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Self-Service Employee Claim Requests

We love innovating to make payroll simpler and our new self-service employee claims feature does just that.

Our employee self-service option was built to ease the administration burden that comes with payroll:

  • Employees can access historic payslips and tax certificates at any time without having to ask the payroll administrator to send it to them. 
  • Leave requests allow employees to request leave and upload supporting documentation (such as medical certificates), saving you the hassle of having to remember to record leave or follow up with employees for their supporting documentation.
  • Info update requests allow employees to request changes to their basic information, ensuring that you have up-to-date and accurate information for employees.

Our new feature expands self-service to allow employees to submit inputs for the following payslip items:

  • Expense claims
  • Custom items, with the Input Type as “Once-off for specified payslips”, “Different on every payslip”, “Hourly rate * factor * hours” and “Custom rate * quantity”

Employees can enter the amounts that they wish to claim and upload supporting documentation. An approver simply needs to approve the request. It will then be added to the employee’s next draft payslip without the payroll administrator needing to capture any of these payslip amounts. In addition to saving the payroll administrator processing time, it also takes the hassle out of verifying claims, since a separate approver (such as a direct line manager) can be set up for this purpose.

Note: As this is an opt-in feature (for now), you need to request it from our support team, at no additional charge. More information on how this feature works can be found on our help page here.

Not a SimplePay client but you want to use our self-service feature? Unfortunately this feature is only available to SimplePay clients. The good news is that we offer a 30 day free trial and sign up is a breeze! You can find out more and sign up for a trial here. Come and experience the joy of stress-free payroll.

Team SimplePay

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Employee Filtering Revamp

SimplePay has always taken a user-orientated approach to payroll. It’s why we focus on two things – building an outstanding product and providing quality customer support. In a nutshell, SimplePay is all about you – our clients! So when the requests came streaming in for an easier way to filter employers, we jumped right on it. Introducing our newly revamped employee filters.

Our new employee filters functionality gives you more options for filtering employees. Depending on what page you’re on, you can filter employees according to pay point, pay frequency or active / inactive status. All pages with filters also let you select employees individually or use the convenient search bar to find specific employees by searching for their name or employee number.

Filters have been added or revamped for the following:

  • Employee list (Under Employees)
  • Employee users (Under Employees > Self-Service)
  • The leave overview calendar (Under Employees > Leave Overview)
  • All bulk action options (Under Employees > Bulk Actions)
  • Bulk finalising payslips (under Pay Runs)
  • All reports (Under Reports)

Finding an employee or selecting only the employees that you need has never been easier! Go check it out and let us know what you think.

Not a SimplePay client but want a payroll system that is all about you, the user? The good news is that we offer a 30 day free trial that allows you to explore our system and see just how easy and stress-free payroll can be. Sign up is a breeze! You can find out more and sign up for a trial here.

Team SimplePay

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New Process for Company Transfers

At SimplePay, the protection of your data and privacy is of utmost importance to us. With that in mind, we’re changing the way that we do company transfers. Our new 4-step process makes company transfers even more secure and gives you greater control over the process. 

Company transfers involve moving a company from one SimplePay profile to another. Transferring the company will change which profile owns the company on SimplePay and consequently which profile gets billed for the company.

It is important to note the following, which often causes confusion:

  • Ownership of a company on SimplePay is not necessarily related to the actual ownership of a business. When a new company is added to SimplePay, it belongs to the profile that the user was logged into when creating it. For example, a small business may be owned by an entrepreneur, but the company’s payroll is managed by an accounting firm. If the company was added to the accounting firm’s profile, the accounting firm is the owner of the company on SimplePay, even though they are not the owners of the registered business.
  • The need for company transfers must not be confused with the need for different users. If you need to give or revoke an individual’s access to a company, this can be done by adding or removing the individuals as users. (The exception being that you cannot remove the account owner i.e. the user with the email address used to create the profile that owns the company).

The following examples illustrate when company transfers are necessary:

  • A business’s payroll is managed by an accounting firm and the business now wishes to process their own payroll. The company on SimplePay would be transferred from the accounting firm’s profile to the business’s profile.
  • A business is sold. The previous owners should no longer have ownership of the company on SimplePay. The company on SimplePay would need to be transferred from the prior owner’s profile to the new owner’s profile.

If you have determined that a company transfer is necessary, you will need to follow our 4-step process for company transfers, which is outlined in the following help article:

Can I transfer a company to a different profile?

Not a SimplePay client but want to enjoy the benefits of secure payroll? Unfortunately our payroll system is only available to clients. The good news is that we offer a 30 day free trial and sign up is a breeze! You can find out more and sign up for a trial here. Come and experience the joy of stress-free payroll.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: End Service Checklist

You asked us for a way to help you remember to capture the necessary payslip items associated with employee terminations, and we’ve been listening. Introducing our newest feature: the End Service Checklist.

When ending an employee’s service on the system, there will now be a pop up if the employee:

  • has a savings balance that you need to pay out 
  • has a loan balance that still needs to be paid

If you are capturing the termination and the employee only has the last payslip as a draft (i.e. prior payslips have been finalised), you can click on each item in the checklist to open the system item where action is needed.

More information on these topics can be found in the following help articles:

Please note: Expansion of this feature is in our pipeline. At this stage, this new checklist only works for:

  • employees terminated individually, not in bulk.
  • positive balances (i.e. if an employee’s loan balance is a negative from repaying too much, then it will not appear on the checklist).

We hope this new feature is everything that you imagined it would be, and more!

If you need assistance with any of these payslip items, please contact us.

Team SimplePay

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Improved Functionality for Deleting Leave Requests

At SimplePay, we believe in continuous improvement and are therefore committed to refining and enhancing the system to better suit your needs. With that in mind, we have made tweaks to our leave functionality to improve the deleting of leave requests. We’d like to highlight some of these changes:

  • In addition to payroll administrators and leave admins, previously approved leave requests can now also be deleted by any leave approver that is part of the employee’s approval group.
  • Where the payslip for the period when the leave dates occurred is unfinalised, the leave request will immediately be deleted in its entirety when clicking on Delete. 
  • Leave requests with leave dates that fall during a pay period with finalised payslips will result in the opening of a new screen when clicking on Delete. From this screen, you can
    • see which of the leave days cannot be deleted as they impact the pay on a finalised payslip, and which of them can be deleted;
    • directly open the payslip where the nett pay is impacted by the leave, if you have administrator rights in addition to being a leave approver; 
    • opt to delete leave in its entirety (the default) or superficially*.

*The Retain these leave dates? checkbox is used to indicate whether leave should be deleted in its entirety or superficially. If you leave the option unchecked, the leave request will be deleted in its entirety (the leave request will be deleted, the leave days will be removed from the calendar and the leave days will be added back to the employee’s leave balance). If you select the checkbox, the leave request will be deleted superficially (only the actual request will be deleted, but the leave will remain recorded in the leave calendar and the leave balance will still take into account the leave days recorded).

You can read more about deleting leave on our help page here.

We hope these improvements provide more useful information and a more enjoyable user experience. 

If you require any assistance, please reach out to our Support team here.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Show More Payslip Info

When capturing payroll from an employee’s profile, our approach has always been to display only the payslip items that impact nett pay directly. This makes it easier to view exactly what impact (if any) the payslip item has on the salary or wage that the employee actually receives.

To view other payslip items, like statutory employer contributions or fringe benefits, you can click on the Preview link to view the employee’s payslip. We are now delighted to introduce a new feature that allows you view these other payslip items without opening the payslip. Clicking on More next to the Preview link will display all the payslip items from the payslip on the screen.

On the left hand side of the screen, you will see all the items that appear in the payslip section that are used to calculate nett pay. On the right hand side, you will see the other payslip items that do not impact nett pay directly (i.e. they are not directly added or subtracted to get the nett pay – however, they could impact the calculation of another payslip item that impacts nett pay).

We hope this new feature for viewing payslips faster makes payroll even simpler.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Managing End of Service in Bulk

With the spread of COVID-19 globally, we decided 2 weeks ago to transition our entire team to remote work. It was a bit daunting at first, but we’re grateful to be able to say it’s largely business as usual again at SimplePay (albeit with a bit more distance between us and significantly more Zoom meetings every day).

With that in mind, we have been hard at work to ensure we reduce the burden on employers and payroll administrators where possible. We have introduced new functionality to allow users to manage their employees’ services in bulk. A new Employee Actions section has been added to the Bulk Actions page to allow users to do the following for their employees in bulk:

  • End Service
  • Reinstate
  • Undo End of Service

This new bulk functionality allows you to manage multiple employees’ services in one place on SimplePay without requiring you to navigate to each employee, one at a time.

To learn more about how this functionality works, head over to our help page here.

For larger companies we recommend limiting this bulk functionality to batches of 50 employees to ensure smoother results.

If you have any questions, please contact our support team.

Team SimplePay

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Automatic Logout Feature

We are happy to announce a new security feature as part of our ongoing commitment to protecting your data and helping you stay safe online. We already have the highest of security standards in place, and last year we introduced an optional 2-factor authentication feature to prevent access to your account if someone has your password. Now, our optional timeout feature allows you to choose how long the system can be left idle for before automatically logging you out of SimplePay.

With this new feature, if you forget to log out of SimplePay, the next person that uses that computer or electronic device will not have access to your account. This is especially beneficial to you if you share computers in the workplace, if you work on public computers or if you are concerned that someone will use your electronic device when you leave it unattended.

To access this feature:

  • Go to the Profile icon and select User Profile
  • Click on Lock screen after timeout
  • Select a timeout option:
    • If you select ‘Disabled’, you will not be logged out of the system, no matter how long a page has been left idle for.
    • If you select a time from the menu (e.g. ‘1 hour’), it means that the system will log you out if there has been inactivity for the time specified.
  • Click Save

Just another way that SimplePay is helping you take care of your sensitive employee data.

Team SimplePay

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QuickBooks Integration Upgrade

As the year draws to a close, our holiday elves have been bustling behind the scenes to enhance your payroll experience, focusing on our QuickBooks integration. SimplePay integrates with both QuickBooks and Xero, allowing you to send your payroll information straight from SimplePay into your general ledger accounts with the click of a button. This means that you do not have to switch between systems to transfer information, saving you time and reducing the possibility of human error.

You’ll be happy to hear that our QuickBooks integration has been refined to give you an upgraded user interface and setup. These improvements will make the process easier to navigate and simpler to understand if you wish to integrate your payroll and accounting information.

If you have already integrated QuickBooks and SimplePay in the past, please note that you may be required to re-authenticate your account due to the work done behind the scenes.

For more information on integrating SimplePay with QuickBooks, head on over to our help page.

Team SimplePay 

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New Live Chat Support

We’re making it even easier for you to get the support that you need with the introduction of our live chat functionality. When logging into the SimplePay system, a new icon now appears in the bottom corner that allows you to initiate a live chat with our friendly support team.

This means that you can start a chat from any area in the system while capturing payroll and get the answers that you need. To send our support team a message, simply click on the chat icon, type your message and press enter.

Please note that while we strive to minimise our response times, these may vary during peak times. If the chat indicates that the team will only be back tomorrow or Monday, please do not hesitate to send us a message and we will respond as soon as we return to the office. Alternatively, our comprehensive help site is also always available for more information.

If you have a longer query, you are of course still welcome to send this to our support team via email at [email protected]

We look forward to helping you!

Team SimplePay