A substitution is generally understood be temporary replacement for an employee who is absent. In the business world, a substitution also means assigning another person to take over the position and associated tasks of an absent colleague.

The term substitution is interpreted even more broadly in R/3 Human Resources (HR). A substitution is not only the temporary replacement of an absent employee, but most importantly, involves a change to the employee’s planned working time.

The Substitutions infotype (2003) includes the following functions:

• Assigning planned working times that deviate from those specified in the employee’s personal work schedule.

• You enter a different cost assignment.

• Assigning an employee to a different position for a certain period of time.

• You can assign a different payment for a temporary activity based on an existing position.

Except for position substitution, all types of substitution constitute a change to the employee’s personal work schedule, because the system overwrites the original work schedule when you enter a substitution. Therefore, on any one day, the system can only take one substitution into account that changes the employee’s planned working time.

By combining the position substitution with other substitution types, you can change both the employee’s planned working time and payment.
To prevent errors, you can set an appropriate collision check in the corresponding Customizing steps in the Implementation Guide (IMG).

The following types of substitutions are available for recording substitutions.

Use this function to enter deviations in your employee’s work schedule that occur on a daily basis.

Use this substitution type instead of the substitution based on a work schedule rule if an employee is to be assigned a different work schedule for a short period of time only (one day, for example).

Use this function to enter deviations in the employee’s personal work schedule that last for several days.

This function is useful to temporarily assign a different personnel subarea grouping, employee group or public holiday calendar to an employee.

Use this function to change your employee’s work schedule rule by assigning him or her another employee’s personnel number. The other employee’s work schedule rule is now assigned to this employee.

This function is useful if an employee replaces an absent colleague over a fixed period, for example, or is to be assigned the same work schedule rule as another employee.

Use this function to enter any kind of deviation to the employee’s planned working time. You can do this by specifying the start and end of working times and breaks for each day of the substitution.

This function is recommended if your substitution is not based on either a specific daily work schedule or a work schedule rule.

Use this function to specify a different payment for an employee over a certain period of time, based on the specifications for a different position. You can do this by assigning the employee the position with the applicable rate of payment.

If you only enter the position, the planned working time does not change. The system does not overwrite the original planned working time of the employee performing the substitution.

You can combine the substitution based on a position with all other types of substitution, enabling you to take advantage of other variations of the substitution.

When recording both a position substitution and a time substitution, you can also specify a different payment for the time interval.

In addition to substitution based on a position, there are two other methods of entering a different payment that results from a substitution in the system:

Choose Goto ® Different payment to enter additional information for a different payment.

• Assign a premium
• Define a payment by assigning a pay scale group and level
• Control payment by entering a different position
• Add or deduct a specific amount using the Extra pay indicator and the Valuation basis.