This update prioritises quality data when concluding payroll and sending payslips. The most significant improvement will be noticed in the Payroll Summary, which now highlights items like the larger variance from the previous run.
- A brand new Payroll Summary experience
- The payslip email content has been revamped for better clarity
- New function to send individual payslips
- Improvements and fixes to live integrations
- Other Quality of Life improvements
Below is a complete list of release notes; note that multiple items have been updated before this date.
Release Notes
Payroll
The most challenging task in payroll is flagging anomalies when reviewing and reconciling reports. The new payroll summary provides all payroll officers with a variance report of employees and pay items to assist in flagging abnormalities.
- New: A brand new payroll summary showcasing essential variances from the previous payrun
- Deductions and Liabilities Summary
- Summary of New Starters and Leavers
- Top and Bottom earners
- Biggest payroll-to-payroll movers
- Exceptions (e.g. terminations, missing pay items, etc.)
- Department Summary
- Pay Item Comparison
- Update: Updated how pension is calculated for NT tax calculation; this should now automatically not deduct the 20% tax relief.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where timesheets could no longer be processed after being unprocessed.
- Update: Updated the logic of the default basic hours for variable hours to utilise the selected bands (see People section).
- Fix: Bank holidays added as public holidays will now show as a separate item in the payslip
Email Communication
Payslip Emails
Payslip emails were sweet and short, but for new employees or customers, this sometimes raised a question. This has been rewritten to give better context and information of what one should expect from their payslip.
- New: Payslips can now be sent individually from the Payslips screen
- New: Added new payslip encryption settings for those sending .pdfs
- New: Terminated employees will automatically receive a P45 in their final payslip email
- Update: Updated the download link to take employees to the employee portal directly
- Update: The payslip email has been updated to include more dynamic details and create clearer expectations, especially for new employees and clients unfamiliar with Buddy.
People
- Update: A new field for "Expected Hours" Band for those on Variable Hours, which is now fully selectable by the users.
- New: Payroll ID can now be generated from Buddy for new employees, using on of three methods:
- Auto-generated ID
- Pattern-based ID
- Reference-based ID
HMRC & RTI Submissions
Our RTI submissions deserved a little polish. CIS and EPS submissions give more details, and we've made several improvements to the existing FPS functionality.
- RTI Submissions
- New: A preview tab with both Raw XML and Summarised Details, visible prior to submission
- Update: Introduced additional validation checks for FPS and EPS submissions
- New: Introduced an FPS Diff view, which highlights differences from the previous FPS
- Update: Improved the error messaging to identify the relevant rows for any errors
- New: New XSD schemes were added
- New: Added new logic to support the creation of automated Payroll IDs
- New: EPS and CIS submissions will now use a similar pop-up, which shows Preview, Request, and Response, similar to the FPS.
- Update: HMRC Notification acceptance window has been increased for notifications up to 75 days old
- Update: The Payroll History for CIS Schedules will no longer show an FPS button
Tax Forms
- Fix: Resolved an issue where P30s were not being generated after concluding payroll. Affected companies would need to Refresh Payroll Reports.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where the P32 was not linking the statutory items for 2025/2026.
- Fix: Updated P60 generation to resolve few identified issues:
- Incorrect data from 2024/2025 related to totals to date import
- Tax Code will now use the original (2024/2025) and not the current tax code (in case it was generated later in the year)
- Added overrides for annual director calculations
- New: P45s can now be automatically sent alongside payslips upon final termination (see: email communications).
Getting Started
- Update: Users can now tick the HMRC Gateway checkmark to avoid inserting this on all clients
Settings
- Update: Removed the Password restrictions for the HMRC Gateway to support older passwords of less than 10 characters.
- Update: Introduced a new setting to only show the Top-Up of Holiday Pay as a separate item, with the weekly pay not separated from the basic
- Update: The Client Permissions for advisors have been updated to remove actions like Send Payslip or Send to Integration when given access to Payroll Data.
Reports
- Update: Bank report has been updated to strictly utilise Account Holder Name and support multiple bank accounts per employee.
- Fix: Resolved a rounding anomaly in BACS files
- Report Builder Changes:
- New: A new option to capitalise all output
- New: Date Format selector
- New: Multiple additional header rows and footers, also referred to as trailer rows, can be added.
- Headers and Footers can use values such as Report Generation Time and Total Values (e.g. Total Gross, Total Net).
- New: For Pension Reports, you can filter the report for specific Pension Providers
Integrations
- Workforce
- Fix: Resolved an issue that incomplete (blank) leave data was preventing leave from being imported
- Employee Workforce Link
- Fix: Resolved an issue that prevented users from saving the employee link
- Fix: Resolved an issue where updating Team Filters was unsaving the initial link
- Fix: Team Filters can now be fully removed
- Fyorin
- Fix: Resolved an issue relating to deactivated accounts, which was preventing payments from being sent to Fyorin.
- Nest
- Update: Our team has made several updates, such as cleaning of NI numbers and improving how the data is sent between the two systems.
- Xero
- Fix: Resolved an issue where Xero journals could not be sent due to an anomaly rounding
- Fix: Resolved an issue where certain items were showing up as undefined on Xero
- Update: Updated the Xero Integration to show errors in the Payroll History.
- People's Pension
- Update: Updated the People's Pension Integration to show errors in the Payroll History.
Other
- Updated: In Pension Scheme details, you can now select the Pension Provider even if you are not using a direct integration