Release Summary
In this update, Buddy embraces change by redesigning the People and Setting menus. Users will now be able to view employee payslips, timesheets and leave directly from a person's profile, including a drill-down on tax calculations.
To keep our users secure, an Account Lockout feature has been implemented to prevent brute-password attempts. The audit logs have also been enhanced to filter by action type and give admins better access.
- Security Upgrades
- Redesigned User Interface for People and Settings
- Integration Upgrade
- QoL Updates
This update includes a lot more, including Accupay™ improvements, a technical overhaul of the Workforce integration, an update to BoV SEPA File customisation, and more.
For the full details, read the below release notes.
Release Notes
New Security Measures
When it comes to cloud-software, security has to be implemented at numerous levels. In this update, we've introduced account lockouts as a security feature to prevent forced attempts as password guessing.
After numerous incorrect guesses, accounts will be locked out briefly. The duration will exponentially increase for each additional failed attempt. Users can unlock accounts via email verification.
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New: If an account has 5 incorrect password attempts, the account will be locked out. After each consequent failed attempt, the lockout period will continuously increase in length.
This applies for all accounts, including employee accounts. - New: Fret not! Locked accounts can be unlocked through email verification.
- New: When a password is reset, any active sessions will be automatically logged out
- Update: A login session will lose its authentication after 30 minutes of inactivity, requiring another login
People Page
You can now view payslips, timesheets, and add leave applications directly from an employee's profile.
This is part of a redesign of the People page, which has moved the different pages (tax, salary, etc.) from upper tabs into a sidebar.
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New: The People page has received a User Interface redesign
- Payslips can be viewed directly, including a breakdown of tax and NI calculations when clicked
- Leave can be added directly from a user's profile
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Audit Log Changes
- New: Audit logs page can now be filtered by action and type of change.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where some payslip audit logs did not load
- Update: Marital details are no longer required when setting an employee as married
Payroll Changes
Accupay™ features are complex due to variances in local regulations. Our team's resolved an oversight with an edge case and improved leave visibility.
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Accupay™:
- Update: The Process Timesheets feature will show a different annual leave balance, which now includes future-dated leave. This should avoid scenarios where pre-booked leave for the end of year is also allocated as paid leave.
- Fix: Resolved an edge case where not all set rules were followed when processing under hours as leave on a Sunday that was also a Public Holiday.
- Update: Added additional validation to prevent the creation of invalid pay-dates which were not auto-corrected on Safari
Payroll History
More is more! New icons and calculation pop-ups to add both immediate visibility and in-depth breakdowns for payroll admins.
- New: In Payroll History, we've added a new icon to show that payslips have been sent. This will only trigger for future sends and will not be added retroactively.
- New: In the Payslip list page, each tax detail is now clickable to display the calculation breakdown.
Settings and Employee Portal
Similar to the employee profiles, the settings menu has now shifted into a sidebar. In addition, many settings are now treated in their page, such as overtime rates. This reduces the need to save all settings when changing a single subsection.
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Update: Redesigned the user interface, moving menus into the sidebar
- Several pages are now separated on their own
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New: In Settings, users can now set the Default Landing page for employee portal.
- Note: In addition to this, the employee portal will no longer show the leave page if no options are enabled
- New: Added a new section to input the date when an organisation stopped being an employer
Leave
Following the introduction to Calculate Backdated Public Holiday (TOIL), our team is introducing a way to download and export leave adjustments, as well as a minor revision to exclude unpaid leave from calculations.
- New: Leave adjustments can now be downloaded and exported to a .csv file
- Update: The Calculate Backdated TOIL option will no longer consider unpaid leave as valid entries
Grades
The Grades details have also been updated with a new interface, to match a similar layout as the People page.
Integrations
Workforce Integration
Buddy's integration with Workforce is one of the most robust. Due to the volume and amount of data being synced to and fro Workforce, our team has updated the integration and added new improvements in the process.
- Update: The sync from Workforce to Buddy has got a technical overhaul to increase efficiency over a large volume
- New: Added new department filter in Import Timesheets and Import Leave features
- Update: Award Mappings now support many-to-one links; each award is separated by a comma
- Fix: Resolved an issue where award mappings were not being updated when saving changes
- Fix: When leave is deleted from Workforce after it's already been marked as paid, the leave entry will no longer be deleted on Buddy.
BambooHR Integration
- Fix: Resolved an issue that was caused when reviewing bank changes
Other Changes
- Update: New companies will no longer be requested to fill in the Cycle Start Date
- Update: Introduced further customisations to BoV and APS Bank Files
- New: Added a drill-down download for single transactions in Businesses to display the employees that were charged for that transaction
- Fix: Scheduled Tasks filter (for Advisors) has been corrected from "Completed" to "Success" to properly match the items.