Payroll is not just about calculations; it's a whole experience.
Buddy has implemented feedback from our customers to make payroll more time-efficient. Here are the highlights of this update:
- A new type of allowance import, supporting override rates for hourly/daily rates.
- Option to show all hourly rates on payslip
- Option to set a default rate for hourly/daily allowance within the company settings
- Improvements to accounting journaling and integrations
We strongly encourage our customers to make use of uploading allowances and overtime in bulk over inputting them line by line.
For the full details on these changes, check out the release notes below.
Release Notes
Payroll
Payroll is more than accuracy and compliance. In this update, our team has focused on introducing several quality-of-life updates, such as the ability to override hourly rates upon a new type of Pay Item import.
- Update: The pay item dropdown now shows the pay items ordered alphabetically
- Fix: Resolved an issue where external contractors could have payslips drafted and showing in the payroll report.
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Upload Pay Items
- New: Introduced a new supported format where users can import the rate of pay (e.g. for hourly rates) that will override any existing rates. Refer to Bulk Upload Allowances using a .Csv Sheet
- Update: Import now supports values with commas (e.g. 1,240 will be imported as 1240).
- Fix: Resolved an issue where uploading pay items was not showing any visual confirmation of successful imports.
- Fix: Importing pay items of type deductions will now properly calculate them as deductions
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Parallel Run Changes
- Update: Employee mapping now immediately shows the number of mapped employees and shows any failed mapping when hovering over the invalid percentage.
- Update: Added option to override deductions during parallel runs
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Update: When choosing the option to "show hourly rates on payslip", this will now also show the rate for every hourly pay item and overtime
People
Based on feedback of customers and our Onboarding Team, the importation of employees has received a large update to improve the user experience. Primarily, templates can now be saved with custom names and can be utilised across bureaus, speeding up the import process.
- Fix: Resolved an issue with grades where certain salary settings were not being auto-applied
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Import Employees
- Update: Removed unnecessary columns from the Buddy employee import.
- Update: Updated the importation of employee import to support saving multiple templates with custom names. These templates can be used across a bureau.
- Update: Employee import format can now be chosen per employee section. The re-importation method has been significantly improved to allow users to upload employees through multiple sheets instead of a single file.
- Update: Working Days are now imported accordingly, with several new options added for mapping values.
- Update: Added validation requiring engagement date for initial partial imports
- Update: Departments created in the import sheet will now be created automatically upon import
- Update: Previous Earnings section will now show the tax year based on how it was initially saved.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where tax changes could not be replaced at the existing effective date
Screenshot of Choosing Import Templates
Settings
The primary change in settings goes hand-in-hand with our payroll changes. Pay items that are hourly or daily can now have a default rate set saved within their advanced details.
- Fix: Corrected the description of some pro-rata mechanisms to reflect the actual calculations.
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Update: Introduced default preset rates for hourly and daily types of pay items. These will be used if they are not set at an employee level. The upload of pay item settings has been updated to support this input.
Reports
We've fixed a couple of issues that cropped up after recent changes that have taken reports to the next level
- Update: When selecting a manual date range, the pay period filter is de-selected in favour of the input.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where journal reports could not be exported for some pay periods.
- Fix: Resolved an issue where employee data reports could not be downloaded for some companies
Accounting Journals
After the launch of the Accounting subpage, we've implemented a few changes based on initial feedback.
- Update: Added Employer Maternity as an option in accounting options
- Fix: Updated the naming of "Cost Centre" from the previous Americanised spelling, "Cost Center"
- Fix: Updated the logic of all items of type deductions to properly reflect and reconcile journals
Integrations
Our team has resolved technical issues and implemented some feedback on various types of integrations.
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BambooHR:
- Fix: Resolved an issue where imported employees were not being successfully imported
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Fyorin:
- Fix: Updated how address details are cleaned up and sent to Fyorin to prevent sync issues
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Telleroo:
- Fix: Resolved an issue where sending payments for same-day payment was not being accepted
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Xero
- Fix: Resolved a Xero issue where rounding could have led to a 0.01c discrepancy, which failed journals to sync
- Update: Changed the journal to share a totals journal instead of a detailed one per employee
Bureau
- New: Added Payroll Operations as a new role in the Bureau permissions levels. These have access to bureau settings and white-label options but not any client details.
- Update: Importing clients will now default the Jurisdiction based on the bureau settings without requiring an additional column
Other
- Fix: Resolved an issue where Managers could not access the employee portal if they did not have any employee profile
- Fix: Resolved an issue where the FS3s were not showing in the employee portal after enabling the toggle
- Fix: Resolved an issue where certain customers were being asked to sign T&Cs every login.