Category: Product Blog

As we enter 2022, we are taking some time to round up the top features released throughout 2021.

To ensure that our users have the best tools on the market to manage their payroll, attendance, and HR functions, our team regularly releases updates for Indigo. Besides giving the Indigo Suite a refreshed look, there have been numerous feature add-ons to our Payroll, Leave and Attendance modules.Here’s a look at what our team got up to last year.

Migrate to Indigo any time with our stress-free migration tool

You can now switch to Indigo as your payroll provider any time of the year, and your company’s employee data and year-to-date payroll data will be ready on Indigo from day one. This allows you to pick up where you left off, so there will be no need to recalculate any payrolls already completed for the year.

Regardless of whether you are using another local payroll tool or Excel sheets, our team will be able to get you up and running in no time. You can rest assured that, as per our ISO certified procedures, all your data will be handled with the utmost security and confidentiality.

Indigo Leave, simplified and enhanced

The first half of 2021 saw a number of enhancements and new functionality to Indigo Leave. These included enhancements to the leave approval window, including viewing and sorting options for pending leave requests, and a pop-up with details of who submitted the request and when it was made.

We have also simplified the process for carrying out slight modifications to leave requests. Instead of having to cancel the request and re-enter all the details, you can now cancel the original request and resubmit a new one with the new resubmit function in Indigo Leave – saving you the time and headache of going through the approval process again.

Increased flexibility for rewards and penalties

Indigo Attendance has supported the assignment of rewards and penalties to shift presets for a while now, but you can now also manually allocate custom rewards and penalties for individual shifts. This means you can appropriately compensate or deduct pay or time for an individual shift that an employee has worked.

What’s more, absence, late arrival, and early departure penalties can now be configured by two different methods: slicing and range.

New Clocking and Scheduler widgets

Portal users can now view their schedule and clocking data, as well as clock in and out of shifts directly from the portal instead of a device, thanks to the new addition of the Scheduler and Clocking widgets. As with all other punching data available on Indigo, the data from the Clocking widget is available in our various punch-related reports.

Added functionality for shift planning

You can now import schedule records via Excel spreadsheets directly into the system. The Import scheduler records function allows you to allocate schedule records, such as pre-approved overtime or exceptional shifts, by bulk.

We have made the Scheduler even more helpful at a glance by clearly labelling overtime shifts, and adding icons within individual cells for clocking data, remarks, and warnings. Simply hover over these icons to view the information. Moreover, our Shift Patterns feature has been enhanced to support patterns that are up to 600 days long.

Identify overlapping clockings easily

The Overlapping Clockings tag for Indigo Attendance will be assigned in cases where employee punches overlap each other, such as when clock-in times are duplicated. This allows you to identify such exceptions with ease and ensures any adjustments are done accordingly.

Added peace of mind thanks to new emergency contacts

If anything happens to an employee, you can now get in touch with their loved ones without having to hunt around for their details. Just check the Emergency Contact Details section in the Employee Profile to find their name, number, and relationship to your employee – and because we know how busy people can be, we have included a primary and a secondary contact.

Simplifying your reporting with new options

When it comes to Indigo Leave, we have introduced two new reports, which will allow you to get a better view on the leave accruals entitlements and balance:

In Indigo Attendance we introduced several new reporting options to help you and your team oversee your staffing and operations:

Easily integrate with third party applications with Indigo’s extended API library

We are continuously working on improving and expanding the Indigo API library. Over the last year we included the following APIs:

If you’re interested in leveraging Indigo’s APIs, have your development team visit our developer’s portal and our developer’s help centre.

Refined performance

Our team routinely releases optimisations for Indigo to ensure that the performance of the platform is maintained. Some of these optimisations released over the past 12 months include:

Continuous security checks

We continue to enhance the overall security of the Indigo platform. Security fixes are regularly rolled out to ensure that your data is kept safe from attackers.

The Shireburn team has been working on a new setting in Indigo Attendance to give employers an improved level of control over how rewards and penalties are applied to employees’ salaries. With this new feature, employers can delegate specific users to review entries, reducing the room for human error or tampering, whilst contributing to both employers’ and employees’ peace of mind concerning fair allocation of rewards and penalties.

What’s new?

The new feature gives users the option to set a Reward or Penalty to require approval. This means that when attendance exceptions are generated with a Reward or a Penalty requiring approval, these entries must be approved by a user who has approval rights. Attendance exceptions can be easily approved or declined by using the newly implemented buttons, which appear with all options available to approving users.

Can every user approve attendance exceptions?

Admin users have this right automatically assigned. In order for other users to be able to approve attendance exceptions, this permission must be manually assigned by an admin.

What happens if I skip one exception?

When the user clicks Send to Payroll, Indigo performs automated checks on all attendance exceptions and flags any entries that have not been approved or resolved yet, alerting the user to the specific entries and action required.

Just over a year ago, Shireburn’s Indigo Attendance was named the best Cloud-Based Solution as a Service in the Malta eBusiness Awards 2020. Today, we’re pleased to share that Shireburn’s Indigo Attendance has been shortlisted for the WSA Shortlist 2021!

The World Summit Award is a United Nations Based Global award initiative selecting and promoting outstanding digital innovations with positive impact in society. Experts in more than 180 United Nations member states nominate local solutions demonstrating global diversity and richness in the smart use of ICTs. With international events and meetings, WSA serves as a knowledge hub and network for academia, social entrepreneurs, corporates, start-ups, international organisations and many others, with the aim to contribute to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.

What is Shireburn’s Indigo Attendance?

Indigo Attendance is a powerful cloud-based software solution that simplifies staff rostering, scheduling, labour cost management and attendance tracking. Our solution helps companies to better manage their operations. Indigo Attendance seamlessly integrates with Indigo Payroll, allowing all data to be synced at the click of a button.

How can Indigo Attendance help your business?

Indigo Attendance was first introduced to the market in January 2019, and has been continuously updated with new features ever since. Indigo Attendance provides a unified solution for time and attendance management. Our solution aims to help reduce manual work and eliminate the chances of human error, whilst providing management with the opportunity to take more data-driven decisions.

The benefits of adopting Indigo Attendance as a system is not only felt at a management level, but is also greatly felt at employee level. Through integrations with Shireburn’s other software solutions, employees are able to view their schedules wherever they are, or have all clocking data instantly calculated at the click of a button, drastically reducing the strain on human resources.

What does this award mean?

From over 65 countries and 290 nominations, there were 119 shortlisted social digital solutions; Shireburn’s Indigo Attendance being the only Maltese solution shortlisted! The WSA shortlist 2021 provides a unique global selection of how digital applications work towards solving local issues – globally!

Starting 2022 in line with the last Budget

When we said we’ve got your back, we meant it! As another year draws to an end and everyone gets ready for some seasonal festivities, Shireburn’s Indigo is on hand to make the transition to the new year run smoothly.

Here are the ways Indigo will help you comply with the measures announced in the Budget for 2022.

Part-time Tax Reduction from 15% to 10%

In the 2022 Budget, the government gave part-timers news of a tax reduction from 15 percent down to 10 percent. Indigo has been programmed to apply this new tax rate as of 1st January 2022, getting on with the extra work so you can get on with your payrolls without missing a beat.

We have also taken this opportunity to rename the part-time tax codes and update their descriptions to make selecting the correct tax rate easier for you.

Automatic switch to a value-driven Overtime Concession

Once again we’ve made sure Indigo will take care of your overtime taxation needs, thanks to the updated support file in the pay item taxation profiles. This now caters to the new value-based overtime concession and will kick in automatically on 1st January 2022 without you having to lift a finger. This means that Indigo will automatically apply the 15 percent tax rate for non-managerial employees with an annual basic salary up to €20,000 up to the first €10,000 worth of overtime worked.

To help you keep up to date throughout our system, we have included new fields for OT Concession Value in the Employees Previous Employment tab, in the sections for ‘Employee Previous Main Employment’ and ‘Employment Details To Date’, for ease of reference.

Updated SSC and maternity fund rates are standing by for 2022

Social security and maternity fund contributions have been adjusted, in line with advice from the Commissioner of Inland Revenue.

At the time of publication the rates in Indigo are correct, as we requested them from CfR; however we strongly recommend you confirm these rates with CfR before calculation of payrolls.

The Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) has also been raised to €1.75 per week, and you can apply this across the board or to selected employees using our helpful Global Basic Pay Adjustments Utility.

Now that we’ve set your Budget-2022 worries to rest, tuck in to a mince pie and raise a toast with us to the new year!