April Showers bring May Flowers … or in this case UKG Ready Feature Enhancements

Working on a computer

The April release is quickly on its way. And there are so many exciting feature enhancements to look forward to. Luckily for you, Brad Nycz, UKG Ready® Executive Relationship Director and former customer has chosen a handful of enhancements that will make your solution bloom this season.

Deleting Checklist Assignments 

We know that System Admins everywhere will be rejoicing with the introduction of this enhancement. As a sys admin, you’ll have the option to delete all incomplete items when deleting a checklist. This includes incomplete HR Actions, Custom Forms, or Government Forms. So, when an employee gets promoted, moves positions within your organization, or is assigned the wrong checklist accidentally, you can easily delete any incomplete checklist to-do’s and establish a better user experience for your employees. By allowing admins to remove all incomplete items, this enhancement also helps to ensure that your organization’s data is clean and up to date.

Where to find it: Suite Experience Release Notes
Who will use it: HR/Admins

Week View for Basic Scheduling 
 

With many customers leveraging basic scheduling in UKG Ready, our team knew it was time for a refresh. As a Scheduling manager, you’ll be happy to learn that a new week view option has been added to basic scheduling. This new view is simpler, cleaner, and more efficient. You can color code shifts and have single or mass action options available in this view. This new view will make it easier for you to look at your weekly schedule, identify where you may have any gaps, and ensure all shifts are properly staffed.

Where to find it: Scheduling Release Notes
Who will use it: Operations    

 

Accruals Donation Bank 


The Accruals donation bank is a new feature users have been looking forward to, and we’re happy to introduce it in this release. Employees will be able to donate their accrued time off to a company-wide donation bank. Others who may not have enough time accrued will be able to take time from this donation bank and use it to cover their time off requests. Now, your employees will have more flexibility with their PTO if needed. And this is only the beginning! Our upcoming releases will soon feature direct Peer to Peer donations.

Where to find it: Release Notes
Who will use it: Managers  

  

Timesheet Auto Populate Rules 
 

We’ve made some key updates to the Timesheet auto-populate rules this release that came from the customer Ideas page on the UKG® Kronos Community. In this release, you’ll see two new rules have been added.

The first focuses on contracted hours. The new rule will now allow for contracted hours to auto-populate on the Timesheet. This is especially useful for admins to see where some of your employees may be working less than their contracted hours and fill in those gaps.

The second auto-populate update ties to the Regular Holiday Rule. We’ve added a second level of date selection in the waiting period based on an employee’s rehire date. If your organization uses the auto-populate functionality and you’ve rehired an employee, Holiday hours are used to auto-populate based on the original hire date. Now, they can first look to see if there is a rehire date before populating based on your employees’ original hire date.  

Where to find it: TLM Release Notes
Who will use it: Ops and Admins      
 


Incidents Enhancements 
 

It’s no secret we’ve been updating our Incidents functionality throughout the past couple of releases, and April is no different. Like the Timesheet auto-populate rules, our two Incident enhancements in this release come from the customer Ideas page on the UKG Kronos Community.

The first enhancement is around print PDF settings. Admins and managers can now decide what employee information is on a printed-out Incident. You can choose whether or not the employee’s Full Name, Address, Employee ID, photo, etc., is shown on the printout. For those of you who may use Incidents to celebrate employee accomplishments, there may be no reason to include their address or employee ID on the printout, so removing those features can align better with your organization’s use.

Our next Incident enhancement is to the Incidents Workflow functionality. We’ve added a step that will automatically close out Incidents once they are marked as approved. This helps to reduce steps and To Do items since you’ll no longer have to approve the Incident and then go in and close it out. It can all be done at once in one quick and easy step.

Where to find it: HR Release Notes
Who will use it: Admins, Managers, and Employees  

 

Payroll Validations
 

Several amazing Payroll validations are coming to your solution with the April release, but I want to call out one in particular – Validation that Payroll Funding Bank Account is Active. As a payroll admin, you may have encountered issues around failing payroll finalization because the bank account used in payroll funding would be marked as inactive. We know that payroll is a stressful time, and we want to ensure your payroll process runs smoothly. This payroll validation ensures that the bank account used for funding is active. So, say you accidentally marked the account used to fund direct deposit as inactive. Instead of the account becoming inactive and causing issues when it comes time to process payroll, you would receive an error message detailing why the account cannot be switched to inactive.


Where to find it: Payroll Release Notes
Who will use it: Payroll Admins

---------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s important to keep in mind that this is just a quick snapshot of six enhancements coming in the April release. For a full overview of everything being delivered in April, make sure to check out the April Release notes.

Appendix
  • For 24/7 access to release notes and user guides, log in to your account and go to My Info > Help > Online Documentation within the UKG Ready solution. 
  • Bookmark the Release Readiness page in UKG Kronos Community for everything you need to learn about what’s new and what’s next.
  • Visit the Announcements group in UKG Kronos Community to stay up to date on published release notes and future release dates.
  • Alert groups provide you with important notifications on critical system updates. Not sure which alert group to join? Click here.
  • To share ideas about new UKG Ready features or enhancements and to vote on fellow users’ ideas, log in to UKG Kronos Community and visit the IDEAS section.
  • Review our technical highlights for easy reference to key release notes.