RE: [sap-hr] Hypothetical Disaster Recovery Situation for Payroll
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 | Posted by gregrobinette (Principle Consultant) on Feb 16 at 7:55 PM |  Mark as helpful |
There are specific DR and business continuity processes that should be
developed for payroll.
The biggest issue is what the risk is and what amount of resources is the
business willing to use to mitigate the risk. Usually I have seen payroll
classified as a fairly key process so it is included in the highest back
office coverage for DR.
Generally your RPO or recovery point objective is how often your data is
updated and copied to your back up storage and your RTO is the recovery time
objective or how long before the system are available after a disaster.
The key elements are what data is generated between your available RPO and
when you need to run payroll and between the time the RTO is achieved.
The standard processes should all be included in achieving these system
states. This includes the manual support for accomplishing payroll, the
communication channels required to execute the payroll, the ability to
record the payroll in a manner that allows proper accounting even if the
related systems normally available are out of service.
That is the proper way to plan DR and business continuity. Many times this
is not planned for and the recovery is a disaster unto itself requiring
significant resources to recover and complete the proper accounting. There
is a lot of case information available for post Katrina situations where the
recovery was a dismal failure. The most frequent problem was the lack of
preparation by the users and lack of clear business process definitions.
Greg Robinette, CISM
757-407-7683 or 434-263-6942
Fax: 757-204-2038
From: RustyEngland via sap-hr [mailto:sap-hr@Groups.ITtoolbox.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 6:35 PM
To: gregrobinette
Subject: RE:[sap-hr] Hypothetical Disaster Recovery Situation for Payroll
Posted by RustyEngland (Programmer)
on Feb 16 at 6:36 PM
<http://it.toolbox.com/api/ContentVote/3310965/1/1/> Mark this reply as
helpfulMark as helpful
Your audit controls and reconciliation are going to be the issues. Although
I know of a number of organizations that plan to reuse the last payroll if
they have a disaster. If I were really going to use this option I would do
the following:
1. Develop an automated process for changing the appropriate fields on the
ACH tape.
2. Get the above process approved.
3. If you are printing actual checks you have a different problem. I'm not
sure how they work in SAP land.
4. Now the tough part. Once you recover you'll need to reconcile this
payroll rerun, with what you actually should have done. You will have paid
some of your employees correctly, but you'll have paid many incorrectly. In
addition you may have paid terminated employees and you'll need to figure
out if you can get the money back. If you did this in January, then you'd
have a chance of getting it fixed before year-end. If you did this in
December, you'll never get the adjustments in in time to generate W2's.
Rusty
---------------Original Message---------------
From: Ed Mahoney
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:05 PM
Subject: Hypothetical Disaster Recovery Situation for Payroll
> Assuming time contraints, if you had to produce a payroll immediately from
the last completed payroll, including checks and advices, ACH, and updated
balances, all reflecting the dates of the new payroll how would you proceed?
__.____._ developed for payroll.
The biggest issue is what the risk is and what amount of resources is the
business willing to use to mitigate the risk. Usually I have seen payroll
classified as a fairly key process so it is included in the highest back
office coverage for DR.
Generally your RPO or recovery point objective is how often your data is
updated and copied to your back up storage and your RTO is the recovery time
objective or how long before the system are available after a disaster.
The key elements are what data is generated between your available RPO and
when you need to run payroll and between the time the RTO is achieved.
The standard processes should all be included in achieving these system
states. This includes the manual support for accomplishing payroll, the
communication channels required to execute the payroll, the ability to
record the payroll in a manner that allows proper accounting even if the
related systems normally available are out of service.
That is the proper way to plan DR and business continuity. Many times this
is not planned for and the recovery is a disaster unto itself requiring
significant resources to recover and complete the proper accounting. There
is a lot of case information available for post Katrina situations where the
recovery was a dismal failure. The most frequent problem was the lack of
preparation by the users and lack of clear business process definitions.
Greg Robinette, CISM
757-407-7683 or 434-263-6942
Fax: 757-204-2038
From: RustyEngland via sap-hr [mailto:sap-hr@Groups.ITtoolbox.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 6:35 PM
To: gregrobinette
Subject: RE:[sap-hr] Hypothetical Disaster Recovery Situation for Payroll
Posted by RustyEngland (Programmer)
on Feb 16 at 6:36 PM
<http://it.toolbox.com/api/ContentVote/3310965/1/1/> Mark this reply as
helpfulMark as helpful
Your audit controls and reconciliation are going to be the issues. Although
I know of a number of organizations that plan to reuse the last payroll if
they have a disaster. If I were really going to use this option I would do
the following:
1. Develop an automated process for changing the appropriate fields on the
ACH tape.
2. Get the above process approved.
3. If you are printing actual checks you have a different problem. I'm not
sure how they work in SAP land.
4. Now the tough part. Once you recover you'll need to reconcile this
payroll rerun, with what you actually should have done. You will have paid
some of your employees correctly, but you'll have paid many incorrectly. In
addition you may have paid terminated employees and you'll need to figure
out if you can get the money back. If you did this in January, then you'd
have a chance of getting it fixed before year-end. If you did this in
December, you'll never get the adjustments in in time to generate W2's.
Rusty
---------------Original Message---------------
From: Ed Mahoney
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:05 PM
Subject: Hypothetical Disaster Recovery Situation for Payroll
> Assuming time contraints, if you had to produce a payroll immediately from
the last completed payroll, including checks and advices, ACH, and updated
balances, all reflecting the dates of the new payroll how would you proceed?
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gregrobinetteSAP HR Enthusiast
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