December 2011 update

With Christmas just days away, we are at the end of the development cycle for the next payroll release, v4.21. This will, as usual, be a mandatory update for those of you who use Uniwage, and will also be supplied to those of you who don't soon after.

As well as handling RTI in preparation for the pilot in April 2012 (as discussed in my last post), we are also well ahead of the game with the Workplace Pension Reforms that are due to begin in 2012. In truth, it is the largest companies who will start in 2012, with some smaller companies not starting until as late as 2015. However, Uniwage now contains everything you need to enter your Staging Date and to automatically enrol employees once the time comes.

We held our annual User Group Meeting in Rugby in November, and as well as being able to tell the delegates about what was coming up, we were also able to listen to what you had to say. One payroll issue that was very popular on people's wish-list was to improve the Fixed Countdown Deductions.

Currently, you can enter the total payment and the regular payment, and it will continue to deduct this until the total is cleared. Now, you have the option to enter a number of periods over which you would like the deduction to be paid off. Uniwage will calculate the regular payment, including taking more in the first period to ensure the deduction is fully cleared within the timeframe.

By far the biggest change available to everyone in v4.21 will be the introduction of the SMP Schedule. This will mark the end of having to calculate SMP each period. Instead, the entire payment schedule is calculated up front. This means you can provide your employees with a clear schedule of what they can expect to be paid, as well as making it easier for you each period by removing the SMP Calculation & Transfer routines. Employees who are currently on SMP will be converted to the SMP Schedule method during your first payroll calculation with v4.21.

If you are on the mailing list for our newsletters, then you may have seen that HMRC are extending the pilot for RTI. Currently, we are 1 of only 40 payroll software providers (out of over 300) who are involved within the pilot, along with some of our customers (from April 2012). More customers have expressed an interest in taking part from the new pilot dates, which are in July and November 2012. If you would like to get ahead of the game on RTI, then contact Emma Clare with your details.

All that remains is to wish our customers and readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in 2012!

September '11 Update

This being only the second post of the year illustrates how busy we have been and how difficult it has been to find time to keep you updated on development here at Carval. I always planned to keep this updated at least once a month and will endeavour to get back to that timeframe.

In the last entry, I mentioned that Carval had been shortlisted for a Small Business of the Year Award. You may have seen it reported back in April that we indeed won that award, a great achievement for the hard work and expertise put in by the Carval team over the past few years, turbulent as they have been for everyone.

At that time, v4.18 had just been released, which contained all the legislative changes for the 2011/12 tax year. Since then, we worked on some internal and structural changes to the software which formed the unreleased v4.19. We are currently in beta testing of v4.20, which will contain, amongst other features:

General

• Mail Merge - now uses the built-in report writer to give much more control over printing, saving and emailing merged documents, and saving them to employees' records. (Microsoft Word mail merge is still supported).
• Report Scheduler - dynamic date selection for report parameters (e.g. show all absence records entered a week ago up to today, where "today" is the date on which the report will run)
• Workflow - set up a flow of tasks to assign to employees, visible to them in HR Unity (Windows) or HR Unity Online (Self Service)
• Employee Information Popup - view vital information about any employee with just a click
• User defined columns on the Employee Search 
• Lookup search now, optionally, allows "obsolete" codes to be seen
• Bank Holiday exceptions by year
• Spinal Column Point "Mid points"

HR

• Company Dashboard - graphs and metrics on the company or companies you have selected
• Driving Licence screens, including Licence Categories.
• Improved security for payroll fields in HR

Payroll

• Data Provisioning Service - ability to run more than one tax reference at a time
• In Year Movements Internet Filing - added to HR Unity Scheduler

Self Service

• Online Payment Requests
• T&A Supervisor functions (such as being able to see and add clockings, make shift changes and add Overtime Authorisation and Worked Meal Breaks)
• View Policies and Forms online

v4.20 is due for release in October.

Work has already started on v4.21, which is the legislative release for the 2012/13 tax year. As well as making the required changes to calculate your payroll correctly, we will also be working on HMRC's new Real-Time Information (RTI) update for payroll. Uniwage has been selected to pilot this scheme for the 2012/13 tax year along with half a dozen of our customers. This will not affect anyone else for the coming year, but it will mean that Uniwage is fully ready for RTI when it goes live for you from April 2013 onwards.

RTI is designed to ultimately replace the Intenret Filing of End of Year (P14, P35) and In Year (P45, P46) forms.

HMRC have also decided to drop the Payroll Standard award that they have created back in 2002. Carval were one of the first payroll software providers to get on board with the Payroll Standard and were involved in early workshops to shape it. We are disappointed that this decision has been taken, as only 55 out of 300 payroll software developers were accredited which meant that Uniwage was part of an elite list of providers who had committed to proving their software has undergone the rigorous testing by HMRC. The Payroll Standard will end on April 2012, at which point we must remove the logo and any reference to it. Rest assured, this does not mean we will not be keeping our software up to the high standard you have come to expect.

Also, you may have heard that Microsoft are planning to release a new version of Windows next year, Windows 8. It is important to us and our customers that our software will continue to work with the very latest Windows, and so Carval have obtained a Developer Preview edition of this operating system. I can confirm that HR Unity installs and works with no problems, as you would expect.

April '11 update

Apologies for this being the first post of 2011. As payroll software providers, the first few months of the year is an exceptionally busy time, ensuring the payroll software is complete and tested. Everyone using Uniwage, and most of you using Unistaff and/or Unitend, will now be using HR Unity v4.18.1.

You may have read that there have been changes to Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) that are effective from this new tax year. If the mother chooses to go back to work early, her parter can take up the rest of what would have been her Maternity Pay (SMP), as Additional SPP. Being a Payroll Standard approved product, Uniwage v4.18 supports this right out of the box.


For many, this will be the first release with the new reports and reporting structure, including the new report scheduler. We have already have some very positive feedback on this, as well as some interesting ideas for the future. We will be looking to improve on this area in v4.19.

In other news, you may have seen that HMRC have committed to going ahead with the Real-Time Information initiative, or RTI, which is intended to improve the operation of PAYE. Carval have always been at the forefront of these HMRC projects, and we have elected to take part of the pilot that starts in April 2012. Read more about it on our main site's blog, where there is also a call for customers who would like to take part with us.

Finally, Carval has been shortlisted down to the final 3 for a Small Business of the Year award. The awards ceremony is on 14th April.

December '10 update

At the beginning of December, v4.17 was released to a handful of customers, principally dealing with the new payroll bureau functionality that has been introduced. Many of the enhancements made may be of benefit to all payroll users, but this limited release allows us to ensure everything is working as expected before the main payroll release comes out next February/March.

Some things you can look forward to that were introduced in v4.17 are:

• Scheduling of the HMRC Data Provisioning Service (DPS)
• Fast-switching of Payroll Groups
• Submit In-Year Movements to HMRC added to the Scheduler
• Reports added to the Scheduler

This was also the first release in which all of the standard reports were issued having been rewritten in ReportBuilder, the same tool provided to you as standard with the software. This has enabled us to schedule reports as mentioned above, plus provide other enhancements, such as exporting to PDF.

Development is now almost complete on v4.18, the annual payroll release that will be sent to all Uniwage customers next year. This will, of course, handle the new National Insurance threshold being introduced in the 2011-12 tax year, as well as:

• New Additional Statutory Paternity Pay (ASPP) calculation
• New Standardised Child Maintenance Deduction of Earnings Order (DEO) Schedule extract

We have also had approval today from HMRC to produce our own Substitute P60 form which means that we can offer our own layout for printing the P60 form to be given to employees at the end of the tax year. From April 2011, if you wish, you are allowed to give this form to the employee electronically (PDF in an email, like electronic payslips), avoiding a long print run and expensive paper and printer costs. This form can still be printed by the employee, if needed, which is why it must be an HMRC approved substitute form.

Finally, Merry Christmas to all of our customers, enjoy the break if you're getting one, and have a Happy New Year.

November '10 Update 1 - Reports Overhaul

v4.17 is well underway and marks a significant change in one area of the software - reports. All of the 200+ standard reports, previously written using Crystal Reports, have now been rewritten using the very report writer supplied with Carval HR Unity. 

This decision has not been taken lightly but has resulted in some significant improvements already, with further enhancements planned.

Already:

• All reports now have the same design and layout.
• Reports will now display a company logo (set up in the HR Administrator).
• Reports can now be exported to PDF as standard, as well as Word, Excel, HTML, and more.
• Reports can now be better organised (see below)
• No more issues with Crystal Reports DLLs.
• Users can copy our standard reports and customise them for their own use using the Custom Report Designer.

We can also now begin to implement a report scheduler so that reports can be set up to run in advance based on the user's own parameters and timescales, and sent to a specific printer, saved to a file or emailed to one or more people.

The main change you will notice initially will be that the long menus of reports have gone, and been replaced by the "Report Explorer".

Uniwage Reports menu in v4.16

Report Explorer of Uniwage Reports in v4.17

The user will have the opportunity to add their own folders and move the reports into categories that suit the organisation better, for example:

Added a folder and moved reports into it

This is just a preview of what you can expect, as we appreciate that it will be quite a change from what you are used to, but we believe that the organisation better reflects how Windows works and that reports can be located and grouped more easily.