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ETI Changes for Special Economic Zones

As from  1 August 2018, the criteria for employees who qualify for ETI have been amended for those working in Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

What are Special Economic Zones (SEZs)?

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) within South Africa are geographically designated areas set aside for specifically targeted economic activities to promote national economic growth and export. This is achieved through support measures to attract foreign and domestic investments and technology.  The 6 SEZs are:

  1. Coega
  2. Dube Trade Port
  3. East London
  4. Maluti-A-Phofung
  5. Saldanha Bay
  6. Richards Bay

What changed?

If employers and employers work within a SEZ there is no longer an age limit for employees who qualify for ETI. For the age qualifying test to fall away, the following two requirements must be satisfied:

  1. The employer must have a fixed place of business within one of the 6 designated SEZs, and
  2. The employee must render services to that employer mainly within a SEZ.

If you operate within a SEZ and would like to apply these changes on SimplePay, check out our updated ETI help page here.

Team SimplePay

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Feature Highlight: Copy First Value Down

Today we’d like to highlight a useful feature on the system that many users are not aware of. The Copy first value down feature makes capturing repetitive data for employees much faster. The following example explains how it works:

Bob has 7 employees who are hourly paid. All employees work the same number of hours each month, but the number of hours worked differ from month to month.

To capture these hours quickly for a particular month, Bob can:

  • Go to Employees > Bulk Actions > Payslip Inputs.
  • Use the filters to locate the fields that he wishes to capture information for.
  • Enter the hours for the first employee.

  • Click on the arrow next to the column name and select Copy First Value Down.

  • All hours have been copied down. If Bob is happy with this, he can click Save. If one employee did not work the same amount of hours as the rest, he can change it just for that employee.

It’s as simple as that!

Found this article useful? Let us know in the comments section below and we will be sure to highlight more features like this in the future.

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Increased Security Features with 2-Factor Authentication

At SimplePay, protecting your data is a fundamental part of our business. That’s why we have the highest of security standards in place to ensure the privacy and protection of your information.

We want your time using SimplePay online to be enjoyable and worry free. One of the ways that users put themselves at risk of cybercrime is with their choice of passwords or by saving their passwords to the device they are using. When it comes to internet security, you can never be too careful. We are therefore launching an optional security feature, called 2-factor authentication. This feature requires users to enter a verification code as an additional step when logging into SimplePay or when changing their password.

With this feature, users can establish a device as a trusted device, so that they only have to do 2-factor authentication every 30 days. All other devices will require 2-factor authentication with each log in.

As this is an opt-in feature, you will need to request it from our support team, at no additional charge. To learn more about how it works, read our help page here.

Just another way that we are helping you to stay safe online.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: More Leave Functionality

Been wanting more control over employee leave balances? We have heard your requests and are excited to announce the launch of a new feature which allows you to customize your leave settings even more.

Want to stop employees from logging leave if it will result in a negative leave balance? No problem!

Our new feature allows you to do just this. If a self-service leave request will result in the minimum balance not being maintained, you can opt to:

  • prevent the leave request from being logged (see image below), or
  • warn the employee of the outcome if they continue (see image below).

For more information on leave settings and setting this up, refer to our help page here.

We hope you love the new feature and, as always, we welcome any feedback that you may have.

Team SimplePay

Edit: Please note that there was an error on the previous version of this blog post where it stated that you could set a minimum leave balance for employees to maintain in preparation for the annual shutdown of your company. The feature is currently only available for setting a minimum leave balance of 0 or a negative number, not a positive minimum balance, which is likely to be developed shortly in the future. Our apologies for the error.

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We’re Making It Easier to Identify Draft Documents

Getting confused between the draft payslips that you saved to your computer and the finalised payslips that you gave to your employees?

To make it easier for you to keep track of versions of your documents, we have added a stamp  to the draft version of the following documents:

  • Payslips
  • Monthly EMP201s
  • UIF declarations

To remove the stamp, simply finalise the document by clicking on the Finalise button or link for the document.

For more information on the processes for generating these draft documents, refer to the following help pages:

Let us know if there are any other features you would like to see on the system – we’re always looking for ways to make payroll better for you!

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Your App can now Integrate with SimplePay!

After several requests for integration with other systems, we are happy to announce that we have built a SimplePay API!

 

If you’re a non-technical person, just think of an API as a way for other systems to talk to our system. For example, an HR system that wants to sync employee info to payroll, or a time and attendance system that wants to automatically send hours worked through, can do this via an API. If you’ve ever wished SimplePay could integrate with another HR or time and attendance system in this way, get in touch with them and tell them about our API.

 

If you are a developer and have been interested in SimplePay integrating with your system,  take a look at our Developers page.

 

Our API allows you to:

  • Obtain information about the company and all employees, pay points and pay frequencies within the company.
  • Create, update and delete employees.
  • Access payslips for employees.
  • Create or view calculations on a payslip.
  • Access monthly reports, such as a Transaction History Report.
  • Record leave and obtain leave balances.

 

We hope that you are excited about the launch of our API. We’re just getting started, so be sure to let us know what functionality you’d like to see in the API in future.

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2018 Employer Annual Reconciliation Filing Season

The 2018 Employer Annual Reconciliation filing season is now open. SimplePay automatically generates the IRP5s / IT3(a)s and EMP501 needed for year-end filing with SARS and these are now available for the 2018 filing season.

You will have until 31 May 2018 to submit your Annual Reconciliation Declaration (EMP501) for 1 March 2017 – 28 February 2018 to SARS. This can be done via eFiling or the [email protected] application. You may need to update your [email protected] application to the latest version, 6.8.3. This can be done here. Please remember to back up your current information on your computer before installing a new version of [email protected]

For more information about the bi-annual filing process, refer to this help page. We also have a useful guide to take you through it step by step. The guide contains an important checklist which will help you eliminate unnecessary validation errors when trying to upload files to [email protected]

In preparation for this filing season, we have done some system updates to further simplify the process for you:

  • Pre-validation updates:

We have added additional pre-validation measures to identify data errors are before filing with SARS.

  • Consolidated IRP5s / IT3(a)s

After liaising with SARS, we have updated the way we generate tax certificates for employees who are terminated – any information on once-off payslips created after their termination date are added to the tax certificate generated for their service period if the once-off payslip date falls in the same tax year.

As always, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Team SimplePay

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Travel Allowance Updates Effective March 2018

As of the 2018/2019 tax year, the treatment of travel allowances where employees are reimbursed per kilometre travelled for business has changed. 

Previously, the travel allowance was not taxable on the payslip, irrespective of the amount per kilometre reimbursed. However, the travel allowance may have been taxed on assessment.

From 1 March 2018, if an employee is reimbursed at a rate above the prescribed rate, the portion above the prescribed rate is taxable on the payslip. The prescribed rate for the 2019 tax year is R3.61 per kilometre.

There are no changes to the way that you capture the reimbursement on a payslip on SimplePay. We aim to keep you compliant with SARS and therefore SimplePay has been updated to take these rules into account. The system will automatically split the travel allowance into the taxable and non-taxable portion, based on your inputs.

Please note that due to this change, the reporting codes for reimbursive travel allowances used on the IRP5 have also been updated by SARS.

For more information on this, refer to the following help page.

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Tax Certificates Now Available via Employee Self-Service

At SimplePay we strive to create value for you by meeting your payroll needs in a simple and easy manner. With that in mind, we are thrilled to announce the launch of a new feature to make the tax year-end even easier for you – employees can now view their tax certificates via the self-service function.

This means that you can release IRP5s/IT3(a)s to your employees at the end of the tax year at the click of a button. Employees will be informed via email that their tax certificates are available on their employee self-service. You can also attach a PDF of their tax certificate in this email. Please note: you can only release final year-end IRP5s/IT3(a)s to employees i.e. interim IRP5s/IT3(a)s for the first 6 months of the tax year cannot be released to employees.

Please see the following help page for more information on the steps to enable and use this function.

Team SimplePay

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UIF Exclusion Update for Learners and Employees who Repatriate

With effect from 1 March 2018 and in accordance with the Taxation Laws Amendment Act of 2017, the following employee categories must no longer be excluded from contributing to UIF:

  1. Learners employed in terms of section 18(2) of the Skills Development Act
  2. Employees who intend to repatriate (return to their country of origin) at the end of their working period in South Africa.

 

This means that both (1) Learners and (2) Employees who intend to repatriate, must contribute to the Fund from 1 March 2018.

NB: The aforementioned categories of employees must contribute to the Fund, but will not be entitled to claim a benefit until the Unemployment Insurance Amendment Act changes become effective.