beqom PaySuite 29.3 - Feature release notes
This article details the latest improvements introduced in version 29.3 of the beqom PaySuite application, their benefits for our end-users, and their principles of use.
Compensation Management
Background preparation for large validation report exports
On very large compensation rounds, exporting the validation report could take so long that the download never arrived. We have rebuilt the export so the file is prepared in the background as soon as a validation run finishes. Administrators no longer need to keep the page open, and once the file is ready the download starts within seconds, even for rounds with more than 120,000 workers. Each report shows its current status, such as Preparing file, Ready to download (with the file size), or Expired, and a Retry action is offered when a run or a file preparation fails, keeping the report and its name. Every user who downloads a report receives a copy filtered to the workers their role and data access allow, and an expired file is rebuilt automatically on the next download. The exported files are also less than half their previous size, and password protection now uses stronger, standard Excel encryption. To keep exports fast at this scale, columns in the file use Excel's standard width rather than adjusting to their content.
List of generated reports
Read-only details for budgets, widgets, and validations in the Round Portal
Checking how a budget formula, a planner widget, or a validation rule was set up on a live round used to mean creating a pending draft just to open the configuration screens. That added draft revisions nobody needed, along with the risk of an accidental edit. Administrators can now inspect these settings directly from the round's Overview in Workbench > Compensation Management, for rounds that are Ready, In Progress, or Closed. Selecting a budget definition in the Budget tile opens its complete setup, including budget rules, aggregation, and recalculation settings, together with the widgets and validations built from it. Selecting a widget or a validation in the Team planner view tile opens a read-only panel with its full configuration, and widgets include a preview of the card. The panels reflect the published configuration and have no pending draft buttons, so a draft is still created from the tile headers as before.
Detailed budget setup view
Read-only Budget definition view
Read-only Widget details
Widget preview
Closed rounds removed from the Planner
Once a compensation round passed its end date and closed, it still appeared in the Planner round list and in a Closed counter, yet opening it led to an Access denied page. Closed rounds are now left out of the Planner > Compensation round list for every role, and the Closed counter card has been removed, so planners, managers, and HRBPs see only the rounds that are ready or in progress. Closed rounds remain fully available in Workbench > Compensation Management for auditing and historical review. Saved or emailed links to a closed round in the Planner now return Access denied consistently, whichever page of the round they point to.
Line managers in the Manager filter for Compensation Advisory and Auditor
Compensation Advisory and Auditor users could only choose Unassigned in the Manager filter, while HRBPs saw the full list of line managers. In Planner > Compensation, the Manager filter now lists the line managers of the workers shown in the grid for every View as role, so these users can narrow the grid by manager in the same way. The list follows the same access rules as the grid, which means every manager offered returns at least one worker. Unassigned is still available, and searching and ordering the filter options work as before.
Manager filter
New bonus multipliers for short-term incentive plans
Some bonus schemes depend on factors the standard bonus formula could not express, such as a strategic goal factor, a country factor, or a company performance factor. Until now, these had to be calculated outside the platform and loaded back in. Short-term incentive (STI) bonuses can now be scaled by up to three optional multipliers, set per bonus plan in the Bonus calculation equation step of the round setup in Workbench > Compensation Management > Compensation Rounds. The Per goal multiplier applies to each goal's achievement, Per situation to each situation's calculated bonus, and Per worker once to the worker's final bonus. Each multiplier uses the same formula editor as the target bonus, with conditional formulas available. Enabled multipliers appear in the bonus formulas shown in the Workbench, the Round Portal, and the Bonus tab of the worker drawer in the Planner, so every calculation can be traced, and a field used in a multiplier formula cannot be deleted while the formula relies on it. Multipliers are off by default, so existing rounds calculate exactly as before, and the target bonus itself is never multiplied.
Worker multiplier formula
Performance Management
Tag library and tag descriptions in review snapshots and PDFs
Tag libraries give each strategic priority a library description and a description for each tag, but until now these descriptions appeared only on the goal view page. A printed goal did not explain what each strategic priority meant, and the frozen goal snapshot in a review listed tag names alone. We have now carried the descriptions into the review's goal snapshot and into both the goal PDF and the review PDF, generated from Passport > Goals or Planner > Goals and from Passport > Reviews or Planner > Reviews.
In a review, expanding a frozen goal with Show details now shows a Goal tags block, where the goal's tags are grouped under the library they come from, with the library description and each tag's description shown in full, as illustrated in the following picture:
Goal tags block
Both PDFs include a matching Strategic priorities block in a print-friendly layout, with each description shown in full regardless of length. The goal PDF always reflects the current library and tag content. Once a review is frozen (after the Manager Reviewer submits, or when the review is Closed), its snapshot and its PDF keep the names and descriptions exactly as they were when the snapshot was taken, so later edits in Workbench do not change the record. Names and descriptions appear in the viewer's language, falling back to the System Default language, and the PDFs show only the goal data each user can already see in the application.
Return to the opened goal in reviews
Opening a goal from the Goals section of a review and then coming back used to return the review to the top of the page. Working through several goals meant scrolling back down each time to find the right place. The review now reopens scrolled to the goal that was opened, with the goals below it already in view, so reviewers can move straight on to the next one. This applies to Manager Reviewers, Self-Reviewers, Additional Reviewers, and Reassigned Managers, in reviews opened from Passport > Reviews or Planner > Reviews, whichever way they leave the View Goal page: Back, Save and exit, Cancel, or the browser's back action. When draft result values exist, Save and exit shows the existing publish popup first, and the review reopens at the goal once the popup has been dealt with.
Pay Transparency
Calculated fields in Pay Information document templates
Pay Information documents could draw only on standard snapshot fields, so showing workers the metrics an organization calculates for itself required manual workarounds. Calculated fields from the snapshot can now be used as variables in Pay Information document and statement templates, alongside standard fields. Their values follow the template's formatting rules for the field type, and each document uses the most recent calculated entry for the worker. Aggregations on calculated fields are not yet supported in templates.
Non-anonymized Pay Information documents for internal review
Anonymised Pay Information documents keep worker-facing responses compliant, but they also hide data that HRBPs need for internal review. HRBPs can now generate an internal, non-anonymised version of a Pay Information document alongside the anonymised one released to the worker. Users with the Configuration or Support role switch on the Allow non-anonymized letter generation option globally or per local rule in Workbench > Pay Transparency > Alerts and Anonymization, so the capability can be enabled or restricted by country. When it is on, the HRBP chooses whether to generate both versions or the anonymised one only. The two documents are labeled For worker release and Internal only, and a tabbed preview shows each version. Only the anonymised document is ever sent to the worker, and every generation that includes a non-anonymised document is recorded as its own audit entry type. Bulk document generation and response automation continue to produce the anonymised version only.
Anonymised and non-anonymised documents
Time shown for the Pay Analysis last sync
Pay Analysis showed only the date of the last data sync, which made it hard to tell how current the data was, particularly when another user had started a sync. The Last sync date now shows the time as well, in the timezone set in the user's preferences. The Syncing label and sync notifications also show when a sync started.
The Pay Analysis sync indicator
Data Foundation
Calculated fields: currency amounts, tenure formulas, and formula preview
In previous versions of Accelerate, calculated fields in the Data Foundation had several limitations. Numeric results did not carry a currency, tenure could not be calculated with a formula, and a formula could only be checked by publishing it and running a snapshot.
We have reworked calculated fields in Workbench > Data Management > Calculated Fields to address these limitations. A calculated field that returns a number can now be configured as a monetary amount with a currency. The currency can be a fixed currency from the tenant’s list, the currency of the worker’s contracted or paid compensation, or the reference currency provided by the process that runs the snapshot, such as a compensation round. The amount and its currency are then passed together to Compensation Management and Pay Transparency. The field’s details display its type as Number (Currency), along with the source of the currency.
Two new date functions make it possible to model tenure directly. CUTOFFDATE() returns the cut-off date of the snapshot, and DATEDIFF counts the complete years, months, weeks, or days between two dates. Together, they calculate time in a job or in the company from a hire date. Because the result is based on the snapshot cut-off date rather than the current date, it remains the same each time the snapshot is run. The date functions currently work with Data Foundation date fields and other date formulas.
A formula can also be previewed on real data before it is published. The preview calculates the field for up to 100 workers the user has access to, at a selected cut-off date, and displays each worker’s input values and result, along with any errors. The Referenced entities tab shows the data the field retrieves from custom entities and business matrices, limited to the first 100 records.
Published fields are also easier to review. Viewing a calculated field in any state now displays its full reference configuration, including referenced entities, fetched fields, and effective date settings, without the need to duplicate the field. The Formula field includes a character counter showing usage against the 2,000-character limit, so an oversized formula is identified before it is saved.
These changes make calculated fields easier to build, test, and verify, and reduce the need for trial snapshots when configuring tenure and monetary calculations.
New Data File & Transform for uploading source data files
Loading data through Data Load means first reshaping each file to match a predefined CSV template, which is hard for business users who receive data in different formats or from several source systems. With Data File & Transform, you can upload files as you receive them, in CSV, XLSX, or encrypted formats (PGP, GPG, and ASC), with up to 100 files of 20 MB each per submission. A preconfigured integration workflow then validates the data, transforms it into the PaySuite structure, and maps it to the standard Data Foundation entities before loading it into the platform.
Data File & Transform is a Data Foundation capability, so it isn’t limited to Compensation. It can load data for any product that uses Data Foundation, such as Performance, as long as an integration workflow is configured for that data.
The feature is used by the following roles:
HRBPs and Compensation Administrators upload and manage files in the Categories they’re assigned to.
Data Foundation Administrators and beqom Support configure Categories and manage submissions across all Categories.
Submissions are organized into Categories, for example one for France payroll data and one for USA payroll data. Each Category defines which users can submit and manage its files and which workflow processes them. Users assigned to the same Category can prepare a submission together and save it as a draft to finish later. They can follow its status through to Success or Failed, and download an error log if processing fails.
The feature is found under Workbench > Data Management > Data File & Transform. It’s part of the separately licensed DataBridge add-on and must be enabled for each customer. beqom Support sets up the Categories, user access, and integration workflows for each organization.