Our first major release of 2021 is here, containing the first release of our in-house time tracking functionality, as well as a large overhaul of functionality related to our Payroll and HR!
If you have any questions about setting up and utilizing these features, please reach out to your dedicated UZIO support representative, or send an email to our support inbox at support@uzio.com
Quick Links
- Time Off Integration with UZIO Payroll
- Self-Check Printing for Employers
- General Ledger and .IFF File Import Enhancements
- Cares Act Paycheck Protection Program Reports
- Child Support Garnishment Setup
- Miscellaneous Payroll Improvements
Enhancements to User Role/Permissions
UZIO Time Tracking
UZIO is pleased to announce the initial release of our integrated Time Tracking tool for small business owners. UZIO Time Tracking helps employers accurately capture and report time worked by their employees throughout a pay period. This feature is integrated with UZIO Payroll out of the box, or can be utilized as a stand-alone module if required.
- If you are an existing UZIO client that already contracted for UZIO Time Tracking, the UZIO Onboarding team will be reaching out soon to engage on getting it set up for your organization.
- If you are an existing UZIO client that has not contracted for UZIO Time Tracking, but would like to learn more, including getting a demo of this new module, please reach out to your UZIO implementation contact or the UZIO support team at support@uzio.com
A summary of features for UZIO Time Tracking is included below:
Time Tracking for Employer Administrators
Real Time Visibility into Time Tracking data throughout a pay period
The system provides real-time reporting for Employers to have a view of employee's time entries as they log them throughout the week. Employers can drill into this view at a Pay Frequency/Pay Period level.
All the times recorded and available for view are by default available in UTC/GMT+0 time zone at this time. In a future release, we will make updates to record the time entries in the actual time zone of employees' devices.
Time Tracking Dashboard
Time Tracking Dashboard by Employee’s Time Entries
Time Tracking actual geo-location details for individual clock-in
Full Time Tracking Administration with synchronization to UZIO Payroll
The Employer Admin has full capability to edit and approve all time tracking data sourced by employees via the UZIO mobile app or entered by the admin themselves. Employer Admin’s can also manually edit overall hours or individual clock ins/outs as needed. Once time is finalized and approved, the Employer Admin has the ability to sync (or “push”) the time tracking data into payroll.
Time Tracking Overview by pay period and pay frequency
Please note that for the initial release, Employee’s Reporting Managers will not be able to approve their reportees time. This means for the initial release, the Employer Admin will be the sole approval authority for all inbound time tracking data. Reporting Manager approval will be supported in a future release.
Geofencing
Employers can choose to record an employees’ clock in location, giving visibility on employee whereabouts from where and when they start and stop work. Geofencing can be enabled from a 100 to 1000 meter radius around the company’s work location to ensure employees are “clocking in” while on company premises. While configuring this, a map view is provided so you can accurately set the “range” of where you would like a clock in/clock out to occur for your employees.
Geofencing Set up
This optional feature, once set up, will allow the Employer Admin to have visibility and confirm if employees are on-premises when they are clocking in using the app or not. A status is provided on the dashboard pages showing if each clock in is in the geofencing range or not, and can be used by the Employer Admin to drill into any potentially fraudulent clock ins if required.
Job Codes
Employers have the ability to create multiple job codes to capture the specific hours worked by employees at each job. These job codes can be selected by employees when clocking in and allow for the employer admin to report on hours-worked against specific job codes.
Please Note: These job codes will not be mapped to different earnings at this time. The different job codes are for company reporting purposes only and will have more advanced usages in future releases.
Access Privileges
Employers have the flexibility to decide what employee population they do or do not want to do time tracking for. Employers can track hours for both Hourly and Salaried employees, as well as selecting who within those populations are eligible to use the functionality. Once enabled, selected employees will be able to log their time directly using the UZIO Mobile App (explained below).
Additionally, Employers have the ability to restrict access to the time tracking module to their employees entirely and manage time-keeping manually in house if required.
FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) Compliance
UZIO Time Tracking does automatic calculation of payroll hours (Regular, OT, DOT) as per FLSA compliance. In the initial release, UZIO Time Tracking will calculate overtime assuming 40 working hours per week, with a work week from Sunday to Saturday.
In a future release, Employers will have more flexibility to set up custom overtime rules depending on the work state and FLSA guidelines. Employers will also get an option to assign this rule to the required employee(s) for overtime calculation.
Time Tracking Reporting
UZIO has added two new reports to facilitate employers to get the employees data for compliance and payroll purposes.
- Payroll Hours Summary Report: This report provides a summary of total, regular, overtime & double-overtime hours for all employees eligible for time tracking, along with their approval status.
- Time Entries Report: This report provides a list of clock-in and clock-out entries by date, along with the duration and missed clock-outs, job codes, and geofencing locations.
Time Tracking for Employees - On Mobile
With the introduction of UZIO Time Tracking, we have also overhauled the UZIO App on mobile to allow employees to track their hours on the move. You can search for and download the UZIO App in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store on your smartphone device. The following features are available to employees on the UZIO Mobile App.
Clocking in and out from your smartphone device
Employees can easily clock in and clock out of work using the UZIO App from their Android or iOS mobile devices. This includes the ability to clock in and out of breaks, as well as the ability to associate clock in’s with particular job codes as defined by the employer.
Timesheet History
An Employees' timesheet history is saved and accessible to employees on their mobile device using the UZIO App.
Enhancements to UZIO Payroll
Time Off Integration with UZIO Payroll
You can now associate Time Off policies with UZIO Payroll earnings directly, allowing for approved Time Off requests to sync into Payroll at the click of a button.
Once your PTO policies are set up in UZIO time, employees have the ability to submit vacation and sick days for approval. If those approvals have been approved by Employer Admins or Reporting Managers in time for the next pay period, these approved times would flow into UZIO payroll automatically. The following enhancements have been done to facilitate this more broadly:
Enhancements to PTO Policy Set Up
- While setting up a Time off policy, users can now set standard daily hours for each time-off policy, along with the days of the workweek. For existing policies, the standard daily hours will be set as 8.
- A policy type as “Paid” and “Sick” have been renamed to “Paid Personal” and “Paid Sick” respectively. NOTE: This is just a name change and has no impact on existing time off policies set up already.
Steps to make this integration work
1. While adding the "Vacation" earning in UZIO Payroll, the Employer will be able to map one or more Paid Time Off policies to this earning. Approved hours of these PTO policies will automatically flow into the payroll and be paid out against Vacation earning for the given pay period.
2. While adding the "Sick" earning in UZIO Payroll, the Employer will be able to map one or more Sick Time Off policies to this earning. Approved hours of these time off policies will automatically flow into the payroll and paid out against Sick earning.
3. Holiday time established in the Holiday Calendar set up in the Time Off module will automatically flow into payroll and paid out against the Holiday earning in UZIO Payroll. For this, you must ensure to have your company holiday calendar set up in the time off module and Holiday earning added to the Company Earnings.
Existing UZIO customers who are using UZIO time off and UZIO Payroll should revisit their company level earnings setup and PTO policy set up to ensure this linkage is done correctly. If you would like to take advantage of having this data flow into payroll automatically, please reach out to your UZIO Onboarding specialist, or at support@uzio.com to inquire about setting this up.
Self-Check Printing for Employers
Employers can now self-print checks for employees using a UZIO check pay stub report that is compatible with UZIO-recommended check stock. Click here to learn more specifically about the recommended stock, how to acquire it, and additional tips for operationalizing this for your business.
A report containing all the printable checks for the company's payroll is made available after payroll is approved. A single .PDF will be generated containing check details for every employee who has set their payment method to “Check” within the context of that payroll.
General Ledger and .IFF File Import Enhancements
We have heard our clients feedback and suggestions with regards to making the General Ledger and .IFF file export more usable. The following enhancements are planned for this feature this release.
- Net Pay distribution - The employers can now create and map separate accounts for Direct Deposit Net Pay and Check Net Pay. This means you can track your direct deposit and check payment liabilities, against separate accounts in your general ledger. In case, you need to track them against the same account, you can create two accounts with the same account number, one each for Direct Deposit Net Pay and Check Net Pay.
Note: The existing account(s) mapped to Net Pay will be automatically mapped to Direct Deposit Net Pay. If needed, users will have to create a separate account for Check Net Pay.
- A Single Account mapped with Multiple State Taxes - The employers can now select taxes of multiple states to map to a single account. Earlier, in order to do that, users were required to create multiple accounts with the same account number.
- Improved Earning Code mapping - An account that is mapped to all pay components of a pay type by selecting ALL in the grid, the system will automatically map any new pay component created to that account. For example, the users select pay type as Earnings and selects ALL in the earnings grid, any new earning added in the Company Earnings will automatically get mapped to the account. Same happens with deductions, contributions, workers’ compensation codes and taxes.
- Duplicate account validation - A validation has been introduced to ensure no two accounts with the same account number and account type are mapped to the same pay type, tax type and state taxes.
Note: The existing duplicate accounts (with the same account number) should be merged into one unique account in order to make any changes to that account.
- Special Characters - Users can now enter any special character (other than \, ", < or >) in the Account Number field.
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Cares Act Paycheck Protection Program Reports
In response to the needs of UZIO clients who have a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan that requires forgiveness reporting, UZIO has released two valuable reports that bank lenders require for both scenarios. The two reports are:
1. Paycheck Protection Program Report (CARES Act Report): This report is used when applying for a new PPP loan. The requirement for this report is to obtain the average monthly payroll cost over the course of 12 months. This amount is calculated by totaling the taxable and qualified earnings for each employee, then dividing that dollar amount by 12 months. This report also explains the requirements used to obtain the results for each category included in the report.
2. Paycheck Protection Program Loan Forgiveness Report: This report is used for the forgiveness aspect of your current PPP loan. The requirement for this report is to obtain the number of average full time employees (FTE's) you had in your employee census for the covered 8 or 24 week period of your loan.
After selecting the desired coverage period and the length of the covered period, this report will provide the number of FTEs and cash compensation amounts for employees and owners. The report also explains in great detail the requirements used to obtain the results as well as precise definitions for the categories included in the report.
You can access these reports on the UZIO reports tab when you login to your account. Simply click on the Reports tab in the upper right corner, then next to Payroll Reports, click the + sign and you will find both of these reports within that list. When you click the report you need, just enter the date parameters you require and run your report. Your generated report will be available for download under "View Reports".
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Child Support Garnishment Setup
To streamline the process of child support garnishment payments to agencies by UZIO, we have made changes to the employee child support set up to capture more information about Child Support order. When creating a “Garnishment” type deduction, there will now be a greater level of information required when assigning this deduction type to an employee. This information is used by UZIO to ensure we are remitting the Child Support garnishments in a timely manner upon each approval of payroll.
Note: By default, any child support Garnishment set up in this manner in the system will be automatically remitted by UZIO as a part of our core payroll services agreement. If you do not wish UZIO to manage your Child Support Garnishment payments, you must create an “Other” deduction type for Garnishments so this data will not flow through our system and paid by us via our payroll and compliance team.
If you have any questions regarding this functionality, or want to work with the team to start automating your child support payments, please reach out to support@uzio.com.
Miscellaneous Payroll Improvements
- Employee Name Format Change on Payroll Grid - Employee name format has been changed to Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial in the Payroll grid and across all other sections of the payroll. This will allow you to sort on the last name on many payroll pages.
- Employee level Earnings - Users can now change the hourly rate of an earning while adding them at an employee level. With this capability, employers will be able to create multiple hourly pay rates for employees in addition to the base hourly rate that is established in the employee census.
- Document library is updated to have 2021 W-4 forms made available for employers to assign to their employees when needed.
- Company State Taxation Setup enhancements
- The State Taxation screen is updated to allow the users to enter tax rates up to 5 decimal places. Previously, it was only allowed to enter rates up to 2 decimal places.
- Company state set up had a different section titled “Advanced Tax Setup” for setting up Paid Family Leave tax for MA and WA states. This separate page has been removed as a and its information is merged with the Tax Setup screen.
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Enhancements to User Role/Permissions
Setting Employer User access By Work Location
UZIO now supports creating customized employer user roles to give individuals the ability to manage specific work locations of one company or multiple interlinked companies. This feature will be beneficial for those clients who have location-based administrators or distributed HR systems.
On the “Manage User” screen in the Employer portal, the Employer Admin can select for each Employer user which work locations they should have access to. Once saved, Employer users that have been assigned to certain work locations will now have all portal actions (e.g, onboarding a new employee, assigning documents, running reports) limited to employees in their chosen work locations.
Please note that restricting a user to certain Work Locations will prevent them from doing some higher-order administrative tasks in the system. For example, if an employee is associated with a single work location, they can no longer do any company-wide administration related to viewing/changing benefit packages or approving payroll because these such items require full-company permissions.
Multi Client Employee Login
UZIO is introducing a new feature where employees working in multiple interlinked companies will have all the profiles of different companies designated to the same login credentials.
UZIO will automatically link a new employee profile created under one company with the existing profiles of all the other interlinked companies whenever a match is found based on SSN and DOB. With this, employees can use the same credentials to log in to the portal and even will be able to switch between different companies without logging out.
Enhancements to UZIO Benefits
- Benefit Compliance reports - UZIO’s Benefits system is updated to generate 1094-C and 1095-C PDF with the version for 2020 taxes.
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Improved Benefits Experience on the app - For companies that are using UZIO Benefits, we also have overhauled the user experience for employees trying to access company benefits information on the go using the UZIO app.