Release Summary
As most of you know, Buddy is opening its services to clients in the UK. Thanks to our team's work on this product, some changes are also implemented for Malta-based companies. This includes new features like the Children tab, child-related leave, and other user interface improvements.
Release Notes
Children Tab
We have introduced a new Children tab. This is only the first part of the update, where the employer or HR team can start saving details of the employee's children, such as a reference and date of birth. This will eventually be utilised for child-related leave applications, like maternity, paternity and parental leave.
- New: A new "has children" checkbox is added to the personal details. Once enabled, a new Children tab will be shown for that employee.
- New: You can now add children's details in the Children Tab. Please check out our guide for more information: Adding Children Details
Run Payroll Changes
Most changes in the update pertain to the Run Payroll page. The changes range from new additions in the user interface of leave entitlement to specific bonus calculation changes.
- Update: The leave balances in Run Payroll have been updated to show the annual entitled amount instead of the entitled to date.
- New: By hovering over the Entitled amount, you will see the split between actual entitled, leave carried over and TOIL adjustments, as seen below.
- New: When updating pay period dates backwards, any social security weeks that were initially calculated will now show as red boxes if they are no longer within the relevant pay period.
- Improvements to Government Bonus Calculations:
- Update: The bonus calculation has been updated to be rounded to two decimal places before calculating the gross. This should increase the consistency of how it appears in all places.
- Update: The March weekly allowance calculation has been updated to project more accurately the bonus for employees whose organisation started utilising Buddy this year and does not have payslips from the previous year.
- Update: Slightly adjusted the formula to increase accuracy on the deduction proportionate of unpaid leave when utilised by employees on reduced hours.
- Fix: Corrected an issue that was not allowing the payslip to be saved if an employee has overtime on termination
- Update: The FSS Tax entry will now show in the Run Payroll even when the result is €0.
This allows users to hover and see the calculation regardless. - Fix: The number of employees that "have not been locked" in the conclude screen will no longer include employees in other pay periods.
We hope this clears any confusion faced by users with multiple pay periods!
Other Changes
A few other changes have made it into this update. The changes are specific to the Maltese software.
- Leave Changes
- Fix: The employee leave entitlement on reduced hours has been updated, as it was incorrectly factoring in past public holidays that fell on off days
- Update: The Carryover Leave function has a slight update to the user interface to fit smaller screens
- Update: Minor text changes:
- Changed the Import Payroll History text from "Manual" to "Guide".
- The Process Timesheets instructions on contacting the support team have been updated.
- Update: New allowances are defaulted to taxable. Users can still untick this to create non-taxable allowances.
- New: Added a notification after closing the Advanced Allowance and Advance Overtime settings.
This will remind you to save the Company Settings as well to save any changes. - Update: Improvements to the Xero Integration to resolve an issue with pay runs sent multiple times to Xero.
- Update: Implemented a method of increasing image contrast on the QR code for OCR uploads to improve recognition