Release Summary
Today's update brings significant improvements to both payroll admins, as well as managers and employees making use of the Employee Portal.
The key highlights are the following:
- Updated BoV's SEPA File Format
- Significant Changes to Multi-Day leave for the Employee and Manager portals
- New Overtime Income and Overtime Tax in the Previous Earnings section
- Other Quality of Life updates
We recommend that you read through the full change log below.
Release Notes
People
Our team has introduced changes to the Previous Earnings input, which allows for enhanced employee onboarding, and updated the date text input to match the expected format.
- Update: Previous Earnings have been updated to include inputs for Overtime Tax earnings and tax, rather than hours.
- Fix: The input for "FT Employer's PE Number" has been removed from irrelevant Social Security Statuses, such as Disability Badge Holder.
- Fix: The text input for dates has been updated to be consistent. The engagement date, termination date and salary update date will now use the standard format, based on the browser, rather than Americanised dates.
Payroll
The overtime tax has been updated to factor in the changes in the Previous Earnings. Particularly, the overtime tax will consider any underpayment, overpayment or rounding of previous earnings' overtime income and tax. Those that had paid overtime tax correctly will see no change.
- Update: Overtime Tax calculation has been updated to reflect the Previous Earnings change.
- Fix: When a mixed-salary payslip is saved before previewing the base hours, the hours will be saved as pro-rata, rather than defaulting to the 173.33.
If the details of the employee are expanded, then the user input will be expected to amend base hours. - Fix: Creating a new pay-period using a weekly schedule will not skip a mystery week. All pay-periods should be numbered and dated in order
Leave Management
A few improvements to the admin's leave management, including a UI division to clearly identify active and terminated employees.
- New: When adding leave, the Employee Selector will split the list into Active and Terminated, which will also show when inputting a name to search.
- Fix: Whilst using the setting to calculate leave balances pro-rata, balances on termination will now show the accurate amount on termination, rather than the balance to date.
- Fix: When adding a single leave day, hours will not automatically be rounded down. For instance, if the leave default is 6.67 hours per day, this number will be used for single-day leave.
- Update: Whilst editing a single-day leave, changing the Time In or Time Out will automatically update the hours requested
Employee and Manager Portals
The leave management within the employee and manager portals has undergone significant changes. Our team hopes this will enhance your teams' experiences with managing leave through Buddy.
Employee and Manager Updates
- Update: When a company has a set default hours, these will be defaulted for any day for all employees, regardless of the employee's salary structure
- Update: When adding leave, the Time Out will auto-adjust to match the Default Hours of the company.
- Update: The pre-filled hours for multi-day leave have been updated:
- The 40-hour cap per week for employees without defined workdays will only consider the days included in the current leave application.
- The weekly hours cap for employees with set days/hours will assume that the other scheduled hours have been worked
- e.g. a 40-hour, Monday to Friday employee that has defaulted 8.5 hours per day, applies for Thursday and Friday. Thursday will default to 8.5 hours, whilst Friday will default to 6 hours.
Manager Only Updates
- Update: When adding leave, changing Time in or Time Out will update the Hours Requested (within the daily maximum leave).
- Fix: When editing leave, the Time In or Time Out are no longer reset to the default hours
Other
BoV has recently communicated changes to its technical specifications for bulk salary uploads, and our team quickly took action to update Buddy's SEPA formats, prior to the deadline. We recommend any BoV clients to ensure they read any emails to understand any changes in the process.
- Update: SEPA Files for BoV users have been converted to .sct format, as per updated BoV technical specifications
- Fix: When editing timesheets, the status will accurately load the current status, rather than the status of a previous timesheet
- Fix: Employee Invites have been updated to ensure that they give proper access to their new account