Purpose
This program is a conversion program intended for those who have chosento utilize the XDEC cost distribution functionality for payroll. It isneeded only if payroll results exist that were calculated without theuse of the XDEC functionality. The XDEC functionality uses a new payrolltable, COSTS, to store the cost distribution results; payroll recordsthat were created without the inclusion of XDEC will have an empty COSTStable. This program enables the user to create COSTS entries where COSTSentries do not exist.
In general, the user has two options for the conversion method:
Convert from date: The conversion program will determine theearliest payroll period that overlaps the indicated date by at least oneday. If this period contains no dependencies on earlier periods, thisperiod will be the start period. Otherwise, the program will determinethe earliest retroactive period needed, and this will be the startperiod. The program will then convert all results from the start periodto the last period of the payroll results.
Convert single period: The selected period is used in the programas the IN period of the results. The program will perform the XDECcalculation on the sets of results starting from the earliest FOR periodto the latest FOR period, and will store the results back on the payrollcluster in table COSTS. Only the COSTS table will be updated with newentries; the program will not modify the results in payroll tables otherthan COSTS.

Prerequisites
The prerequisites to successfully run this program for an employee areas follows:
XDEC must be activated in the system.
The following tables must be customized:
T7PBSDEC_WTGRP: Wage Type Group Definition
T7PBSDEC_COSTS: Cost Distribution Definition
In the case of the "Convert Single Period" method:
Results should be converted sequentially by period.
Before the payroll results for a period can be converted, all errorsthat may have occurred in the preceding periods must be corrected.

Selection
The selection parameters for the conversion program are a subset ofthose used for the standard payroll driver:
Personnel Number: A personnel number or range of numbers
Payroll Area: Indicates the payroll area for which the conversion shouldbe done.
Start Date ("Convert From Date" method) : The date for which conversionshould begin. Note that the start date does not imply that the earliestperiod to overlap this date will be the earliest period to be converted.The program will determine if dependencies on earlier periods exist, andconvert results starting with the earliest retro-active period needed.
Selection Period ("Convert Single Period" method): The payroll period tobe converted
Test Mode: An indicator for whether or not an update should be done tothe payroll cluster. If the checkbox is checked, no update will be done.
Display variant: A variant for the ALV list display of the results.

Output
The initial output of the report provides the status of the results: thetotal number of employees processed, the number of employees that wereprocessed successfully, and the number of employees that had errors.From the status screen, the user is able to navigate either to the ALVlist displaying the converted records, or to the error log.
The ALV list will display only the COSTS entries that have beensuccessfully calculated. The results are grouped by employee and aredisplayed in the order in which they have been converted. Each set ofCOSTS entries is grouped by a sequence number. This sequence numbercorresponds to the payroll record for which the set of costs have beencalculated.
Erroneous employees will not be included in the ALV list display. Anymessages such as error, information, or warning messages that werecreated during processing will be contained in the error log. The logcan be accessed from the ALV list display or the status screen via theerror log icon. Should an error occur for a particular employee, XDECprocessing will stop for that employee and will proceed with the rest ofthe employees in the selection. The errors that occurred for theemployee must be resolved before subsequent periods for that employeecan be converted.
The contents of the error log can be sorted according to problem class(the severity of a message). The classes by which the messages arecategorized are 'Additional Information', 'Medium', 'Important', and'Very Important'. By default, messages from all problem classes are alldisplayed together in the error log; double-clicking on a particularproblem class will restrict the list to messages in that problem classonly. The list entry for each message will contain the personnel numberfor which the message applies. Double-clicking on the list entry of themessage will display the long text for the message if it exists.