Release Summary
Buddy's payroll engine has gone from best to bestest as we introduce additional tools and improvements. In addition, as the deadline for FS7 submission approaches (15th of February), we are releasing minor improvements to tax forms.
Here are the key highlights:
- Employees over 65 will be defaulted to not pay SSC, regardless of social security status
- New 15% share options tax rate
- Tax Form improvements
- UX improvements to Bulk Imports
For those still needing to submit, we suggest you check out: All About the End of Year Submissions and FSSXpress™.
Read below for the full list of changes included in this update. Some of the changes on later dates, which will be mentioned.
Release Notes
Payroll Calculation and Payslips
Sometimes, employees who become pensioners continue to work. We've made this process simpler by automatically excluding any further SSC deductions for such employees.
We're also introducing a 15% tax option for share option allowance.
- New: Employees over 65 will automatically be defaulted to not pay SSC or MFC. Employees who go on pension earlier than 65 still need to have their Social Security rate set as Pensioner.
- New: Buddy has introduced a 15% tax rate on share options. Choosing this allowance type will tax it separately from the main income.
- Update: Updated the Net Pay calculation to not consider taxable overtime income or overtime paid.
- Fix: Resolved an issue for payslips with advanced Sunday Overtime where the Basic Amount was including the Sunday basic. This only applies for some configurations of advanced overtime settings.
- 5th February Fix: Resolved an issue where users could not insert the base hours for their employees, despite enabling exact hour settings.
- 16th February Update: Implemented minor adjustments to improve the linking of leave to payslips, particularly for those saving payslips at a much larger volume.
We'd like to disclaim that the net pay reverse tax calculation is primarily designed for salaried employees. Please use caution when using it for employees with variable, additional income or have multiple tax rates.
Tax Forms
As the end-of-year submission period is in full force, our team has released few improvements, following other changes implemented in January
- Fix: Resolved an issue where generating FS5 for January made the FS7 for 2023 inaccessible. For those who still need to submit, you can still regenerate tax forms for this to appear.
- Fix: FS7 will now include the Director Fees. These were already included in the FS3s, FS5s and electronic lodgement files
- Update: Regenerate Tax Forms will now also update FS3s for employees terminated in the previous year but still paid during the year.
- Update: In the FS5, any payslips that have part-time (qualified) tax will appear as part-time employees, regardless of their employment type
- Update: Allowed the FS3 not to block payroll reports if there are no valid FS3s
Bulk Importations
Importing data in bulk can save a lot of time! We've made some minor improvements to facilitate these processes.
- Update: The importation of Payslips has been updated to allow the generation of previous pay periods. We still recommend importation to be done before you run that company's first payroll.
- Update: Importation of Leave will now display each error even when all rows are invalid
- Update: Importation of employees has been updated to clarify which header could not be found when this does not match the company settings
Payroll History
This update also resolves two recent issues relating to the creation of new pay periods and another regarding sending of payslips.
- Fix: Fixed an issue where pay periods for new pay schedules without cut-off dates could not be created
- Fix: Fixed an issue where pay periods could not be created if the pay schedule's payday was set using the working day's option.
- Fix: Fixed an issue where the sending of payslips was getting stuck when new employees had not yet been invited. Employees will now receive both the invite and payslip
- Fix: The payroll report (.pdf) was updated to include the department totals again
Other
- Update: When downloading cheques, only employees who are not meant to be paid by the bank will have a cheque downloaded.
- Update: Elements of the add leave have been updated to facilitate the adding of multi-day leave. Our team will be further revising this eventually to further improve the experience of adding leave.
- Update: The people page will no longer show a department column if departments are not enabled.
- 16th February Update: Made minor improvements to the sending of payslip emails to match latest changes of our mail provider.
- 16th February Update: Revamped the leave application modal to improve the user experience.