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Release Notes: Advisor-Focused Features (22nd Dec, 2023)

Jeremy
  • Updated

Release Summary

With 2024 approaching, Buddy introduces key features aimed at simplifying the workflow for payroll providers. Here are the key highlights of this release: 

  • Inclusion of Minimum Wage Checks in the COLA Review
  • Revamped Advisor Page
  • Single-Page FSSXpress™: Submit all electronic lodgements from one page
  • EverRoll™ for Partners: Automated Payroll 
  • A new "Getting Started" flow when creating new companies

Screenshot of Minimum Wage Enforcement in COLA Review

COLA Minimum Wage.png

An overall description of the new key features is discussed in our announcement. Below are the detailed release notes.

Release Notes

2024 Changes

2024 COLA Review

This year, the Cost of Living Adjustment announced in the Budget is accompanied by an additional increase in minimum wage. Buddy has implemented checks to ensure that when applying COLA, the new rate satisfies this requirement.

  • New: Added minimum wage checks for new salaries
    • If adding the standard COLA to the previous salary results in less than the expected minimum wage, the minimum wage will be automatically suggested as the new salary
    • If employees have been in continuous service for more than 1 or 2 years, the additional rate to their minimum wage will be factored. 
      Please note that currently, there are no further minimum wage checks when the employee completes their first or second year of service after the 1st of January
  • Update: COLA can now be reviewed for employees set on fortnightly or four-weekly salaries. These frequency options were added early in 2023, and hence had not featured in previous years' reviews.
  • Fix: Our team caught this one in testing! An issue has been resolved that prevented the yearly salary increase from increasing €1,000, which is now more likely based on the new rates.
  • Update: Implemented minor changes to the rounding of COLA as the hourly rate for 2024 has up to 5 decimal points

Other 2024 Changes

Based on our standard rules, leave entitlement is automatically updated each year based on the Public Holidays. We've implemented the legally required rates and a couple of additional tweaks.

  • 2024 Rates
    • Social Security, Sickness benefit and injury benefit rates have been inserted as per values communicated by the official authorities
  • Leave Entitlements
    • Update: Leave entitlement is no longer capped to the first 40 hours per week. Employees on 48 hours per week, for instance, will see an increase in entitlement.
      Note that if your 48-hour agreements are made out of 40 normal hours and 8 hours overtime, you should update the salary profiles to reflect this accordingly.
    • Fix: The proportionate amount that the unpaid leave removes has been updated to no longer remove a pro-rata of public holidays where not applicable
    • Update: Pro-rata calculations have been tweaked further to ensure consistency with number of working days in 2024, which will dynamically update each year.

Advisor Portal

The User Interface for the Advisor Portal has changed significantly to improve workflow and allow room for new features.

Advisor Portal Malta.png

  • Update: Revamped Advisor Portal's UI:
    • The Horizontal Menu has been repositioned into a vertical left-hand menu
    • The Advisor menu's colour has been set to purple to differentiate from when accessing client accounts.
    • Updated other user interface elements to improve cohesiveness with our overall product
  • Update: Client list now shows the current status of the company
  • New: New advisor team members will see a screen to accept or decline the invite to join the advisory.
  • New: When adding a new company, advisor users will have a new tab asking them whether the company will be managed and paid by the advisor

Create Company as Advisor.png

FSSXpress™

Last year, Buddy introduced FSSXpress™, allowing for direct electronic lodgement submissions. This year, we are introducing new features and improvements related to this feature:

  • New: When two or more companies share the same PE Number, the dedicated FSSXpress™ page will automatically merge their data during submission
  • New: Submission errors that show up during the validation stage can now be downloaded.
  • New: FSSXpress™ can now be accessed from the Advisor page (or through special access for joint organisations)
    • The FSSXpress™ will show all clients within one page, including the status of the electronic lodgement submissions

FSSXpress for Advisors.png

EverRoll™

Buddy is introducing Automated Payroll under EverRoll™. Oftentimes, payroll service providers have a high number of low-touch clients. These payrolls are often consistent and require little input, for which EverRoll™ is ideal. 

  • New: EverRoll™ page is accessible from the new Advisor Portal
    • Enable automated payroll for select pay periods
    • Schedule dates and times for automatic actions, including:
      • Process Timesheets
      • Draft Payslips
      • Conclude Payroll
      • Send Payslips
      • And More
    • Configure conditions to prevent actions (e.g. if there are non-approved timesheets)
    • Receive email notifications on the status of EverRoll™, such as on failed actions
  • Upcoming Payrolls
    • An upcoming payroll page shows open payrolls that are upcoming. Note that currently Buddy will not auto-create pay-periods unless.

Note: EverRoll™ is currently available for free in Beta to all advisors. This will later be only eligible for Advisors with a Partner license.

Getting Started (Company Creation)

Throughout the years, we have identified that users may often rush to onboard on Buddy and sometimes skip necessary steps. 

To improve the user experience, when creating a new company, the account will go through a new stage. Check out the Getting Started for the full explanation of this process.

Getting Started on New Company.png

  • New: Account Setup Stage
    • A new page called Getting Started has been added. This will show all the Setup Steps required to go live with the account
      • Users can set targets for some of the steps (e.g. target of employees to import)
      • A checklist for each step is created. Most of these will be auto-checked upon completion, although there are a few that can be ticked manually.
    • Accounts in the Setup Stage will not be charged for their activity. We want to ensure that users take the required time to set up their account
    • Payroll cannot be drafted before going live

AccuPay™

  • Auto-Created Public Holiday
    • Update: The creation of automatic public holidays will now be capped until the timesheet cut-off date instead of the leave cut-off date
    • Fix: When employees have Mixed Salary, the public holiday will now accurately be allocated to the salary on the date it occurred
  • Time & Attendance Rules
    • Fix: Fixed an instance where later allowances were not calculated if other allowances appeared before overtime calculations
    • Fix: Fixed an instance where overtime hours were no longer triggering any hourly allowances
  • Update: When overtime is paid by weekly breakdown, paid leave will now be allocated on the Sunday of each week instead of the last day of the month. This will primarily improve the breakdown visibility for employees who change salary mid-month.

Permissions

  • New: Account owners can now revoke the permissions of other authorised users.
  • New: Each account will have a Primary point of contact, which owners can change. This will help our team identify which user to contact, if needed.

Other Changes

  • User Experience
    • Update: Changes to the Demo Company interface
      • Renamed Create a Live Account to Setup Live Company
      • Managers cannot be invited to the Demo Account
      • Demo company can no longer be archived
    • New: Added a Loading Screen when switching companies. This will ensure that all data is loaded before users can start taking actions
    • Update: Pay period start date now shows as locked when it is not changeable
    • Update: Other user interface elements, such as the top bar, have been updated
  • BambooHR Integration
    • Fix: During importation from BambooHR, the button to ignore employees will now permanently exclude those employees from future imports.
  • Manager Portal
    • Fix: When adding leave, the hours requested will now adapt to the time in and time out. This may still be limited, depending on company settings.
  • Leave Management
    • Update: Updated the Leave Situation Report to match a recent update to calculate leave only until end-of-year, even if employees have future termination dates
    • Fix: Fixed a minor inconsistency with entitlements for a custom leave type

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