Release Summary
In today's update, Buddy is introducing new functionality for Advisors & Bureaus to standardise and simplify the creation of new clients. In addition, we're releasing other changes
Here's a summary of the latest release:
- New Allowance Template for Advisors & Bureaus
- Updates to Advisor Plan Selection on Buddy (to match Pricing Website & Discussions)
- Toggle to Blur Salary in the People page
- Other user experience improvements.
Read further below for the detailed list of changes
You may already have noted a few of these changes before today's announcement, as a few were released earlier this week.
Release Notes
Advisor Allowance Templates
New: Allowance Templates
Advisors can now go to their Advisory > Settings > Payroll and create generic overtime and allowances that can be used for new companies.
Creating these templates simplifies the addition of new clients, as well as standardises the allowances and reports across companies within similar industries
The full user guide can be found here: Overtime & Allowance Templates for New Clients. Below is a brief summary of the features:
- Add Overtime
- Create multiple overtime rates that may be used in one or more templates
- Add Allowance
- Create allowances to be used in one or more templates.
- Add Template
- Create templates to quickly add Overtime Rates and Allowances
- Apply Template
- When creating new companies, you will see the option to Apply Template, both within the Overtime and the Allowance pages. Select the applicable template, and Buddy will auto-create allowances based on the selected template.
Note: this template can only be used when creating new companies. If the template is updated, this will not reflect any changes in existing clients.
Payroll
- AccuPay™ & Process Timesheets
- Update: A feature to assign Public Holiday TOIL on weekly calculations has been revised to support weeks in which there are two public holidays
- Fix: Updated the pension age cut-off from 66 to 65; anyone over 65 will now automatically not have any contributions deducted.
Partner (Advisor) Billing & Plans
Although no pricing changes have been implemented, Buddy's now been updated to more accurately reflect changes and restrictions to better reflect the pricing plans on our website.
These will only impact Advisors on Pay As You Go or Unlimited Bureau plans, but may not impact Legacy Advisors for the time being.
- Update: Advisor-Only plan has been renamed to Basics. This will continue to give access to Advisors for payroll, tax forms, and leave management, amongst other tools
- Update: The Starter plan has been restructured into the Collaborator plan. This unlocks the below features, amongst others:
- Inviting Clients to access Buddy
- Allow Clients to Review Payroll
- Enable Vacation Management for Employee Portal
- Update: The Seriously Accurate plan has been renamed to Automation Guru
- This remains primarily the same, unlocking AccuPay™ and advanced integrations (such as Workforce T&A)
- Fix: Resolved an issue where adding new companies showed both non-advisor and advisor plans
Our team has also implemented changes to handle advisory plans and billing directly from the website. This will also improve the flow of automated yearly renewals upon plan expiration.
Bank Files
Fix: The Bank File generation has been updated to custom sort an updated SEPA package; this was required as two local banks require a specific custom sort to process internationally accepted data. This change should have no impact on other banks who process standardised formats.
Toggle for Salary Blur
New: The people page will automatically hide visible salaries. Salary rates can be seen by either hovering the cursor on the blurred amount or by clicking the toggle, listed as an 'eye' icon.