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Buddy Release: Flawless Submissions and QoL Improvements (3rd Feb 2023)

Jeremy
  • Updated

Release Summary

Just as the first month of the year has gone by, Buddy's momentum does not stop! For those who have been attentive, you are already aware that our team is doing its utmost to ensure that users can be compliant when it comes to accurate payroll calculations and leave management.

This update continues to polish our recent changes on that front, as well as include new ones:

  • The implementation of further leave entitlement changes
  • Improvements to Payroll in various circumstances, particularly for employees who are being paid for 2022 hours in 2023
  • Updates for exceptional cases in FS3s, FS7s and electronic lodgements files, such as multiple FS3s on the year of marriage
  • New features, such as the ability to import allowances and adjustments in bulk

We suggest that you read through the Changelog in this article for more details. Do note that some of these changes were uploaded prior to the release date.

Billing Changes

Buddy has now moved away from pre-paid bundles of credits and into a pay monthly model with three standard plans available (see: 2023 Pricing Plans). Most of our existing clients have been placed on the Business Plan, which remains at the same base pricing as our previous credit system. 

You might have noticed transactions in your Billing section. For the month of January, Buddy is yet to charge any pending balances. This was delayed to reduce any problems that users could face when lacking the appropriate billing settings or methods. Please ensure that you have updated your Billing Settings!

Leave Management

Our team has implemented further changes as previously announced in Changes to Leave Entitlement Calculations. Moreover, further updates were made to improve the user experience of managing leave.

  • New: A new feature has been created to allow bulk importation of leave applications and adjustments through .xlsx sheets. See the following two guides for instructions:
  • Fix: Leave Balance now shows for employees terminated in 2023.
  • Fix: Custom Leave Types added from Settings are now visible as an option when Adding a Leave Application
  • Fix: When applying for Sick Leave, the industry settings will now fully apply and show as unpaid sick right away if an employee has no entitlement.
  • Update: When editing a multi-day leave entry, Buddy will no longer auto-fill 8 hours to skipped days

Tax Forms and Electronic Lodgement Files

As 2022 has ended, companies are due to submit their FS3s and FS7s by 15th February to file all the data for the previous years. Our team was proactive and performed updates related to any exceptional cases or errors encountered. Particularly, on the year of marriage, Buddy is automatically splitting the FS3 and F3 submission data into two for the non-responsible spouse.

  • New: F3 file is now split in two entries, similar to the FS3s, in the year of marriage
  • Fix: The number of FS3s has been corrected on two counts:
    • To correctly account for employees with multiple FS3s during the year of marriage
    • To consider a terminated and re-hired employee as one FS3
  • Fix: On rare occasions, the FS3 showed a higher number of weeks for a terminated employee. This was corrected to reflect the correct number of weeks, as paid within the final payslip.
  • Update: Updated the FS7 to exclude all employees who do not pay tax and SSC in Malta
  • Update: Similarly, employees who do not pay tax or SSC in Malta have been excluded from the Download All FS3s document
  • Fix: The FS3 and FS7 generation has been updated to be compatible with 2019 - 2021 data for those who are still working on these.
  • Fix: FS3 and Submission Data have been updated to properly report the number of weeks and weekly wages in cases where a single payslip had multiple rates of wages and SSC.
  • Update: The FS3 and FS7 generation is updated to include any manual SSC and MFC Adjustments performed during the year.

Run Payroll

Buddy's payroll functionality has always been thorough. The following changes update existing functionalities to allow more use cases within payroll, such as the ability to accrue entitlement and bonuses for part-timers with multiple basic rates.

  • Update: Allowances of the type Basic will now also increase leave and bonus entitlement for employees on Variable Hours.
    • This will allow you to have employees on variable hours with multiple basic rates, e.g. if an employee has two rates for different types of tasks or locations
    • Buddy will still use only the basic pay for employees on full-time employment.
  • Fix: Special Rates set as not taxable as overtime will now not be taxed at overtime rates.
    In our last update, these new settings were introduced in Overtimes and Special Rates, and are now reflecting these changes in Payroll.
  • Fix: When saving an extra payslip for a terminated employee, the base hours will default to read zero hours, and the pay period dates are replaced by the text "Final Payslip"
  • Fix: The summary table now shows the Gross and Net under the correct columns, as these were previously reversed
  • Fix: Allowances of type Deduction will now always deduct the amount, regardless of whether the input is positive or negative.
  • Hotfix: Employees employed in the previous year but are still not entitled to sick (due to Wage Regulation Order) will have their sick leave calculated as unpaid sick.
  • Update: Updated the rounding in the base hours in Run Payroll to reflect the accuracy that was occurring within the payslip calculation
  • Update: Payroll calculation has been updated to accept variations of the input of "Minimum Tax" variable.
    • This particularly impacts the recent importation of employees, where if the user inputted "yes", "Yes", or different variations, all will be accepted and function the same.
  • Update: Updated the net pay reverse calculation for employees on part-time (qualified) tax
  • Update: Updated calculation to handle payroll for 2017 for those clients doing backdated payroll

  • AccuPay™ Updates:

    • New: Public Holiday leave entries that are added or amended manually will no longer be updated by the Process Timesheets functionality.

    • Fix: Fixed an issue for a few users where the Process Timesheets feature was not processing due to a particular set of allowance settings

    • Fix: Fixed an issue with the Process Timesheets function ability when not using the leave cut-off date:
    • Fix: Fixed a very particular circumstance for payroll with cut-off dates of previous months, where leave processed in the previous payroll did not have an impact on the overtime of the first week.

Employee Information

We have expanded our ways of handling and importing employees into Buddy. This is mostly directed at new and existing users who are adding more companies to Buddy:

  • New: The Import Employees functionality has the option to use Indigo or Talexio export formats. 
    This will save new users time from having to edit their export to Buddy's template.
  • Hotfix: Updated the Talexio import to allow import further fields than were in our initial template
  • Update: In the COLA Review, companies who are starting with Buddy in 2023 can skip the COLA by marking that this was already included in their import.

Advisor Settings

Advisors are Buddy's term for users (such as accounting firms, payroll bureaus and solo practitioners) who perform payroll for multiple clients from one account. We have updated some functionality to make it easier to manage Advisor Settings and Team, particularly due to our recent changes in billing.

  • New: Advisors can now add an Advisor Employee to their firm
    • Note that the employee needs to have at least a demo account prior to being invited
  • Update: Added the functionality to add Contact Details to Advisors
  • New: Billing Details have been created in the Advisor Section
  • Update: Renamed the Advisor button to instead show the name of the Advisory. We hope that you enjoy this personal touch!

Other Quality of Life Changes

  • New: Users can now sign-up to Buddy using the Xero Single Sign-On Feature
  • New: In the Settings' Time and Attendance module, there are two new settings to separate permissions from managers and employees.
    This will allow companies to have managers view and edit timesheets without employees having the same permissions.
  • Update: Grades can now be sorted in Alphabetical order
  • Update: The button in the Reset Password email has been renamed to "Reset Password".
  • Update: Payroll reports are now internally saved with more unique IDs. This will allow companies who issue multiple payrolls for the same period (e.g. two different monthly payrolls) to have multiple sets of reports
    Update: PDF Report Download Names now to reflect Company, Payroll, and Pay Period
  • Fix: Fixed some issues for managers (in the employee portal) who were unable to apply for leave of employees in specific circumstances

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