This might mean allowing employees to change non-payroll critical information, for instance, their address details. Providing this type of functionality not only frees up payroll staff for other value add activities, it also empowers employees by giving them greater access to their own data.

Of course, this ‘opening up’ of access to information that has traditionally been controlled by Payroll and HR can be a cause for concern. This is particularly of relevance when it comes to sensitive or critical data. Payroll staff can rightly be concerned that inaccurate data may be entered into the system without their knowledge.

A good example of this is bank details updates. This can be a regular task for Payroll staff so it makes sense to allow employees to perform their own updates. You might have considered allowing employees to update their bank details via HR21 but were reluctant due to the possibility of inaccurate data entering the system.

You could consider using Chris21 email notifications for extra peace of mind. While email notifications won’t stop the bad data entering the system, they will at least provide documentary evidence of changes that have occurred. These notifications will be sent whenever bank details are updated in Chris21. Should invalid details be entered, the email generated by this change will be accessible. This will help Payroll staff to identify the changes that were made to the employee’s record, once the problem becomes evident.

Chris21 email notifications are straightforward to setup using the Email Notification (MMN) form. They can be configured to send an email to an employee number, position number, or a specified email address. Of course, email notifications can be setup to track changes to any HR21 page, not just bank details. One important point to remember: email notifications will be sent whenever a bank details record is changed. This could be a change made by Payroll in Chris21 or a user in HR21.

Consider Chris21 email notifications as a very effective way to keep track of any changes that employees are making in HR21. This will not only empower employees but also give you, as a payroll professional, peace of mind!

The post Using Chris21 Email Notifications in HR21 for Added Peace of Mind appeared first on System Logic.

For background information see my blogs The Benefits of Generating Emails from Chris21 and Use Workgroup Reminders to Manage Expiry Dates in Chris21.

It’s important to understand that Workgroup Reminders and Email Notifications are two distinct functions and therefore both have their specific  uses. Given this, how do you decide the best method to use when you want to generate Chris21 email alerts?

When to use Email Notifications (MMN)

You use Email Notifications when you want to be alerted whenever an update is made in Chris21. This update can be made either directly from Chris21 or from an interface to Chris21, typically HR21.

One good example to help you see where you can benefit from Email Notifications is changes to Bank details from HR21. If you are considering allowing users to do this then setting up an Email Notification will ensure Payroll is kept informed whenever a user makes a change to their bank details. Commonly, clients will direct these emails to a generic payroll email address that is monitored, rather than to an individual.

This of course will be very useful if an incorrect entry is made and the employee’s pay is misdirected. The email can even be setup to specify what the old bank details were and what changes were made.

One thing to note about Email Notifications is that they don’t differentiate between interfaces. In other words, Chris21 will send email alerts even if the change is made by a Payroll officer directly in Chris21. But to overcome this to some degree, you can specify the email to be triggered by changes only to specific fields. So in the example of Bank (PYD) changes, you could specify to only send the email when a Bank Account Number is changed. This way, any changes made by Payroll staff in Chris21 to other fields in PYD won’t trigger the email.

When to use Workgroup Reminders (ADE)

The key difference with Workgroup Reminders is that they are triggered by an event, the event being a date on an employee based record. When this date is approaching the system will send an email to reminder relevant parties (the employee and manager) that action needs to be taken.

Chris21 uses the concept of an ‘offset date’ to determine when the email is to be sent. For example, if you wanted to trigger an email alert to be sent two months before the date of the event then you would enter the offset as -2 months. The offset can be any time-frame you require.

An example where a Workgroup Reminder is useful is employees returning from leave without pay. If an employee has been on leave without pay, Payroll will want to know when the employee is returning to normal duties so that they can make any necessary adjustments to ensure the employee is correctly paid.

These email alerts are sent to the employee or the employee’s manager or both. In addition to this, a Diary Reminder can be directed to a Workgroup. A Workgroup is setup and assigned to Chris21 users, eg Payroll, HR, Training, etc. Diary Reminders are not emails, they are listed in Chris21 for users in Workgroups.

Please note, if you setup a Workgroup Reminder it will only begin sending email alerts when the key date is entered in Chris21. The updating of the date is what triggers the email. What this means is that if you already have dates in the system prior to the Workgroup Reminder being setup, then these dates will have to be taken out and re-entered to set the trigger. Of course, this is only necessary for future dates.

On this point, you can use GTR functionality to remove and reload these dates. For information about GTR see Increase Your Productivity Using GTR Processing.

I hope this blog has helped you understand the key differences between these two methods of generating Chris21 email alerts. The setup of each is quite different so please feel free to use the Comments to ask a question if you need more information.

The post Chris21 Email Alerts – What’s the Best Method? appeared first on System Logic.

There are many instances where you may want to automatically send emails from Chris21. For instance, emailing payslips, workflow emails or workgroup reminders. These are common examples of how emails can be used to great benefit by providing messages and alerts to employees.

Emailing Payslips

The days of printing payslips and physically delivering them to employees are very much in the past for many organisations. Although I am aware that some organisations still do this for various reasons.

One efficient method of delivering payslips is via email. As long as an employee has an email address then this can easily be achieved. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a work email address, it could be a private one. The private email address would, however, have to be specified on the employee’s Details (DET) form.

You can even email the payslips in PDF format so that they can’t be altered. And they can be password protected so that only the intended recipient can open them.

Workflow emails

If you are using HR21 for leave requests then you are already be using workflow emails in Chris21. These emails are purely alerts that tell a manager that an employee has requested leave and also tells the employee when the manager has responded to the request.

This is a very useful way to keep all parties informed as to the status of workflow requests. Bear in mind that workflow requests do no just refer to leave, it’s just that leave is probably the most popular one. Other forms of workflow can include such modules as training, expenses, performance management.

It’s also worth noting that workflow emails are simply alerts and have no bearing on the actual workflow process. This means that the workflow process will continue as normal even if the email functionality stops working.

Workgroup Reminders

These are very useful and lend themselves very well to email alerts. Please read this blog for further information about workgroup reminders, Use Workgroup Reminders to Manage Expiry Dates in Chris21. This gives a good example of how you can configure and use workgroup reminders.

Essentially, workgroup reminders are emails that are sent to interested parties to alert them that an important date is nearing. In my blog example you can see that there are many ways to use this functionality to your advantage. For instance,  payroll could set up a workgroup reminder if a position has an end date that is approaching. This could be sent to the employee’s manager as an alert that the contract may need extending.

You may not be using the emailing feature of Chris21 to its full advantage. If that’s the case, consider some of the ideas mentioned in this blog. With a few configuration changes you can achieve significant efficiencies by auto-generating emails from Chris21.

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