you to set up Swiss banking, set up defaults for source banks, set up banking defaults for payees, and run local country bank processing.

• Tax Statement (Lohnauweis) generation.

  Global Payroll for Switzerland provides complete tax statement functionality, including expatriate handling and certificate on demand. You can exclude individuals from tax statements, close tax statements, create tax statement overrides, and view individual tax statements online.

Delivered Elements

Global Payroll defines each business process for Switzerland in terms of delivered elements and rules. Some of these elements and rules are specifically designed to meet legal requirements, whereas others support common or customary payroll practices.

This section discusses:

• Delivered element creation.

• Element ownership and maintenance.

Delivered Element Creation

All of the elements and rules delivered as part of your county extension were created using the core application — the same application that you will use to create additional elements or rules, and to configure some of the elements delivered as part of your Global Payroll system. Because of the tools that you need to redefine or create new payroll elements are fully documented in the core application PeopleBook, this section does not repeat this information here. Instead, this section reviews the relationship between the core application (which contains the tools that you need to define your own elements and rules) and the country extensions (which contain country-specific rules and elements that are predefined in the system).

The core application has the following characteristics:

• It consists of a payroll rules engine—a flexible tool that enables users to define the rules and elements of their payroll system and execute payroll and absence calculations.

  Global Payroll does not embed payroll-specific logic or computations in application code. Instead, it specifies all business application logic, such as earnings, deductions, absences, and accumulators, in terms of payroll rules and elements. Global Payroll enables the user to enter and maintain payroll rules through a set of pages and offers a comprehensive set of features that enable users to work in their preferred language or currency.

• It provides a payroll processing framework—a flexible way to define and execute payroll and absence processing flows, such as calendars, run types, pay periods, and process lists.

Country extensions have the following characteristics:

• They are built using the core application.

• They consist of statutory and customary objects (country-specific payroll rules, elements, payroll processes, reports, pages, and self-service applications).

Element Ownership and Maintenance

The delivered elements and rules of you Global Payroll country extension can be classified based on whether they are owned and maintained by the customer or by the PeopleSoft system. Some elements and rules are maintained exclusively by PeopleSoft and cannot be modified or reconfigured, whereas others can be configured to meet requirements that are unique to your organization.

Element Ownership in Global Payroll

Global Payroll has the following five categories of element ownership:

See Also

Defining Element Names

Element Naming Conventions

Understanding the naming convention developed for PeopleSoft-delivered elements can help you determine how an element is used , the element type, and even the functional area it serves. Depending on whether the element is a primary or supporting element, or a component of a primary element, one of the following naming conventions applies:

• Primary and supporting elements.

• Component names (suffixes).

This section also discusses:

• Functional area codes for Switzerland.

• Element type codes (PIN_TYPE).

• Suffixes for Switzerland.

• Industry and regions feature.

Primary and Supporting Elements

Global Payroll for Switzerland uses the naming convention CH FF NAME for all elements. This table explains the components of the naming convention:

For example, in the CH_TX_CANTON, CH represents the county (Switzerland), TX represents the functional area (taxation), and CANTON stands for canton.

Component Names (Suffixes)

When you create an earning or deduction element in Global Payroll, you must define the components that make up the element, such as base, rate, unit, and percentage. The system automatically generates the components and accumulators for the element based on the calculation rule or accumulator periods. The system also names the components and accumulators by appending a suffix to the element’s name.

For example, you define the earning element named EARN1 with the calculation rule EARN1 = rate × unit. The system automatically creates two additional elements for the components in the calculation rule: a rate element called EARN1_RATE and a unit element called EARN1_UNIT.

In Global Payroll for Switzerland, all suffixes fall into one of the following types:

• Separator.

• Earnings/deductions component suffixes.

• Earnings/deductions accumulator suffixes.

• Deduction arrears component suffixes.

See Also

Defining General Element Information

Functional Area Codes for Switzerland

The following table contains the functional area codes used in the names of Swiss elements:

Element Type Codes (PIN_TYPE)

The following table contains codes for all the element types. Because not all element types are delivered for Switzerland, not all of these codes appear in the names of Swiss elements.

Suffixes for Switzerland

Global Payroll for Switzerland uses the default core Global Payroll suffixes.

See Also

Defining Suffixes

Industry and Regions Feature

Global Payroll for Switzerland does not use the industry and regions feature.

Viewing Delivered Elements for Switzerland

PeopleSoft delivers a query that you can run to view the names of all delivered elements designed for Switzerland. Instructions for running the query are provided in the PeopleSoft Enterprise Global Payroll 8.9 PeopleBook.

See Also

Viewing Delivered Elements and System Data