Important Notices and Breaking Changes

The enhancements described in the related pages below represent significant functional changes that you must be aware of prior to upgrading to this release. Some of these enhancements require specific actions before or immediately after upgrading and are therefore highlighted here for your reference. Please refer to the relevant sections of this What's New Guide, as identified below, for detailed information about each enhancement and any configuration that is required.

Please be aware of the following important points about upgrading to v11.37:

Recruitment Manager

• A separate permission item has been added in this release for the Pay / Bill section of the Client record (see Client Record Pay/Bill Information Access Permission for details).  On upgrade, the Client Record Pay/Bill permission is automatically applied to all agency user security roles that have the add, edit, view or full permission level enabled for the existing Organisation > Client Record permission in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Security.

  If, for certain agency user roles, the permission level for the new Client Record Pay/Bill permission needs to be different than the permission level for the existing Client Record permission, edit the permissions for the relevant security role in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Security for the Client Record Pay/Bill permission accordingly.

• Activities and Notifications Changes – on upgrade your users will notice that the top tool bar icon for Activities & Notifications has been changed to two icons.  One for Activities and one for Notifications.  This is part of an enhancement to provide users with the ability to define what Activities they see when the evoke this item from the Dashboard – for more details see Activities & Notifications Changes for details.

• Maintenance > Section Defaults – in this release this new maintenance item provides Agencies with the ability to determine for primary records like Parent, Client, Cost Centre, Job, the sections that display by default, and the order they display in.  On upgrade, within each record, the existing FastTrack section defaults will still apply where ‘Reset Layout’ is selected in Manage Sections.  Should you configure Section Defaults for a Record, where a user has not used Manage Sections to alter their view, the new Section Defaults will apply on load of the record.  Users who have altered their settings via Manage Sections, will still see the order they have defined, however if they select ‘Reset Layout’, the Maintenance > Section Default settings (where configured) will apply.  For more details on this feature, see Maintenance > Set Section Defaults.  NOTE:  For Custom Sections, from this release forward when a user is granted permission to use the section, they will need to go into the applicable record's Manage Layout and 'Add' in the new section.

• Candidate / Contact Records – Portal User Delete.  In this release, users with FULL permission to ‘Candidate Online Profile’ and/or Contact Online Profile will be able to see the new ‘Delete User’ action.  To maintain their existing functionality, on upgrade we will run a script to map any existing Agency Users with FULL permission ‘Candidate Online Profile’ and/or Contact Online Profile', to only tick have ‘Add’, ‘Edit’, ‘View’.  Should you wish to provide these users with the ability to Delete a Portal User, you will need to open the related Security Roles and change the permission to ‘FULL’.  For more details see Candidate / Client Contact Portal User - Delete.

• Candidate Record > Resume section - Currently if a user does not have permission to Document Management in the Candidate record, they can still see the Resume section.  As the Document Management permission item relates to both the Document Management and Resume sections (there is no separate resume section permission item), we have made a change whereby if the permission is not true, the user will also not see the Resume section.  This change brings the experience in line with how the Document Management permission item works in the Candidate Portal.

Time and Attendance

• Timesheet Initiator / Approver – Key and Approve from one screen.  On upgrade, where a user has permission to both ‘Timesheet’ (Full or Add or Edit) and ‘Approve, Reject, Recall’ (Full), Timesheets opened in the Available, Incomplete and Bulk Timesheet tab will show a new combined action for ‘Approve and Submit’.  This will reduce the need to key time in one screen and submit in another.  For more details see Timesheet Initiator / Approver – Key and Approve from one screen.

• Timesheet Workflow Participant Access Changes – a new Security Permission called Access only to timesheets if a user is workflow participant has replaced the Override is Workflow Participant security permission item.  On upgrade:

  • Where an existing security role has 'Override is Workflow Participant' ticked, the new Access only to timesheet if a user is workflow participant item will not be ticked, so users will not experience any change.  

  • Where an existing security role has 'Override is workflow Participant' unticked, the new Access only to timesheets if a user is workflow participant will be ticked, so users will not experience any changes.  

  • For more details See Timesheet Workflow Participant Access Changes.

• Mobile Timesheets – Security Policy – Mobile Timesheets has been enhanced to observe the Maintenance > Security Policy setting for ‘Security Question Required’.  Now where a mobile timesheet user is logging in, they will be asked to set a Security Question where this maintenance item is ticked.  For more details see Mobile Timesheets – Security Policy.

Pay Module

Please be aware of the following prior to upgrading to v11.37:

• For Payroll AU, new settings have been added to deduction headers with a deduction type of Child Support to allow optional default rate settings and mandatory net protection settings to be defined at the deduction header level. Because of this, the following will occur automatically on upgrade to v11.37 if there are Payee records with Child Support deductions that are valid on the date of the upgrade:

  • Each existing deduction header with a deduction type of Child Support will be copied and a new deduction header of the same type will be added. The suffix (Pre <date>) will be added to the name of each existing child support deduction header, where <date> will be the upgrade date, and the existing deduction headers will be made inactive.

  • Any existing payee deduction that was linked to an existing child support deduction header will be end-dated to the last used date of the respective Payee record.

  • A new payee deduction will be created for each payee deduction that was end-dated and each new deduction will be linked to the new child support deduction header. The validity start date of each new payee deduction will be set to the day after the last used date of the respective Payee record.

• For Payroll AU, because of the addition of the optional default rate and mandatory net protection settings on child support deduction headers, a deduction header with a deduction type of Child Support can no longer be linked to payee deductions that are configured as a rolling deduction. Instead, a new deduction type of Child Support - Rolling is available on deduction headers to cater for rolling child support deductions, such as those required under a Section 72 A Notice in Australia. Because of this, the following will occur automatically on upgrade to v11.37 if there are Payee records with rolling Child Support deductions that are valid on the date of the upgrade:

  • Each existing deduction header with a deduction type of Child Support that is linked to a rolling payee deduction will be copied and a new deduction header with a deduction type of Child Support – Rolling will be added. The suffix (Pre <date>) will be added to the name of each existing child support deduction header, where <date> will be the upgrade date, and the existing deduction headers will be made inactive.

  • Any existing, rolling payee deduction that was linked to an existing child support deduction header will be end-dated to the last used date of the respective Payee record.

  • A new payee deduction will be created for each payee deduction that was end-dated and each new deduction will be linked to the new rolling child support deduction header. The validity start date of each new payee deduction will be set to the day after the last used date of the respective Payee record.

• A new pay batch stage called Banked Leave Accrual has been added to the pay batch process to support accrual of banked leave, such as Rostered Days Off, this new stage and precedes the existing Leave Accruals pay batch stage. For more information, see Banked Leave Accrual Pay Batch Stage.

• For Payroll AU, an enhancement has been made in this release to allow superannuation to be transferred outside of the bay batch process and therefore the ability to transfer superannuation balances at the Wage Costs pay batch stage has been removed. This applies to Payroll AU only. For more information, see Transferring Superannuation Outside of the Pay Batch Process. Note that this change may also affect Finance Integration. For more information see Important Notices and Breaking Changes – Finance Integration.

• The concept of document format groups has been introduced to allow the document formats for all pay related documents, such as payslips, to be grouped and assigned to a payee. Because of this, a new field labelled Payslip Format Group has replaced the Payslip Format field on the Payee Entry screen and the new field defaults to the payslip format group that includes the payslip format that was assigned to the payee prior to upgrading to v11.37. For more information, see Document Format Groups and Payee Payslip Format Enhancements.

 Billing

• Debtor Invoice Format Group Enhancement - In this release, the concept of a document format group has been introduced to allow billing and pay related documents to be grouped and maintained in a centralised location within the system.  As a result, the Agency Portal > Billing > Maintenance > Invoice Format Groups maintenance area has been removed as you will now be maintaining these format groups in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Portal Maintenance > Document Format Groups. 

  On upgrade, one bill document format group will be automatically created in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Portal Maintenance > Document Format Groups based on each active invoice format group that existed prior to the upgrade. Where a set of debtor invoice details were previously linked to an invoice format group that existed in Agency Portal > Billing > Maintenance > Invoice Format Groups, the invoice details will automatically be linked to the corresponding document format group in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Portal Maintenance > Document Format Groups.  For more details see Debtor Invoice Format Group Enhancement and Document Format Groups.

• A change has been made to allow manual/ad-hoc invoices to be raised without linking invoice items to a job order (for more information, see Manual Invoicing Without Job Orders). This will affect custom Finance Integration implementations that have been designed to build a GL string based on the Office/Staff/Skillgroup/Position of a job order. For more information, see Important Notices and Breaking Changes – Finance Integration.

Portal Maintenance

• The concept of Document Format Groups is introduced in this release and this changes how payslip and invoice formats are assigned to payees and debtors. For more information, see Document Format Groups.

• New payslip formats created for Australia in v11.37 onwards will, by default, include a new Contribution Type field that will split superannuation accruals by contribution type (i.e. superannuation guarantee, employer additional, salary sacrifice etc.). By default, where this new field is used on a payslip format, the Contribution Type field, Amount MTD (new in v11.37) field, Amount Contribution Period TD field and the Amount YTD fields will be blank for any historic superannuation transactions that occurred prior to upgrading to v11.37. However, FastTrack can run an automated script on your system to align historic superannuation accruals with the new split of accruals by contribution type if necessary, which will allow these fields to be populated on a payslip for historic accrual transactions. If you require this, please contact FastTrack Client Services.

Reports

Database Schema Changes (11.37)

Changes have been made to some database elements to support this release.  It is important to check any custom reports prior to upgrade to see if there has been any impact, so you can refactor if required.  Some custom reports may not work after the upgrade unless they are refactored to cater for database schema changes. To assist with validation, click here to see a list of database schema changes.

It is recommended that you run any business critical custom reports prior to upgrading in case you require time after upgrading to refactor your custom reports. 

Custom Report Variable Defaults

Prior to the 11.37 release, where custom reports have variables / filters available for the user to further refine results, these items automatically defaulted to 'All', so the report would run where no additional criterion is added. 

From 11.37 on, the filters automatically default to NULL so a value must be selected  for the report to run.

Click here for more details on how to refactor a report to assign default values.

Finance Integration

Changes have been made in the FastTrack360 solution in the 11.37 release that could impact custom Finance Integration. This ONLY impacts Custom Finance Integration if you use the following features;

Manual/Ad-hoc Invoices

• A change has been made to the base product when raising a Manual/Ad-hoc Invoice where it’s no longer mandatory to supply or link an invoice item to a job order.

• If you build your GL string based on the Office/Staff/Skillgroup/Position of the job order linked to the invoice item, this will no longer function if you choose to create an invoice without a job order.

• If you are impacted by this change, and wish to use this feature, please contact your Account Manager to organise a quote for this change.  Please do not use this feature where you are impacted without organising the change as FastTrack will be limited in our ability to quickly turn around these changes.
  For more information, see Manual Invoicing Without Job Orders.

Super Transfer Outside of Pay Batch

Superannuation is accrued during the pay batch process where the fund defines the Natural Account the wage cost will be posted to in your General Ledger.  In 11.37 we have moved the transfer process outside of the pay batch to simplify this process.  Superannuation transfers will not be picked up by the Finance Integration.  As wage data, including superannuation accruals, are only exported where linked to a pay batch.

This will only be an issue where you have different Natural Accounts defined per Superannuation fund as the original Superannuation Accrual will be posted to your General Ledger, but the future transfers will not.  We feel whilst this configuration is possible in the solution, it is not likely as most agencies deal with tens to hundreds of Superannuation Funds and mapping each fund to its own Natural Account is not manageable. FastTrack have therefore decided that we will not be changing the Generic Finance Integration to provide support for this feature.

If you feel you will be impacted please contact your Account Manager for further discussion.

For more information, see Transfer of Superannuation Outside of Pay Batch.