Buddy Release: Improvements to Quality of Life (March 2023)

Release Summary

For most companies, 2022 is now behind them, with all tax forms finalised and submitted. Now, it's time for payroll officers to be rewarded for their hard work! 

This Buddy update introduces new features and improvements to the user experience, without introducing any drastic changes. Here's a preview of some of the changes:

• We have introduced a new rehire functionality
  
• Added two new salary frequencies in the Salary Details
• Added an option to show the Weekly Breakdown feature in Payslips (related to AccuPay™ functionality)
• Several other quality-of-life improvements

Release Notes

Below are detailed release notes and the rationale for these changes

Employee Page

Employees are the core of any business. Buddy has introduced a rehire feature and other enhancements to improve the users' experience of the People page.

• New: Re-hire functionality for leavers. This will prompt to add a new employee with most details copied from the employee's old profile.
• New: Below the salary description, you will see the basic pay based on the Pay Schedule frequency. For example, in the below screenshot, Buddy converts the €250/week input to a monthly amount (since the employee will be paid monthly).
  
• New: Added two new options to Salary Frequency:
  • Fortnight (2 weeks)
  • Four Weeks
• Fix: Fixed an issue with the bulk employee import which was not saving the Working Days of employees

Payroll Changes

Buddy's payroll calculation has been consistently accurate and easy to use over the years. While we update other features, Buddy still remains to look for new features to allow for more options to enhance our users' compliance with local regulations.

• New: An optional Weekly Breakdown Feature in payslips.
  For AccuPay™ users who process timesheets and overtime per week, we have introduced a weekly breakdown option within the payslip. This can be enabled from Payroll Calculation Options, on the Payroll Settings page.
  
• Update: Updated payroll calculations to handle the new fortnightly and four-weekly salary frequency options
• Update: A minor update to the SSC calculation for anyone calculating the backdated 2020 payroll in 2023. Don't worry, this did not impact anyone that did the 2020 payroll before this year! 
• Update: Added a specific rate for Disability Badge Holders who were also under 18, as this uncommon scenario was previously not being catered for
• Fix: Fixed the Weekly Allowance calculations, which impacted only companies created in 2023:
  • Fixed an issue where the calculation for variable-hour employees was not being impacted by hours worked in Q4 2022
  • Fixed an issue where the calculation for non-monthly payrolls was not estimating a portion for periods that are not imported into Buddy
• Update: Our team has been working on a new AccuPay™ ruleset which is being implemented with a beta client. These updates will eventually be released for other clients
  • Public Holiday leave is no longer automatically created if the employee has worked 5 or more days within a week
  • Fixed Public Holiday leave not being assigned to part-timers on 1st January 2023, due to a change of year
  • Added a new condition to only count a shift larger than a specific duration as a workday
  • Fixed an issue where the Public Holiday portion was still paid for part-timers in the basic pay, even though this was removed from the leave management
  • Added a new rule to check the time of the start of the timesheet, rather than any point during the shift

Add New Company

A few of our changes are targeted towards the addition of new companies, particularly for Advisors who utilise these feature more regularly than other users.

• New: All new companies will be required to select a billing plan
• Fix: PE & VAT Numbers are now being saved when inserted from the Add New Company
• Update: Updated the User Interface (UI) for the Add New Company modal to make it visually consistent with the People module
• Update: The modal of Add New Company was updated to retain saved details when going back to earlier pages

Leave Management

Throughout the past few months, Buddy has introduced changes to the leave management module. This update builds on those changes to introduce a new way of calculating sick leave for employees working variable hours. Moreover, further enhancements to the adding and editing of leave applications have been implemented.

• Update: The sick leave entitlement for employees on variable hours has been updated. Instead of accumulating each month, the leave will be projected based on the average hours paid in the last 13 weeks.
  This may vary slightly based on the pay periods of the company. Effectively, this means that these employees are entitled to sick leave even during the early months of the year.
• New: When applying for a leave entry spanning multiple days, public holidays will automatically be skipped from applying. This is only enabled for users who do not Add Public Holidays to leave balance
  
• Changes: A couple of updates were done to increase clarification and flexibility for leave applications that are already paid
  • Update: Updated the user interface to further clarify when a leave application is already paid and when it can be edited
  • New: Users can now add comments and attachments to leave already paid
  • Update: When a multi-day leave entry is already marked as paid, the warning "Leave already Paid" is now displayed instead of a simple lock icon
• Update: An update to the calculation of sickness benefits to improve its accuracy for leave applications that include 0-hour leave days
• Fix: Corrected when the Sickness Benefit sticker appears when adding/editing leave applications.
• Hotfix: Fixed an issue where adding a leave application crashed if the employee had additional spaces in their name.

Employee Portal

There were fixed circumstantial issues which were proving to be frustrating for some managers utilising the employee portal. These fixes aim to tackle those frustrations and facilitate day-to-day performance.

• New: Managers can now update leave for external contractors
• Fix: Fixed an issue where managers could not cancel an approved leave application
• Fix: Fixed an issue where managers were unable to update leave applications if they remove a day within a multi-day application
• Fix: When managers edit a leave application of multiple days, the total hours requested will now show the actual total hours, rather than the number of hours edited
• Fix: Fixed an issue where the employee page was not loading if they were required to register their MFA code for the first time

Reports

Reports are often times undervalued; they contain a broad set of information in a compact form. Companies now have access to two new additional reports, along with minor updates to improve the visibility and access of existing reports.

• New: Two new reports were added:
  • Payroll Leave Balances Report
    This report will print out the leave balances as issued in the payslips of that specific period
  • Process Timesheets Report
    This report outputs the Process Timesheet data that is saved inside the payroll itself for AccuPay™ users
• Fix: Fixed an issue where the .pdf reports were not being saved in the correct location if the user tried to switch the active company while the reports were being generated
• Fix: Fixed an issue in the Payroll Report (.xlsx) where post-tax allowances were being reported after pre-tax allowances, rather than after the tax deductions

Other

Our team has worked hard to introduce other changes that cannot be categorised in the above sections. These changes vary from user interface improvements to fundamental integration upgrades.

• New: Users will now be automatically logged out when a session expires
• New: Added a new notification button instead of the previous credits warning. Further notifications will soon be created to make use of this new feature. 
• New: A billing email field is added to be utilised for invoicing
  • Billing Email added to Advisor Settings
  • Billing Email added to Company Settings
• Update: Added extra visual padding at the bottom of the People page so that the Save button is not hidden by the Get in Touch button.
• Update: The taxability of allowances has now been switched from a drop-down to a toggle
• Update: When switching active companies, users will now be redirected to the people page (if they have permission for such a page).
• New: Restrictions based on Billing Plans have been added, with changes to the user interface to help users accurately select their plan
• Update: Updated the integration framework. Existing integrations will continue to work as prior
• Update: Updated the Xero Integration as it was creating instances of some pages crashing
• Update: The Send to Xero button is now hidden for users who do not have an active Xero integration
• Update: The Create a Live Account button is now hidden for users who already have active companies. Users can still Add Another Company to Your Buddy Account
• Update: Introduced custom settings to direct punch-clock integrations with select clients. These options will eventually be available through the user interface
• Tax Forms
  • Update: Updated Electronic lodgement files (SS and F3) to handle larger volumes for the largest of our users
  • Update: The years available in the drop-down are now based on the company's payroll years, rather than fixed for all users. For instance, new companies starting in 2023 will not have a drop-down to select 2022.
• Update: As Buddy prepares to launch our product into the UK market, several changes have been implemented. Changes that impact the Maltese companies have been noted above.
  Tweaks to the Answer Bot in chat and emails have been done to maximise its accuracy in landing Maltese clients to the Maltese Help centre.