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Release Notes: Optimised Onboarding (12th February, 2025)

Jeremy
  • Updated

Buddy's first update for 2025 focuses on empowering bureaus with new tools, customisations, and streamlined onboarding tools. 

Based on our active customers, we've implemented changes to improve the user experience, such as supporting multiple bank details and pension groups for individual employees. 

For the full details on these changes, check out the release notes below.

Release Notes

Advisor Tools

  • New: Bureau Dashboard
    Review data from your dashboard to see patterns of client growth and your performance
  • New: Report Packs
    After the recent update to the Report Builder, we have finalised the missing pieces to get the Report Packs to tip-top shape. 
  • New: Bureaus can now view Detailed Transaction History on each transaction
  • New: Additional permission levels have been introduced to Advisor Team Members
  • Update: During the Payroll Review process, files can now be uploaded
  • New: Bureaus can now set multi-level approval requirements for client reviewsScreenshot 2025-02-06 at 12.34.34.png

Onboarding and Migration Tools

  • New: Parallel Run
    • Introduced a new parallel status in the setup flow, allowing users to upload an original payroll report and compare calculations within Buddy
    • Users can use override options to use their original deductions when these do not match
  • New: Organisation Import
    Bureaus can now import clients in bulk, using data from spreadsheets
  • New: Improved Employee Import
    • Rather than forcing you to use Buddy's template, the employee import now supports custom mapping. This tool can also be used to import salary allowances and employee changes.
    • Update: NI Number is now a non-mandatory field when importing in bulk
    • Update: A new sheet within Employee Import Template has been added for Departments. This allows users to add Departments that haven't been added to Buddy yet.
    • Update: Departments will be automatically created if they do not match an existing one on Buddy
  • New: Pay Item Settings Import
    Custom Allowances can also be imported in bulk. This also supports the importation for overtime rates.
  • New: When importing Totals to Date, users can now select the Tax Year in the import screen.
  • New: Asset Importatation
    Assets such as cars can now be imported in bulk
  • Update: When importing secondary imports (e.g. overwrites, parallel runs), NI number can now be used to identify employees
  • Fix: Leave application import has been updated to resolve issues with reference/NI mapping to employees.
  • Update: Numeric values now support importation where the fields include comma values as part of the text

EverRoll™

  • Fix: Resolved issues where scheduled tasks were not being processed on their due date
  • Fix: All scheduled tasks will now correctly have a status set to show their current state
  • Fix: Corrected the spelling of "Cancelled" to ensure that the filtered data shows any cancelled actions
  • Fix: Resolved a visual issue where 2025 due dates were showing as 2024, despite still being executed in 2025

People Page

  • Update: NI Number will automatically detect and remove spaces to avoid RTI submission errors.
  • New: Payroll ID is automatically generated during the first FPS submission, only if this is still marked as empty.
  • New: Buddy now supports multiple bank details for employees. You can select the % payment that will be transferred to each bank amount.
  • New: Added a new field, "Building Society Number / Payment Reference", in the Bank Details.
  • Fix: Resolved a visual issue where ticking checkboxes moved them slightly upwards.

Compliance and Payroll

  • Fix: Resolved an issue with the way Attachment of Earnings were being handled in payroll.
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where base hours would default to 0 for part-time employees. Note that if this still occurs, you are asked to Clear Payslip and then Refresh to clear out the original data.
  • Fix: Adjusted issue where custom salary allowances could not be edited in the Run Payroll page
  • Fix: Resolved issue of pension reassessment triggering early if no reassessment date is added
  • New: Long-Term Commitments can be set as Salary Sacrifice
  • New: If Pay Day falls on Bank Holidays, it will automatically default to a previous working day.
  • Fix: Improved the SMP to use pro-rata calculations based on the pro-rata mechanisms selected for payroll
  • Fix: When using Full Day pro-rata mechanisms, the wage will default to full if the only dates non-worked are non-working days.
  • Fix: The option to round-up rates is now also applied on Base rate for overtime calculations
  • Update: Buddy now allows payslips with negative gross as long as the net amount is 0 or greater.
  • Update: Re-saving a payroll will now re-calculated pay items using any changed rules (e.g. pensionable) even if the amounts are not changed.

RTI Submissions and Tax Forms

  • Update: EPS submission will automatically exclude any dashes inserted in the bank sort-code to avoid errors
  • New: Address details will be automatically cropped to max length on RTI submissions
  • Update: EPS Import will now attribute the EPS to the correct month, rather than relying on the date of the Period End
  • Update: Introduced new logic to remove any whitespace and improve NINO validation pre-submission

Reports

  • New: In the Reports page, you can now select whether you'd like to exclude or zeroise draft payslips from payroll reports
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where custom employee data reports would be downloaded as blank
  • Fix: Resolved duplicate lines being exported in some pension reports
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where dates could prevent a custom report from being downloaded
  • New: Apart from selecting Report Type, a File Extension override can also be applied (e.g. a .csv type report can be exported as .txt)
  • Fix: Improved visual alignment of columns in the payroll report

 Pensions

  • Updated: Improve the postponement flow so that users can now delete any pension scheme applied by mistake
  • New: Employees can enrol into Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs).
  • New: Each Pension Schemes can now be applied to multiple Pay Schedules
  • New: When choosing Relief at Source pension scheme, one can opt out of the 20% deduction
  • Fix: Employees can opt out of pensions even if their current pension is non-qualifying

Localisation

  • Fix: Changed the Times outputted in reports and emails to be in GMT rather than CET

Settings

  • Renamed Pension Settings to AutoEnrolment Settings for better clarity on its purpose
  • Renamed Code/Initiator ID to Service User Number
  • New: Each company can pre-set filename templates for different reports/downloads.
    • These can be set same as Hourly/Daily rates, but will automatically deduct instead of add value
  • New: Pay schedule settings now support additional pay days:
    • Penultimate Day
    • Penultimate Working Day
    • 1st/2nd/3rd/4th specific weekday of the month
    • A specific weekday before the Last Sunday (e.g. a Friday before the last Sunday).
  • Update: New pay items will, by default, have the pensionable and nicable toggles enabled; these can still be disabled.
  • New: Multiplier type of pay items can now have their default amount/rate set in the Advanced Pay Item settings.
  • New: Introduced two new types of Deduction Types: Hourly Deduction and Daily Deduction
  • New: In the Permissions tab, we have added a set of filters to view a subset of specific permissions (e.g. Payroll Permissions).
  • Fix: Bank settings that have batch enabled will now see the toggle visibly enabled

Journals (Accounting)

  • New: Rules/Conditions can now be deleted
  • New: Journal Rules can be uploaded in bulk using a template
  • New: Added an Accounting sub-page within the Employee's profile to view the default journaling behaviour for the employee
  • Update: Updated the rounding logic for split items to ensure their total matches the original amount
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where some buttons in the Journal menus were unreactive.
  • Fix: After saving changes, the interface will properly update to reflect these changes
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where the accounting journals did not account for the Salary Sacrifice portion

Workforce Integration

  • New: Users will now have the option to disable the sync of leave balances to Workforce

Xero Integration

  • New: Users can choose between sending Journals and Bills
  • Fix: With the new upgraded integration, this should resolve any issues experienced with disconnected Xero accounts

FreeAgent Integration

  • New: The FreeAgent integration now supports Bureau integrations, which connect based on the Advisor tokens. The bureau can then decide which organisation to link to the client account on Buddy.

Other changes

  • New: Option to encrypt PDFs with common passwords such as Date of Birth
  • Fix: Improved Session Handling so that expired login sessions are automatically shown the log in screen.
  • Fix: Resolved an issue where the drop-down search in large companies was excluding a few employees
  • Fix: Removed the Back button from the first page of adding a new company.
  • Fix: Added additional validation to block the creation of timesheet entries if the session has been invalidated (e.g. by switching company on another tab).
  • Update: Introduced additional validation to integrations to block timesheets with invalid (future) dates.
  • Update: If a user does not have an emploeye account, they will no longer see the Switch to Employee Portal button. 

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