CORE HR: Multiple Salary Bases for a single element ??

A friend of mine sent me this question “Can we create multiple salary bases with the same element?”

Yes. From an application standpoint you can, but there are certain constraints. Besides, before you embark upon the need to create multiple salary bases on the same element, stop and think – What is the business need for doing the same? Are you using multiple assignments in your organizations where you want the pay information to go to the same element for costing purposes?

Oracle looks for a uniqueness while creating the salary basis. The element Name + the Input Value + Grade Rate combinations should be unique for you to create multiple salary basis for the same element. If this constraint is violated then Oracle will throw up an error and will not allow the creation of a second salary basis.

I have built a sample scenario to explain the concept.
Create an earning element as shown below.

Create Input values as shown here. Notice that I have created three Input values: two input values that have Money as the Units and one as the Hour. You will understand the reasoning behind the same as you read further.


Navigate to Total Compensation > Basic > Salary Basis. Create a Salary basis as shown below and select the element that we have created above. Select the Input value as shown below. You may notice that when you select the LOV in the ‘Input Value Name’ field, you will see two values (a) Pay Value and (b) New Pay Value.

The reason is quite obvious. Both of them have the units as money and you create a salary basis with input values that accept monetary units.

After saving the salary basis, create another salary basis. I have chosen the name as “AP_Test_Salary_Basis 2”. When you tab out after selecting the element name, you will see the caution message. You can click OK and continue. Now in the ‘Input Value Name’ field, you can select the other input value “New Pay Value”. You can proceed to save the salary basis.




Finally, create a third salary basis and select the same element. This time, you will encounter the caution message again. Click OK to continue and when you select the Input value, you will see the error message.





The reason for this error message is that Oracle looks for a unique combination to exist between Element Name, Input value and the Grade Rate (Here I am assuming that you don’t use grades).

So bottom line is that you can create multiple salary basis for the same element provided you do not violate the unique constraints. But in real-time scenarios, it is suggested to create salary bases with separate elements.