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UZIO Product Updates, June 2021

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UZIO Support
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The second major release of 2021 has arrived. This release contains an overhaul of functionality related to our Payroll, HR, and Benefits.

If you would like to read about our last major release from March, click here. 

 

Quick Links:  

UZIO Payroll Enhancements

UZIO Time Tracking Enhancements

Benefit Enhancements

Miscellaneous Product Enhancements

 

 

UZIO Payroll Enhancements

Paying Employees with Multiple Rates

UZIO now supports multiple pay rates for employees on our time tracking platform. 

For example, a restaurant worker may make one hourly rate when working as a hostess, but another when working as a server. This can get complicated—particularly when it comes to overtime rate calculations and workers compensation calculations. UZIO is here to help with this additional layer of complexity. For more details about how to implement this feature see below. 

First, set up a master Job Codes list for all applicable jobs in the company. 

This is available under the Company Profile > Company Master > Job Codes.  By default, the system automatically creates a “Primary Job” in the master. All employees will default to the Primary Job unless otherwise specified.  You will change the actual rate of pay for the employee in the next step, for now you are just creating the master list of possible jobs. 

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Create Job Master

 

Next, assign Additional Jobs To Individual Employees

A new section “Additional Jobs” has been added under the Employee Information tab in Employee Profile. You can assign one or more jobs and the rate at which the employee should be paid for an hour worked.

 

If you are an existing UZIO client and using the UZIO Time Tracking module, your employees will experience no change.  However, you will have more control to manage what all job codes should be visible to them and the hourly rates for each job assigned to an employee. All the job codes that you have created earlier will appear under Additional Jobs for the employees you earlier selected for the Time Tracking.

  • For hourly employees default per hour rate will be set up the same rate that is available on employees' profile and
  • For salaried employees per hour rate will be $0 as the rate is not applicable for them. The system allows the rate to change but this rate for salaried employees has no significance.
  • If you want to limit the job choices for an employee selection, then you can delete such job codes from an additional jobs section.

 

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Employee Additional Jobs Set up

 

Workers Compensation Rates at a Job Code level

You can assign jobs to each worker’s compensation code. When you process your payroll the system will automatically calculate the workers compensation estimated premium against each linked job.

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Workers Compensation Code linking with the job codes

 

Syncing to Payroll

If you are an existing user of UZIO Time Tracking, your employees capture their hours specific to the jobs then those hours will automatically sync in the UZIO payroll after you approve them in UZIO Time Tracking. The hourly rate will be used that you have set up for an employee under additional jobs in the Employee profile. You will have the option to override the rate for additional jobs during the payroll run if required.

On the payroll grid, the hourly paid employees with multiple jobs can be identified with an icon denoting multiple jobs.

 

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Employees with multiple jobs

 

When selecting Regular Hours, Overtime Hours, or Double Overtime Hours, a new popup window will open in which the employer can enter regular, overtime, and double overtime hours against each job assigned to an employee. You can opt to pay overtime and double overtime to your employees, either at a blended rate or at a straight rate. You can make this choice in the Employer Settings. Click here to learn more about blended rates.

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Review and setup hours for employees with multiple

 

Earnings will be calculated at a job code level and will be listed separately in the employee payroll summary.

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Employee Payroll Summary

 

Pay Stubs and Reports

Following reports have been changed to show hours and $ amount of each job separately:

  1. Pay Stubs
  2. Check Stubs
  3. Payroll Register (PDF and Excel)
  4. Payroll Summary
  5. Payroll Comparison
  6. Payroll Allocation Reports

 

General Ledger and IIF File Import Enhancements

General Ledger Enhancements: Setup

  • UZIO GL setup has been enhanced to now include grouping by company location and company divisions.
  • When adding an account to your chart of accounts, you can now map some, none, or all your accounts to one or more file groups (file groups in UZIO are the same as classes in QuickBooks).
  • Click here to learn more about how to do the general ledger set up in UZIO. 

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General Ledger Account setup

 

IIF (Intuit Interchangeable Format) Changes

  • IIF File has been changed. CLASS now appears as a column instead of as a row.
  • TRNSTYPE value has been changed from mixed case “General Ledger” to uppercase “GENERAL LEDGER”, so that IIF file can be uploaded on QuickBooks Enterprise.

 

General ledger in excel format

The general ledger is now available in an excel format therefore giving you all the necessary information to manually create journal entries in your accounting  software.

 

Regular Hours for Salaried Employees

In our last major release in March’21, we added a feature where while setting up a Time off policy, the clients can set up standard daily hours for each time-off policy, along with the days of the workweek. These hours were used to calculate the regular hours of salaried employees. However, this had unintended consequences on regular hours of salaried employees whose days of the workweek would change regularly.  Therefore we have reverted this logic and instead: Salaried employees’ regular weekly hours will be automatically set to 40, and their regular pay period hours will be determined accordingly (80 Bi-Weekly, 86.67 Semi-Monthly, and 173.33 Monthly).

We are committed to make this more flexible for you in our next release.

 

Payroll Custom Reports

Custom payroll reports now have additional fields including: class, division, and payroll status. Class and division fields are available under job information in the payroll report.

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Custom report with additional fields

 

A payroll in draft status is now available in the custom payroll reports.

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Custom report with a new column Payroll Status

 

Miscellaneous Payroll Improvements

Pay Stub Changes – Pay stubs and check stubs of salaried employees have been changed to hide their regular hours and rate.

 

Override System Calculated Contribution Amounts – “Edit Contribution” link (similar to Edit Deductions) is now available on the payroll grid. After selecting “Edit Contribution” a pop-up window will open in which you can provide One-Time Amounts if there is a need to override the system calculated contributions amounts for an employee.

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One Time Contribution Override in the payroll run

 

UZIO Time Tracking Enhancements

Custom Overtime Rule

Employers can now set up custom overtime rules and assign them to particular employees.

Please check with your state requirements to confirm all overtime regulations for your unique situation. Our team can assist you with setting up the requirements after you have confirmed them.

 

Default Overtime Rule

UZIO Time Tracking has the following default rules:

  • Weekly: 40 hours, All work hours over 40 in a workweek are considered as overtime.
  • Sunday is the first day of the work week.

You can create a customized weekly overtime rule to change the workweek start day.

 

Overtime Customizations

Custom overtime rules can be tailored to your requirements including a weekly overtime and daily overtime calculation.  If you have both a weekly and a daily overtime rule set then the calculation will use both requirements and calculate the maximum amount of overtime between the two requirements.

For Example:

You have set up an overtime rule with a Weekly limit of 40 hours and a Daily limit of 8 hours for an employee. If your employee works 9 hours daily for 6 days in a workweek then your employee will have 40 regular hours of pay and 14 hours of OT pay. See below for a breakdown of this calculation:

Day 1: Regular Hours 8, Overtime Hours 1. Total Hours: 9

Day 2: Regular Hours 8, Overtime Hours 1

Day 3: Regular Hours 8, Overtime Hours 1

Day 4: Regular Hours 8, Overtime Hours 1

Day 5: Regular Hours 8, Overtime Hours 1

Day 6: Regular Hours 0, Overtime Hours 9*

  • On Day 1 as the employee has not met the weekly 40 hours limit however they have gone over the daily limit of 8 hours therefore 1 of their hours is calculated at the OT rate.
  • On Day 6 since the weekly limit of 40 hours has already been met, if we go with the daily limit there should be 8 regular hours and 1 overtime but since the employee has met the regular 40 hours limit in a workweek any hours worked after 40 will be considered overtime. So giving maximum advantage to the employee on Day 6, regular hours will be 0 and overtime hours will be 9.

 

California Overtime Rules

California law requires that employers pay overtime, whether authorized or not, at the rate of one and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for the following instances:

  • Hours 8-12 in an individual day
  • The first 8 hours of work on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek

California law requires that employers pay double the employee's regular rate of pay for the following instances:

  • All hours worked in excess of 12 in any workday.
  • Any hours over 8 hours of work on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek.

See below for the setup page for overtime rules specific to California:

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Setup Overtime rules

 

Time Entries in Employees’ Local Time Zone

With the initial rollout, the time tracked by the UZIO time tracking system was in one particular time zone. Now the system is updated and it captures the employees’ device time zone. Each time entry has an explicit callout of time zone abbreviations from where it has been recorded over the Time Entries page and in the Time Entries Report.

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Employee Time Zone Tracking

 

Edit and Sign Documents on Behalf of Employees

In some cases, employees may be unable to complete documents during the onboarding process.  We have removed a restriction for employers to complete forms that are assigned to employees.  Now, an employer can act on behalf of an employee to complete necessary documents. 

 

Pay Stub on Mobile App

UZIO is excited to release the Pay stubs feature on the mobile app. Now employees will be able to view and download the paystubs for any pay date with just one click, anywhere anytime. Employees can view the current ($) and YTD ($) values of all the pay components through our intuitive UI.

 

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Pay stubs on mobile

 

Managers Can Approve Timesheets on Mobile App

A reporting manager now can easily view and approve their direct reports timesheets.  The manager can also see employees’ timesheets for previous pay periods.

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Managers Timesheet review

 

Miscellaneous Enhancements on Mobile

Switch Company

UZIO has introduced a unique solution for the employees who work in more than one company from the group of interlinked companies. Switch Company is available under the “More” section at the bottom of the mobile app dock. Users can change the company he/she works for and take actions on their account, like clocking-in or viewing pay stubs.

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Switching between companies mobile

 

Forgot Password

The employee users can now also initiate the forgot password process through the UZIO mobile app. The app will provide a list of guided steps to easily reset your password.

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Employees resetting the password through mobile

 

Need Help Option in Mobile App

To provide quick references for user's questions, the Need Help section has been introduced on UZIO’s mobile app. Users can access help articles from the ‘More’ section for self-service support. 

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Need help on Mobile

 

Benefit Enhancements

Evidence of Insurability (EOI) in Voluntary AD&D Insurance

EOI requirements vary depending on the insurer and the type of insurance. UZIO already supports EOI requirement needs for Voluntary Life, Basic Life, and Critical Illness products. With the new release, UZIO now supports EOI for the Voluntary AD&D product.

 

Configuring Guaranteed Issue Amounts in Voluntary AD&D Plans

The process to configure EOI/Guaranteed Issue amounts for voluntary AD&D will follow the same process that exists in voluntary life and basic life plans. The voluntary AD&D plan design allows brokers to set a plan guaranteed issue rules:

  • Flat Dollar
  • Lesser of $x or multiple of salary
  • Greater of $x or multiple of salary

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Voluntary AD&D Plan Set up

 

EOI Display In Enrollment Process

Like other benefits on the UZIO platform that have EOI requirements, the system will trigger EOI if an employee or spouse/domestic partner enrolls in a coverage amount greater than their guaranteed issue amount. 

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Employees Benefits Enrollment Review

 

Additional setup rules for guaranteed Issue and step increase in Voluntary Life & Voluntary AD&D

Insurers have different ways to underwrite the group life insurance policies and each of them does it differently for a group to ensure the risk is balanced. To cater to such different coverage eligibility rules with the employee's enrollment for a group, the UZIO platform is updated with additional options to set up the guaranteed issue rules for Voluntary Life and Voluntary AD&D insurance. These new options for guaranteed issue amount and step increase amount will be available ONLY with the renewal proposal.

 

The availability of new rules allows configuring the plan basis the previous enrollment status. For example, an Employee who is previously enrolled can have different guaranteed rules, and employees who previously neither enrolled nor waived the coverage can have different rules to set up to determine the coverage level with or without EOI. The guaranteed issue rules that now are available as follows,

  • Current Coverage
  • Plan’s Guaranteed Issue
  • Step Increase over current coverage
  • Greater of Current Coverage and Plan Guaranteed Issue

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Guaranteed Rules Setup

 

The step increase rules can be configured as follows:

  • Flat $
  • % of current coverage
  • Multiple of Salary
  • Greater of $x or % of current coverage
  • Lesser of $x or % of current coverage
  • A choice of $x or $y over current coverage

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Step increase rules Setup

 

Cancellations in Benefit Change Report

This is an existing report and identifies the employees who have had their initial benefits enrollment, termination of benefits or enrollment changes submitted manually or by the system within the selected date range after the package is approved. This report didn't capture any canceled enrollments like before the start date of the coverage the employee got terminated, and the enrollment done is no more applicable and hence canceled. UZIO has enhanced the report to capture such canceled enrollments for brokers to update the insurer system. This information can be found under the first column in the report that is "Enrollment Type" with value as "CANCEL".

 

Miscellaneous Product Enhancements

Employee Rehire - Rehiring employees in UZIO will now keep some of the prior employment information from before the initial termination. Some major improvements of this information are:

  1. All payroll-related information of prior employment duration will be accessible to employers and employees on the portal and through payroll reports.
  2. All prior pay stubs will remain accessible to the employee.
  3. Future payrolls for the rehired employee will take into account the year-to-date taxes and this will make sure that there is no over-deduction of taxes.
  4. All previously completed or uploaded documents along with time tracking and time off history will still be accessible to employers and employees.

 

Discovery Benefits Rebranded as WEX - WEX, a global payment service company, has acquired Discovery Benefits.  All Discovery Benefits references have been updated to WEX across the UZIO portal.

Password Change - For additional security purposes, when a user is logged in and updating their password, they will also be asked to enter their current password as part of the password update.

Enrollment Updates - The back office module has been enhanced to update premium and coverage amounts of Ancillary and Supplemental Benefits to $0. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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