Business Unit, Company and Regulatory Region in PeopleSoft

Over the time the three entities Business Unit, Company and Regulatory Region have always confused me as to how differently are they used when setting up the PeopleSoft HRMS system for any organization. I have read People books many times to understand them but believe me you will always run around the concept but never get to it unless you see a live scenario.

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In nutshell, when PeoleSoft HRMS is setup the:

• Business Units are defined from security standpoint
• Companies are defined from the standpoint of how many subsidiaries, operations an organization has
• Regulatory Regions are defined from the standpoint of what are all the regions with different rules and regulations are there in a particular country where the organization operates.

Assume there is an organization named XYZ Corporations. It operates in 4 countries with its 7 development centers across these 4 countries, 1 Business Services in US and 1 Technology Services in India.

Country                              Location                                        Type of Operation

USA                                   2 (Texas, Illinois)                             Development Center
USA                                   1 (California)                                   Business Services
CAN                                   2 (Ontario, Quebec)                         Development Center
IND                                    2 (Bangaloru ,Mumbai)                     Development Center
IND                                    1 (Chennai)                                      Technology Services
GBR                                   1 (London)                                       Development Center        


Let's look at how the Business Units, Regulatory Regions and Company will be defined while setting up PeopleSoft HRMS system for the XYZ Corporations.

Business Unit in PeopleSoft

As stated earlier Business Units are always defined from security standpoint. Though it might not be true in few cases but it is in most of them at least where I have worked so far. So, while defining Business Units for XYZ Corporations the main aspect which will be looked at is:

How the restriction to see the control data will be imposed on these locations?

The requirements are:

1. The three locations in US shouldn't be able to see each others control data.
2. One country shouldn't be able see the control data defined for another country.

So, based on the requirement and from security standpoint below will be the Business Unit setup:

Country                             Business Unit        Description          

USA                                   USA01                    Business Unit for Texas      
USA                                   USA02                    Business Unit for Illinois      
USA                                   USA03                    Business Unit for California        
CAN                                   CAN                       Business Unit for Canada         
IND                                    IND                        Business Unit for India       
GBR                                   GBR                       Business Unit for Great Britain        

There are three locations for XYZ Corporation in US hence to enforce data restrictions on each other, three Business Units - two (USA01, USA02) for the Development Centers in Texas and Illinois respectively and third (USA02) for the Business Services in California.  Likewise, three more business units - CAN, IND, GBR for Canada, India and Great Britain to ensure that the setup reflects the requirement.

Company in PeopleSoft

As stated in the beginning, Companies are defined from the standpoint of how many operations, subsidiaries an organization has across the globe. In our case the XYZ Corporations has operations in 4 countries, have two subsidiaries XYZ Business Services US and XYZ Technologies Services India hence the Company Setup would look like:

Country                            Company                        Company Name

USA                                   XUS                                XYZ US
USA                                   XBSU                              XYZ Business Services US
CAN                                   XCA                                XYZ Canada
IND                                    XIN                                 XYZ India
IND                                    XTSI                               XYZ Technology Services India
GBR                                   XUK                               XYZ UK    

Regulatory Region in PeopleSoft

In PeopleSoft, a regulatory region is considered any region with specific rules and regulations or more importantly the tax regulations. It can either be a country or specific parts in a country for example, in US tax regulation varies from state to state but in India its uniform all across the country so in the PeopleSoft context, for the country like US there will be as many regions as the number of states but for India there will be only one Region as there is only one tax regulation.

So assuming that the country US and Canada have varying tax regulations from their one state to another, accordingly the Regulatory Region setup will look like:

Country                            Reg Region                 Description   

USA                                   USA01                        USA Texas
USA                                   USA02                        USA Illinois
USA                                   USA03                        USA California
CAN                                   CAN01                       Canada Montreal
CAN                                   CAN02                       Canada Quebec
IND                                    IND                            India
GBR                                   GBR                           Great Britain