Release Notes: Advanced Client Management and Report Building (17th Dec 2024)

Release Summary

Cue the fireworks... It's not New Year's Eve, but Buddy's latest update comes in with a big bang. This update introduces several new features, primarily focused on bureau management and customisation of reports and payslips.

Here's a brief set of highlights of what to expect:

• Manage Clients by assigning teams, tags and assignees
• Create advanced custom reports with ease
• Apply salary changes in bulk
• Select preferred pro-rata mechanics and payslip printing customisations
• Apply filters and searches within the Run Payroll page

For the full details on these changes (and links to the relevant user guides), check out the release notes below:

Release Notes

Advisors (Bureaus)

Bureau management is a key aspect that Buddy is continuing to focus on improving. In this update, we're introducing the ability to assign clients to teams, assignees and custom tags.

• New: Users can now attribute and filter their Client List with Teams, Tags, and Assignees.
  • Filter by Assignee if that colleague is unavailable to ensure smooth operations
  • Create tags to filter clients by types of payroll or activity, ensuring the right actions are taken for each client. 
  • Filter by status to see which clients are in setup or parallel runs and ensure your team is progressing on these
    
    For more information, see: Manage Clients by Teams, Tags, and Assignees
    
    
• Update: The Add New Team Member functionality has been updated to allow invites to non-existing accounts.
• Update: Team members who have not accepted invites will now show in the Team Member list as pending.

Custom Report Builder

One of our largest update centres is the revamp of the Report Builder. We're introducing new output types, the ability to combine values, and much more customisation. For full instructions, see: Report Builder: Creating Custom Reports

• New: Custom Reports can be selected into three output formats: .csv, .xlsx, or fixed space .txt files
• New: Introduced new Report Builders options for further customisation:
  • "Exclude Header from Output File"
  • "Leave Empty Cells Blank"
  • "Include Empty Columns"
  • "Only Output Rows with Net Values", applicable to Payroll report types. 
• New: Clicking on the edit button of custom reports will take users to the Report Builder, allowing reports to be customised further after initial creation.
• New: When editing Custom Reports, users can now move columns or delete them
• New: Users can now combine multiple values into a single column
  • Text fields will automatically concatenate and allow multiple variables, example: @Name @Surname
  • Numeric fields can use arithmetic operators to calculate formulae within the export: addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*) and division (/)
• Update: When using text values (without Buddy variables), Buddy will export the text inserted for all rows.
• Fix: Resolved an instance where previously terminated employees with extra payslips were being filtered out from .xlsx payroll report types. 

People

We've re-introduced the bulk adjustment feature, alongside several improvements to the employee and totals to date importation modules.

• Update: Restored the visibility of the Advanced Search and Bulk Adjustment, currently in their Beta stage (see: Advanced Filtering and Bulk Salary Changes)
• Fix: The Employee Import template will include the Salary Type column to determine if salaries are gross or net.
• Fix: When importing FPS data via .xml submission file, Buddy will update the Tax Rate effective as at the last payment date to ensure it takes effect from the first Buddy payroll.
• Update: The FPS .xml importation will no longer update Salary or Role data, ensuring no impact on effective dates.

Payslip Details

Each client comes with different needs. We've introduced the ability to show or hide some of the non-required information for each company.

• New: Introduced four new customisation options:

  • Hide Role & Department from Payslip

  • Remove QR Code from Payslip

  • Remove Period Dates from Payslip (use only if period is not known)

  • Show Employee Reference or Payroll Number on Payslip

• Fix: The Totals to Date section has seen minor revisions to correct totals and improve consistency:
  • Employer Pension amount will now include values added in the Employee's Totals to Date section (for mid-year migration)
  • The gross value will now use the Employee's Totals to Date Gross pay, rather than Taxable pay, for better consistency for employees paying net-pay agreement pension

Payroll Updates

In Run Payroll, users can now filter for incomplete payslips and search users by name, NI or Reference. The update also introduces two new pro-rata mechanisms which can be further customised.

• New: We're introducing two new pro-rata mechanisms with additional customisations. Users can now select whether the pro-rata is to be calculated as percentages, working days, or calendar days, as well as default weeks between standardised 52 or more exact ones.
• New: Users can now use Search within Run Payroll to look up employees by name, NI Number, or reference code.
• New: In Run Payroll, users can now filter for incomplete payslips only, allowing teams to finalise payroll with better ease
• New: Introduced new settings in Settings > Payroll, which allows users to import statutory pay items (like Statutory Sick Pay) in bulk, either in days or, if using override, the gross amount.
• Fix: Salary frequencies set as Fortnight (Two Weeks) can now be used in payroll. 
• Fix: Resolved an incident where re-saving payslips would recalculate the monthly allowances to a slightly less rounded figure.
• Fix: Resolved an instance where a payroll requiring approval would not load if some payslips were not finalised.

Pension Details

The Salary Sacrifice can now be topped-up further with a percentage from employee and employer NIC savings.

• New: Added an option to top-up a Salary Sacrifice pension with a percentage of the NIC savings.
• Update: When selecting pensions, users will now be able to choose pensions which started after the employee's engagement date.
• Fix: If the pension groups are updated after having assigned employees, the employee profile will properly reflect these changes. Note that this was already happening at the payroll level.

Technical Changes

Our team has migrated our emailing to a new platform. This should see no immediate changes but will allow us to introduce new functionalities in the near future. 

• Update: Our team has migrated to use a different emailing platform. A few templates might have changed slightly as our team built new functionality.
• New: Bureaus that have White Labelling can now customise email templates.

Settings & Other

There are a few other changes that are more general in nature:

• New: P11 Report can be downloaded from the Reports section
• New: Additional validation was introduced to prevent users from setting the Gateway password to empty.
• New: In the Pay Items (Allowances) section, you can now Show/Hide the Buddy Default allowances
• Update: The address search results are now sorted alphabetically
• Update: Demo accounts will now be pre-loaded with Pension Details to facilitate getting to the first Payroll Run.
• New: In the Employee's profile, users can now remove an existing workforce integration connection.