The Feature

Welcome Aboard, Contingent Workers!

February 26, 2006 on 9:00 am | by Marian Crkon | In Reviews | |  Print |  Email

Open the gates! Roll out the red carpet! Start the music! Contingent workers have arrived in Oracle Applications (Release 10.5.10)! Who are those contingent workers anyway? I define them as individuals working for your business, but not on your payroll.

You are probably thinking what the big deal is, right? Well, it’s big because contractors can now enter time and expenses in Oracle, and we are done with all the ugly workarounds and customizations we had to do in the past! Somehow, it took Oracle several years to provide this functionality, but it’s better late than never. Contingent workers are here, and they look fabulous!

How It Works…

• In Human Resources (must be a fully installed HR), you can define contingent workers as persons with a separate person type ‘Contingent Worker’. You can define their assignments, assignment rates, and attach them to their suppliers - either their agencies or their respective 1099 suppliers.
• In Oracle Time and Labor (OTL), contingent workers can now enter time the same way employees do.
• In Oracle Internet Expenses (iExpenses), contingent workers can now enter expense reports the same way employees can. When expense reports are imported into Payables, they become invoices under suppliers that are assigned to contingent workers in HR.
• Contingent worker time and expenses can now be imported into Projects to be costed and/or billed according to your company’s needs.
• Contingent worker labor costs can be calculated either based on their Purchase Order, or Hourly Rates defined in Projects. Using the Labor Costing Extension, you can calculate their costs based on their assignment rate maintained in HR.
• You can define separate accounting rules for contingent worker costs and revenue, thanks to Person Type being a separate parameter in the AutoAccounting rules.
• You have an option to send, or not to send, contingent worker labor costs to General Ledger.

People keep asking me about the gotchas, hidden bugs and surprises. I can’t believe your expectations are so low! There are none. We found everything described above working as designed. Well, for most part…

.. What Could Work Better

• WebADI Transaction Import does not distinguish between person types, and hence does not recognize contingent workers. If you are planning on uploading a larger volume of contingent worker expenses into Projects (e.g. data conversions) using the Web ADI upload, it won’t work.
• The Streamline Interface Process (XL option), which interfaces labor costs from Projects to General Ledger, does not work for contingent worker costs, if they are being interfaced alone. It workrs fine if you interface them with employee costs. I understand this is an existing bug fixed in the next release.
• Contingent Worker and Supplier Start Dates Be careful about the start dates! If contingent worker record in HR has an earlier start date than his supplier record in Payables, and if contingent worker incurred expenses during that timeframe, his expense reports will fail, because “Supplier is Not Active”. In addition, there is no supplier start date, so fixing it is a lot of fun. See Contingent Worker and His Supplier Start Dates feature of the week.
• Contingent Worker Assignment Rate Start Date. Here is a little gotcha for you. Make sure you set this date far enough in the past so that you can cost any legacy timecards. Once you define the first assignment rate, you cannot define another before it.

Share your experience with contingent workers with others. Let the rest of us know what worked and what didn’t.