#pegasusopera3

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Statutory Adoption Pay will be paid at 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks

Where the adoption pay period (APP) starts before 5 April 2015, SAP is paid for the entire 39 weeks at either the standard weekly rate or 90% of average weekly earnings if that’s less. From 5 April 2015 the first 6 weeks will always be paid at 90% of the average weekly earnings. The new entitlement mirrors the current arrangements for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP). For the remaining 33 weeks the SAP rate will be calculated as before. SAP will also apply to surrogacies for the first time.

Read more: Technical Changes in Pegasus Opera 3

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View or Disable the Event Log in Pegasus Opera 3

By default, Pegasus Opera 3 automatically maintains a log file that records when users log on and off the systems. Each entry in the log includes the date and time of logging on or off, the terminal name and user ID. You can view the contents of this log file using the View Event Log command. You can disable this facility by clearing the User Event and User Logs option on the System Preferences form.

When running this Event Log command in Pegasus Opera 3 it will ask you to fill in some parameters. For example the dates, this will let you extract activities from a range. This is very useful as you will not need to go through a all activities if you know more or less what log you are looking for.

If you have more than one company and many users this is certainly not a problem as Pegasus Opera 3 will let you choose your preferred criteria to search entries for. This means you can choose which company and which user/s in that company you would like history for.

Note: Depending on the amount of activity associated with the system, this log can become quite large and may require clearing once in a while. If you select the Clear Event Log option on the Reorganise System Files dialog box, this log file is cleared of all entries.

For help on how to view the Event Log and a detailed step by step guide, look at our Tips & Tricks article now.

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Change your Background and default webpage in Pegasus Opera 3

There are many features in Pegasus opera 3 that make your life much easier. One of the many is being able to change your default background and webpage. This is a preference and can be changed to whichever website at your request.

This preference will allow you to view any webpage and set it as the background of Pegasus Opera 3. This webpage will only appear when you launch Opera and can be closed at any time. You can have anything from Google, to the Intsys UK Ltd Website (www.intsysuk.com).

If the ‘Use Opera 3 Info Centre’ box is ticked, this box defaults to the address of the Opera 3 Info Centre portal, however as previously stated you may change this to whatever you want. Alternatively you may also remove the default webpage completely and not have one set. Once this has been set up, you will be able to navigate that webpage within Pegasus Opera 3 which at times can come in very handy.

For help on how to Change your Background and default webpage in Pegasus Opera 3 and a detailed step by step guide, look at our Tips & Tricks article now.

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How to enable Student Loans in Pegasus Opera 3

In Pegasus Opera 3 you can set up Payments & Deductions once and make it run for each pay period for an employee if that be weekly or monthly. This will save you time rather than manually adding each payment and deduction every pay period.

Once you create an employee you can use the Pay & Deductions command located, under action in Payroll>Processing. The command lets you set temporary and permanent value Payments. An example of a temporary value will be a ‘bonus’; you manually add this in and will run in the calculation for that pay period, however discarded for the next one. Permanent Values are payments such as a salary, the only time you will have to change this is when that particular employee gets a pay rise.

You can also do the exact same thing for Deductions. Many people go into work straight after university and have a student loan that they owe. Once the company is informed either by yourself or the HMRC a deduction will be set up to come out of your salary each pay period and will show under deductions on your payslip.

Once you have created the Deduction profile you can then enable the student loans to show up as a deduction on an employee’s payslip. To find out more about how to enable this Pegasus Opera 3 please read our Tips & Tricks article.

Please note: Employee pay records are not updated with the payments and deductions you define until you use the Calculation command.

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Additional Statutory Paternity Pay will be replaced by Shared Parental Pay For parents of babies due on or after 5 April 2015 Additional Statutory Paternity Pay ASPP will be replaced with Shared Parental Pay (ShPP). ShPP allows eligible partners to share parental leave.

For babies due before 5 April 2015, ASPP will still be applicable. So both ASPP and ShPP could be in operation for a time during the 2015/16 tax year. The rules for adoptions are similar to new births.

These are the main points about the introduction of ShPP: • There is still a maximum of 52 weeks statutory maternity leave and up to 39 weeks statutory maternity pay. The mother must take at least two weeks maternity leave. • Parents can agree to convert a period of maternity leave into shared parental leave. The available shared parental leave is 52 weeks less the weeks’ maternity leave already taken. • The available shared parental pay is 39 weeks less the weeks’ maternity pay already paid. • At least a week must be taken at a time and all leave must be taken before the child’s first birthday. • Parents can choose to be on leave at the same time. • The same rules apply for multiple births. • Ordinary Paternity Leave (OPL) is not affected. Fathers can still take up to two weeks OPL and then take ShPP if required.

Check our step by step guide to see how to set up ShPP payments in Pegasus Opera 3

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Pegasus Opera 3 (2.14): find out what's coming soon

They have also added 'Your Pensions' to Payroll Self Service, a new feature offering employees visibility of their pension-related information. Plus, look out for CRM enhancements, such as further integration with Notification Services and an additional 5 new reports that can be exported to Excel.

Technological shift: server-side processing

This release will see the start of a technological shift from client-side to server-side processing, with the enhanced Scheduler Service. This uplift in technology will enable the transition of other Opera 3 processes moving forward, to provide improved processing, concurrency and performance, significantly refining usability. In the first instance, server-side processing will enable the Debt Management facility to mail merge and generate PDFs, and either print or e-mail debt correspondence via an SMTP server. The benefit is greater efficiency as users can continue working whilst the server handles processing of the tasks in the background.

Debt Management: get paid faster

To help customers with late payments, a new Debt Management facility will be added to the Credit Management Centre for designing, generating and sending correspondence to debtors. It's flexible, so users can specify and design up to 9 levels of debt letters per company, or per individual customer if letters are customised. Plus, they can create up to 9 e-mail covers for each level of company correspondence, or use one e-mail cover for all levels of correspondence. A new Design Editor provides intuitive formatting tools to tailor each level of correspondence. It includes mail merge fields, text fonts, sizes and colours, tables, bullet points and images. Correspondence can be generated and sent in bulk or to individual customers; it can be sent via e-mail, or printed for customers that require a hard copy. Debt Management is available as standard to Opera 3 customers with the Credit Management Centre application on a current AMC.

Scheduler Service (2.00)

A new Scheduler Service (2.00) provides server-side processing for both printed and e-mailed Debt Correspondence. For printed correspondence, the Scheduler Service will create the mail-merged PDF files and print. For e-mailed correspondence, the Scheduler Service will generate and e-mail the mail-merged PDF files. All generated debt correspondence is automatically recorded against the relevant customer with a Sales Ledger Note and Credit Management Diary Action. A new History form provides a view of previously successful correspondence, with the ability to drill down to the underlying PDF. A Summary report will also be available to provide an audit trail of generated correspondence.

Pegasus Web Xchange and Payroll Self Service (1.14)

Employee Pensions for better visibility

To give employees better visibility of their personal information, an additional menu option “Your Pensions” will be added to Payroll Self Service. This will allow users to view their pension information including details of their current pension provider, a summary of their current pension scheme, their current contributions and their auto enrolment status. Plus, they'll be able to drill down to a detailed breakdown of their overall pension contributions and filter by pension scheme and/or year. In addition, users will be able to view a breakdown of the Opera 3 Payroll deductions that relate to pension payments.

Payroll Self Service Validator

The enhanced Payroll Self Service Validator will validate new pension information to be extracted to Pegasus Web Xchange. In addition, an uplift to the interface will make it more intuitive and user-friendly.

CRM enhancements

The next release includes a number of enhancements to CRM for improved communication and efficiency and better reporting. Further Notification Services integration: improved communication and efficiency Activities and Sales Opportunities will be integrated with Notification Services. Notifications can be sent to users when an activity is created, modified, cleared, deleted, or as a reminder when it is about to become due. This will affect Activities created in the following areas: • The Activity Tab available in: Company Processing, Contacts Processing (including Group Processing), My Company, My Record, Sales Opportunities Processing, Project Processing, Stock Processing, Service Contracts Processing, Equipment Register Processing and Helpdesk Management Processing • Resource Scheduler and Summary Scheduler • Daily Calendar, Group Calendar and SPM Today Notifications could also be sent to users whenever a Sales Opportunity is created or amended, and as a reminder when an Opportunity has reached the ‘Next Chase Date’. This will affect Sales Opportunities created in the following areas: • Sales Opportunity Processing • The Opportunities Tab available in: Company Processing, Contacts Processing, Referral Methods, My Company and My Record More reports can be exported to Excel, for information sharing and further analysis 5 more reports will be available to export to Excel: • Sales Pipeline Management: Sales Pipeline Report, Telephone List and Activity List • Helpdesk Management: In-Tray and SLA Monitor

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Debt Management: get paid faster in Pegasus Opera 3 new release 2.14

To help combat late payments, a new Debt Management feature will be added to the Credit Management Centre for designing, generating and sending correspondence to debtors.

A new Design Editor provides intuitive formatting tools to tailor each level of correspondence. It includes mail merge fields, text fonts, sizes and colours, tables, bullet points and images.

Correspondence can be generated and sent in bulk or to individual customers; it can be sent via e-mail, or printed for customers that require a hard copy. Debt Management will be available as standard to Opera 3 customers with the Credit Management Centre application on a current AMC.

[intsysukltd]

Overtime now included in Holiday Pay

On the 4th November the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) passed the ruling to include overtime hours alongside basic when calculating holiday pay.

For companies where the staff are required to do overtime regularly as part of their job, it could have major implications. When assessing the worker’s actual earnings, it may be that they vary depending on the amount of work done for that week or month. In this case their holiday pay is now calculated based on the average earnings over a 12-week period.

When assessing the capabilities of the payroll software, many systems may not have the automatic features present to deal with the new ruling.

Luckily for Pegasus Opera 3/II Payroll users, there is already the capability within the software to deal with this new ruling automatically, with little or no change to the software itself.