The second major release of 2022 has arrived. In this release, we have overhauled our Payroll, Time Tracking and HR modules.
Note: UZIO Mobile application features will be updated by June 17th, 2022.
If you’d like to read about our last major release from February 2022, click here.
Quick Links
Employer Portal Enhanced User Experience
UZIO Payroll New Feature and Enhancements
- All New Payroll Input Grid
- Check Printing on Blank Stock
- Automatic Deduction Arrears Calculation
- S-Corp Owner Taxation Setup
- Payroll Miscellaneous Enhancements
UZIO HRIS New Feature and Enhancements
- Hire and Onboarding Module - A redesigned version
- Employees Task Management Module
- Employees Document Module - New User Interface with Many New Features
UZIO Time Tracking Enhancements
UZIO Mobile Application Enhancements
Employer Portal Enhanced User Experience
New Vertical Navigation Menu
With this release, the employer portal has been redesigned to make it easier for users to access all features. We have reorganized the horizontal menu items into vertical menu items and grouped similar functions. A smart vertical menu bar has been added, which is collapsed by default for smaller screens and expands on hover. On larger screens, it is expanded by default. We have added breadcrumbs to drill pages to make navigation easier.
Watch the Feature Update Video
UZIO Payroll New Feature and Enhancements
All New Payroll Input Grid
UZIO is pleased to announce the launch of the new payroll input grid, enriched with so many great features that make payroll managers' jobs easier and more efficient than ever before. In the new grid, you can now
- Hide and unhide the columns to see on the grid
- Choose the column sequence according to your preference
- Use the arrow keys to move quickly through the grid
- Search, filtering and sorting of data for every column
- Pin the columns to left or right to always see it on the grid
- Adjust the hourly rate for hourly based earnings except for regular wage rates, overtime rates, and double overtime rates.
- See the column totals at the bottom.
Watch the Overview Video
The grid also shows employee information such as Department, Pay Type, Employment Status, Employment Type, Employment Classification (Exempt/Non-Exempt), Resident and Work location state. These columns are not automatically selected on the grid by default. Click on the columns section to set your column selection.
Any changes you make to the grid, such as column sequence, columns to show or not show on the grid, will be saved as a preference when you click the continue button available on the page. The grid will display the same view when you run the next payroll. The system allows you to set up a different grid view for the special payroll if required.
Check Printing on Blank Stock
In addition to the existing capability of printing checks on the UZIO recommended (preprinted) check stock, UZIO is pleased to announce the capability of printing checks on blank stock as well.
UZIO has redesigned how you generate the PDF for printing employee checks with this new blank stock format. If you've chosen to pay employees by check, you'll be asked to choose how you want to print the checks upon approving payroll. After you click on the button Download Check Stubs, the report will be downloaded immediately for your reference and next steps. If you skip to generate the report now, you can later go to the Payroll History page where the payrolls you ran are listed and click on the actions to download the check pay stub report from there.
Note: After the introduction of this additional format, the Check pay stub report feature is deprecated and you will not be able to see that report under the reports section.
When you print the checks using blank check stock format, you can assign the starting check number. Additionally, the check numbers assigned to each employee based on the starting check number will also be displayed on the following reports:
- Check Payment Details
- Payroll Register (Both XLS and PDF
Blank check stock can be purchased from anywhere as long as it meets the dimension requirements.
To learn more about check stocks and it’s printing requirements, click here
Automatic Deduction Balance Tracking
For hourly employees, sometimes their paycheck is not enough to cover their deductions (e.g., health premiums), or sometimes they are not paid at all due to no working hours in the pay period. Hence, it becomes difficult for employers to manually track the balance when the company has a number of such employees in each pay period. With this new product release, UZIO now provides an automatic way to track the deduction balance for an employee who does not have enough net pay to cover the deductions or is not a part of the payroll.
Apart from the deduction balance tracking, the employers would also be able to set up the deduction arrear processing method to decide how to recover the balance from the employee in the future paychecks. Click here to learn how to set up the deduction for arrears balance tracking.
Updates to the Deductions Report
Assigned Deductions Report
The report is updated to show the additional information like Arrears Balance, MTD (Month to date), QTD (Quarter to date), YTD (year to date).
Deduction History Report
The layout of the report is changed to show one row per deduction of the employee. The report is also updated to show the additional information for each deduction row like Scheduled Deduction Amount, Current Deduction Amount, Arrears Accrued, Arrears Processed, Arrears Balance, MTD (Month to date), QTD (Quarter to date), YTD (Year to date).
The MTD, QTD, and YTD information will be calculated in the reports as of the check date.
S-Corp Owner Taxation Setup
S-Corporation owners who are 2% shareholders of the company have different taxation rules as mentioned below
- Employee health benefit deductions are subject to taxes.
- Employer contributions towards health benefits are subject to taxes except for Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment taxes.
UZIO has enhanced the ability to set up any employee as S-Corp owners. Once done, the rest of the unique taxation rules are taken care of automatically by the Uzio payroll system.
Click here to learn more about this feature and know How to set up S-Corp owners on Uzio?
Payroll Miscellaneous Enhancements
There are few additional miscellaneous enhancements made to the UZIO payroll system.
Employee SSN is a mandatory field
UZIO has made the SSN field mandatory for Payroll Clients. If your company has missing SSNs for one or more employees, you will be restricted from running the next payroll. You will have to set up the SSN for all the employees in the UZIO system before you can run payroll. By now you may have already received communications from the UZIO payroll service team to get this information updated in the system to avoid any last minute challenge running the payroll.
Negative Net Pay
When you process the payroll, and there are one or more employees with net pay less than zero due to insufficient wages, you would not be allowed to approve the payroll unless you adjust the employee's paycheck or skip them from the payroll. The system will prompt you with the employee's name to take corrective actions to ensure the net pay for all employees is zero or more.
Blocked Deductions and Contributions
The deductions and contributions will be automatically blocked for the employees in the pay run if they do not have taxable wages on it. If they are getting paid either for the reimbursements or any other nontaxable wage, the deductions will not be withheld. For example, if an employee has only expense reimbursement to be paid in the payroll and there is a 401k deduction set up for the employee, the 401K deduction will not be withheld for the employee.
Multiple Child Support Garnishment
When there is enough allowable disposable income, the employee should pay the amount in full for all the current child support orders. Sometimes an employee's earnings do not stretch far enough to pay for all the orders. In such a case, most states suggest prorating by allocating a percentage to each order based on the total dollar amount of current child support orders. This method is compliant with the Federal law that says that some money must be paid for each child support order if there is more than one withholding order. With this release, the UZIO payroll system is enhanced to handle multiple child support garnishments when there is not enough allowable disposable income. Click here to learn more about how it is calculated?
UZIO HRIS Enhancements
Hire and Onboarding Module - A Redesigned Version
UZIO Hire and Onboarding Module has been revamped to deliver a better user experience and added many new exciting features. Here are the highlights of the enhancements.
Add prospect with or without sending the offer letter
Now you can decide whether you want to add a prospective employee with or without sending an offer letter. By using this new workflow, you will first receive the employee's offer acceptance. After that you will proceed with the rest of the steps associated with onboarding the employee.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Prospective Employee Offer Acceptance
A prospective employee can view the offer letter with a single click from the offer invitation email. For accepting the offer, they can either draw a signature or upload a signature image from their device.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Prospective Employee Onboarding
The onboarding process will begin after the employee has accepted the offer. The HR manager can invite the new employee to self-onboard or complete the process himself/herself.
Invite prospective employees for self-onboarding
HR managers and admins can create employee onboarding setup/checklists by assigning documents and tasks for prospective employees and other employees in the company to complete as part of the employee onboarding process and inviting employees to do self-onboarding.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Employer completes onboarding
HR managers and admins can also onboard a prospective employee themselves, same as the existing process.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Employee Self Onboarding
Prospective employees can complete the self-onboarding process when invited to do so, and the Admin/HR managers will be able to review the submitted information and complete the onboarding process.
Watch the Tutorial Video
When required, you would be able to cancel the self-onboarding if the prospect has not completed it yet. Additionally, you would be able to re-open the self-onboarding for the prospective employees who have completed it. The employee can again see the experience of self-onboarding on their login and perform any required corrective action.
A notification is sent to the Admin/HR managers once the prospective employee has completed the self onboarding process. After that, the Admin/HR manager has to review the details, finish the onboarding process, and turn the prospective hire into an onboarded employee.
Additionally, few more capabilities are added for the users
Resend Offer
While deciding to resend the offer to the prospective employee, you will get an option to resend it to the same email address or a different one.
Revoke Offer
For some reason, if you revoke the offer from a prospective employee, you will have a choice if you want to notify the employee or not.
Act on Behalf of Prospect
When the prospective employee needs any help with the self-onboarding process, you will now have the option to “act on behalf of the prospect” to complete the onboarding process.
Employees Task Management Module
New features have been added around task management to help administrators and HR admins assign and monitor tasks more efficiently. This functionality is available to the UZIO HRIS module subscribers.
Task Library
You can now organize and store all your company's tasks in a Task Library. Onboarding and offboarding tasks previously hosted under the Hire and onboarding module settings will now be available in the library. Moreover, you can now create and assign employees ongoing tasks that are not related to onboarding or offboarding. For example, Completing sexual harassment training, providing COVID vaccination certificates, etc.
Here is what all you can you do in the Task library
- Create custom categories and group tasks of similar types under a category.
- Manage the tasks and configure the rules like who should be the default assignee and the due date. You would be able to override at the time of the actual assignment of the tasks.
- Assign the tasks and set the due dates for the task assignee.
- Configure the task to define if any documents are mandatory to be uploaded by the task assignee.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Employees Task
This new section allows you to track the status of all the tasks assigned to employees in real-time under the onboarding, offboarding, and ongoing tasks categories.
Ongoing Task
It lists all day to day tasks that are assigned to employees and includes statistics about how many employees a task has been assigned, who have completed the assignment, and with whom it is pending. When you click over a task name, you will see more details like the employee, to whom the task is assigned, the task due date, and actions like deleting, reminding, etc.
Onboarding and Offboarding
Each of these tabs provides you with an overview of all onboarding and offboarding tasks assigned to an individual employee. You can see the count of assigned, pending, and completed tasks. Click on the employee's name opens to a more granular view that includes details such as the task name, due date, to whom it is assigned and actions such as deleting and sending reminders.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Employees Document Module - New User Interface with Many New Features
We have added a lot of exciting features in the Employees Document module, which will make document management operationally efficient and easy to use through a fresh new intuitive UI.
Watch the Tutorial Video
Documents Library
The system documents are now better organized and grouped in predefined categories like Agreements, Employee Handbook, Tax, Compliance, etc. With the new set of other enhancements, here is what you can do in the Documents Library
- Create your custom category to add documents in it to house the related documents in the same category.
- Assign the documents and set the due dates for the assignee. The system wouldn’t restrict employees from completing the document even if the due date has passed.
- Move the document between the custom categories. You can now move documents across custom categories. For example, if you have a document that you are not assigning any more but do not want to lose it, you can now create a custom category “Archive” and move the document to it.
Employees Document
The Employees Document section provides access to all documents assigned to employees, which are now better organized and clearly visible.
Real Time Status
After clicking on the category, you will see the number of employees to whom the document was assigned, how many declined or completed the document. Upon clicking on the document name, you will see more information including whom the document is assigned to, the due date and the status of whether or not it has been completed, pending or past due.
Document Status History
By hovering over each assigned document status, you will see an audit trail showing who and when it was assigned, whether it was viewed, is pending with whom, or if it has been completed.
Send Reminder
You can send a reminder for all the pending documents with employees or to a specific employee by clicking actions available against that employee’s record.
Bulk Download
All completed and declined documents can now be downloaded in one go. The system allows you to choose if you need individual employee PDFs or all of them as one PDF. You can specify the completion date range else it will be downloaded for all time and select if you want to combine all PDFs in one file.
UZIO Time Tracking Enhancements
Midnight Shift Time Entries
The UZIO time tracking module has been enhanced to make it more operationally efficient to administer. With this new feature, you will be able to manually enter the time of multiple days/midnight shifts in one go.
For example, if an employee starts work on 05/18/2022 at 9 PM and works till 5 AM on 05/19/2022, you will be able to add a manual entry for the given period in one go. As soon as the time entry is saved in the system, the system will automatically separate it into the respective hours worked for each day.
Mobile App Enhancements
Download UZIO's latest mobile app available at the play store and the app store. It has improved security for your user account along with the following functional changes.
Time Tracking Clock in Enhancement
Going forward, an employee with unapproved time entries can clock in for the current pay period from mobile, even if payroll has been initiated or processed. Previously, this was only possible through the web portal.