SimplePay Blog

January 20, 2021

New Feature: Give Admin and Leave Admin Users Read-only Access

Unlike many other payroll systems, SimplePay does not charge for or restrict the number of users on the system. This means that you can give system access to all the people that need it, whether this is a department head who approves leave, a payroll administrator who processes payroll or an external accountant who completes filing submissions. While our user settings already have a range of roles and restrictions that you can configure, we’ve had several requests for giving users read-only access to the system.

We are delighted to announce that we’ve upgraded our permissions to enable you to give users read-only access, with extensive flexibility that lets you customise this on a company, pay frequency or pay point level.

When adding a user, you can still select their permission role (e.g. Leave Admin) and restrict them to specific companies, pay frequencies or pay points. However, when restricting users with Admin or Leave Admin roles, you can select the type of access for each company, pay frequency or pay points, namely:

Full: gives the user full access to the areas of the system as defined by that particular role
Read-only: gives the user read-only access to the areas of the system as defined by that particular role
None: gives the user no access

For more information on setting up users with read-only access, refer to our help article here.

We hope that you love the new feature! Please reach out to us if you have any trouble setting up users or if you have any further questions.

Team SimplePay

January 14, 2021January 14, 2021

President’s 11 January Speech and TERS Disputes Procedure

As the country eases into 2021, the President’s speech on 11 January made it clear that COVID-19, and the resulting restrictions, will remain a part of day-to-day life in 2021. The blog post today looks to give a brief overview of the adjusted level 3 regulations from a business perspective and also flags the TERS disputes process.

Adjusted Level 3

The main change that the President announced in his most recent speech was that South Africa’s land borders will be closed until 15 February. Exceptions apply for goods, repatriation and medical supplies, meaning that this change is likely to mainly impact the tourism and leisure industry.

The above is in addition to the measures announced on 28 December, all of which remain in place.

Below is a table summarising some of the key restrictions to businesses under adjusted level 3 at this point in time.

	Non-Hotspot Areas	Hotspot Areas
Curfew	21:00 – 05:00 daily	21:00 – 05:00 daily
Business closing times	Non-essential stores close at 20:00*	Non-essential stores close at 20:00*
Gatherings	All uncontrolled social gatherings are prohibited. Gatherings at businesses permitted which are permitted to be open is allowed, in line with the occupancy limitations.	All uncontrolled social gatherings are prohibited. Gatherings at businesses permitted which are permitted to be open is allowed, in line with the occupancy limitations.
Beaches, dams, lakes and rivers	Open between 6:00 – 19:00 daily	Closed
Businesses that must remain closed	Public parks, public swimming pools, clubs, bars, taverns, shebeens,	Public parks, public swimming pools, clubs, bars, taverns, shebeens,
Sale and distribution of alcohol	Not permitted	Not permitted

*List of establishments which must close by 20:00: Cinemas; theatres; casinos; museums, galleries and archives; gyms and fitness centres; restaurants; venues hosting auctions; and venues hosting professional sport.

At this point in time, the only material difference between hotspot and non-hotspot areas is access to beaches, dams, lakes and rivers. The reasoning behind this is that the number of people at any one of these locations cannot easily be regulated or controlled.

You can find a list of the areas designated as hotspots and the adjusted level 3 Regulations on the Government website.

TERS Dispute Resolution Process

On Friday 8 January, as an employer you should have received an email from the UIF, titled “UIF-TERS – Update letter”. The update letter lays out the process that you can follow if you believe the UIF has not performed one or more of its contractual obligations with you contained in your memorandum of association with them.

The letter highlights that this route is only for disputes and not for enquiries, such as failed bank verifications.

To lodge a formal dispute:

Complete the Dispute Form (attached to the 8 January email, sender: [email protected]a)
Attach any relevant supporting documentation
Email the completed dispute form with attachments to [email protected], with the subject as “COVID-19 TERS Dispute – [Your UIF Reference Number]”

We hope that this information has proved useful. If you have any questions for us, you can contact us at [email protected]

Equally, if you are not yet a client of SimplePay but would like to be, why not check out our website? Or, better yet, try out our service for free with our 30-day trial, get acquainted with our user-friendly service by reading our getting started page, or take our free online course.

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

January 12, 2021

New Feature: Bulk Assign Leave Policies

Happy new year! We hope that 2021 brings you new opportunities, improved performance and overall success in all your endeavours. As always, we’ll support you with an efficient and effective payroll system. We’re kicking off the new year with a brand new feature – you can now assign leave policies to employees in bulk.

SimplePay’s leave functionality allows you to set a company default leave policy for all employees that are added to the system. You can then assign a different leave policy to employees if they are not on the default policy. Being able to assign leave policies now in bulk saves you time if you have many employees who are not on the company default policy. It is also useful for companies who do not have a single company default policy, but rather separate policies per pay point or pay frequency.

Once you have created your leave policies, you can assign them in bulk as follows:

Go to Employees > Bulk Actions
Click on Entitlement Policies under the Leave heading
Use the filters to select only those employees that are part of a specific pay point or pay frequency
Use the drop-down menus to allocate the leave policies for each leave type for each employee on the page. If all employees on the page are on the same policy, use the Copy first value down option to save you time.
Click Save

It’s as simple as that. For more information on leave management and bulk leave actions, refer to the following pages:

Team SimplePay

December 22, 2020

TERS Update Blog: 22 December 2020

Our blog post today draws your attention to our new FAQ, based on the UIF’s TERS update letters from 15 and 18 December 2020. As TERS draws to a close, these letters, and therefore our FAQs, provide information relevant to the 16 September to 15 October application period. They also cover information on correcting earlier periods’ applications, yet to be accepted and / or processed.

You can find our FAQs on this help site page. The FAQs are:

We hope that the FAQ proves useful. If you have any questions on how the above information relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

December 15, 2020December 15, 2020

President’s Speech – 14 December 2020

Last night the President addressed the nation for the second time this month on the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 and how the Government plans to counter them. Some of the new rules announced are particularly important for businesses, so these are what the blog post today focuses on.

Masks and Social Distancing

The authorities are going to be more active in enforcing compliance with measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. You as managers and business owners are now responsible for ensuring that employees and customers entering your premises or vehicle are wearing masks.

Failure to enforce these rules on your employees or customers could expose you to fines or even six (6) months imprisonment.

Gatherings

Some of the key points on changes to permitted gatherings are as follows:

Gatherings are limited to 250 people outdoors or 100 people indoors.
All gatherings need to provide ventilation and hand sanitiser, as well as practice social distancing and mask wearing.
Certain hotspots for gatherings will be fully or partially closed across the festive season (16 December 2020 to 3 January 2021). Fully closed areas currently include the Eastern Cape and Garden Route.
Beaches and parks that aren’t closed will be open between 9am and 6pm.

It is important that you keep up to date with the latest news on any restrictions as rules are subject to change, dependent on increase or decrease of transmission in a region.

Hospitality and Goods

As the President suggested a second wave is possible, the focus of the Government is to try and maintain economic activity, whilst limiting the spread of the virus. This is reflected in the restrictions and rules that have been placed on the hospitality and tourism sectors.

The new rules are:

There is a national curfew between 11pm and 4am.
Restaurants and bars must close by 10pm to allow staff time to return home before curfew.
Alcohol can be sold in shops Monday to Thursday, between 10am and 6pm
Vineyards and wine tastings may resume on the weekends and may include purchases for offsite consumption.

Although the above restrictions may limit your business, it is encouraging that emphasis is being placed on keeping the wheels of the economy turning.

You can read the President’s full speech by following this link.

We hope that this information has proved useful to you. As always, if you need to get in touch with a member of the team, you can contact us at [email protected].

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

December 11, 2020

2020 Year in Review and Price Increase Deferment

Like most individuals and companies, SimplePay entered the new decade armed with big dreams and extensive plans for the year that lay ahead. As COVID-19 swept across the world, we were forced to temporarily pause our plans and adapt to the new challenges thrown our way. But one thing has stayed constant throughout: our customers remain our top priority.

It’s with this in mind that we have decided to defer our usual annual inflation-linked price adjustment which is normally effective on 1 January each year. Inflation-linked price adjustments are unfortunately unavoidable, as our sustainability depends on us staying on top of rising costs. However, we recognise that many of you have been through undue hardships in 2020 and we hope that by delaying our price adjustment by a few months, we are able to provide additional relief during these difficult economic circumstances. We will notify you in advance of the effective date for our price adjustment.

As we look back on the year, our team pulled together like never before to ensure that you were equipped to process payroll despite the changing payroll landscape. We rapidly responded to add system functionality as the government introduced various COVID-19 relief efforts and had ever-changing requirements for these. In addition, we assigned a dedicated team to blogging and creating help site articles so that you had easy access to information as it unfolded, and we spent countless hours on phones and emails providing support. We hope that our efforts made this year a little bit easier for you.

Despite the unexpected challenges that we faced in 2020, the SimplePay team still managed to roll out some fantastic new features. Although not an exhaustive list, we’d like to highlight a few of them:

With the payslip password settings feature, you can encrypt payslips sent to employees via email.
An expansion of the self-service portal allows employees to submit expense claims via self-service.
You can correct ETI overclaims and underclaims after our huge ETI overhaul.
Understanding your SDL and UIF figures became a lot easier with the UIF and SDL trace.
If you claim ETI, the ETI breakdown and ETI trace outlines the calculations for ETI for each qualifying employee.
The End Service Checklist flags outstanding leave, savings or loans for employees being terminated.
You can download the UIF Declaration file that was sent to the Department of Labour, as well as the response received.
You can download pre-populated individual UI-19 forms for employees who need to claim from the UIF.
Employees can view payslips and submit requests from anywhere using version 2 of the SimplePay mobile app.
You can now transfer companies yourself if you are the account owner.

As this year draws to a close, we’d once again like to take this opportunity to thank you for your loyalty, support and understanding throughout the year. We wish you all the best over the festive season and look forward to the positive opportunities that lie ahead in 2021.

Take care and stay safe

Team SimplePay

November 30, 2020December 1, 2020

TERS Updates for September October Applications

Update 1 December 2020: Minister Nxesi has announced that the September / October TERS period will be the last of the scheme. To read the Government Gazette, follow this link.

Hello and welcome to another TERS update blog post. Our information today is taken from the UIF’s most recent update letters, which announced a post-verification audit and highlighted an issue with some applications for the most recent application period. You can read more about the 16 September to 15 October TERS application period in this recent blog post.

Post Verification Audit

The UIF has announced that audits of the TERS process will begin from 1 December 2020 and will last for an estimated period of six (6) months. The audits are to be completed by a number of named companies with expertise in this area. This is in line with the Memorandum of Agreement you signed to be able to partake in the TERS scheme.

The UIF requests that you keep at least the following information readily available in hard or electronic format in case you are contacted:

UIF COVID TERS application pack
- There should be an application pack for each period which you applied to, containing the documents which you submitted;
Bank statements relating to your COVID TERS application(s);
Each employee’s HR file;
*Payroll report from 1 January 2020 to July 2020;*
Proof of payment to your employees; and
Proof of any refunds to the UIF (if applicable).

*Thankfully, by using SimplePay all of your payroll information is in one centralised location! We hope that this helps you with any prospective bookkeeping which may follow.

NOTE: The information listed above contains personally sensitive information for both you and your employees. Because of this we would recommend that you verify the credentials of anyone who may contact you in this respect.

Issue with SOME September / October TERS Applications

The UIF has announced that some applications received for the 16 September to 15 October period, submitted before 10AM on Wednesday 25 November 2020 did not meet their system’s requirements. As a result, they have been rejected and if this applies to you, you will need to resubmit. The UIF won’t notify you if you fall within this set of applications, so if in any doubt you should check your application status.

This issue does not apply if you applied using SimplePay’s CSV, but if you have made applications manually, this may affect the employees for whom this was done.

Whether you submitted via CSV or manually, we recommend you log in to your TERS profile and look for the September / October applications in the Saved Employees section. If your applications appear then your submission is deemed to be correct and you don’t need to resubmit.

If you cannot find your applications for the September / October period, you must resubmit for your employees to receive TERS benefits for this period.

We hope that this information has proved useful to you. If you have any questions on how the information above relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

November 25, 2020November 27, 2020

Password Protected Payslips Are Here!

Gone are the days of employees only being able to receive printed versions of their payslips. Accessing payslips is easier than ever before with our mobile app and self-service portal, and companies have the option of attaching payslips to the emails that are sent to employees when payslips are released to self-service.

We’ve recently seen an increase in requests for password protecting the payslips that are sent via email. Although an employee’s email inbox should be protected with a secure password, we understand that problems can arise where an incorrect email address is entered for an employee, or if an employee leaves their email inbox open and unattended. We took your concerns to heart and are delighted to announce that this feature is now available.

To enable passwords for payslips:

Go to Employees > Self-Service > Settings > General
Ensure that the checkbox for Attach payslips to emails on Self-Service release is selected
Select the Enable password protection for attached payslips (using employee identity numbers or birthdates checkbox
Click Save

All payslips sent via email will now be password protected. The password used will be the employee’s identity (ID) number, or where no ID number is available, their date of birth.

Please note that the password is based on the information available at the time of the email being sent. Therefore, changes to an employee’s ID number or date of birth will only impact payslips sent via email after the change and not historic ones.

We hope that this new feature gives you peace of mind over the security of payslip information.

To learn more about emailing payslips to employees, head to our help page here.

Not a SimplePay client? Surprised to hear that payslips can be accessed via a self-service portal and a mobile app? Sign up for our free 30-day trial here and see just how simple payroll can be!

Team SimplePay

November 24, 2020November 24, 2020

TERS Application Period for September / October Open

We are happy to start the blog today with news that applications for TERS benefits for the period of 16 September to 15 October are now open. We mentioned this previously in our blog post on the President’s national address, but we can now provide you with more details.

The application period opened yesterday, 23 November and runs until 31 December 2020. The eligibility criteria remain the same as for the 16 August to 15 September period, with more information available on this here. As always, you need to make the claim via the TERS portal and upload the relevant documents along with your application.

First Time Applicants

It is still possible for you to apply for TERS for the first time, but it should be noted that you will only be able to apply for the 16 September to 15 October period. If you wish to claim, you’ll need to activate your profile online as soon as possible on the TERS portal, following the instructions to sign the Memorandum of Association and Letter of Undertaking.

If you experience any difficulty you can call the UIF on 0800 030 007. They will provide you with a reference number, which can be used as evidence of your efforts to comply if your submission is late.

Bank Verification

Our last blog post on TERS covered in detail many of the problems that have arisen through the bank verification steps. If you are continuing to experience any issues with bank verification, that post may provide a useful port of call.

As the bank verification process is fully automated, the details you provide have to exactly match those that the bank has. If in any doubt, please contact your bank to make sure that the details you input are correct.

Digital UI-19

The UIF has stated that It is ceasing to process manual UI-19 submissions. In its place, the UIF has introduced an online equivalent called Digital UI19. The aim of this is to streamline their operations and reduce the amount of manual inputting on their side.

SimplePay users, no need to be alarmed! With the exception of foreign employees, who have to be submitted separately for TERS, if you are a part of SimplePay we enable you to generate and send your UIF submissions from the SimplePay site. Easy, we know. This in turn means you don’t have to manually input data and can avoid the dreaded typo!

Because of this, you can read the following explanation on Digital UI19 safe in the knowledge that you don’t have to get to grips with new software.

So… Digital UI19, what is it?

Digital UI19 provides a way for employers to fill in an online spreadsheet with the relevant information, download it and then send it to the UIF, where it will be automatically processed. To us this sounds like a lot of extra typing. You could nonetheless do this and brush up on your touch typing (yawn)…

… or you could start / continue using SimplePay, make payroll a breeze and treat yourself with all that time you’ve saved!

We hope that this information has proved useful to you. If you have any questions on how the information above relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay