What We're Working On | HCM UK | 29 Oct 2026

Holiday Record Keeping Audit Output (ERA 2025 - Section 35)

🔵 In development | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: HR - Holiday

What it is: A new, read-only Holiday Record Audit Output that lets you produce a full holiday record for an employee on request. It sits within each employee's record and shows one employee at a time. It is not a portal-wide report run across multiple employees at once. From the employee's record, you select a holiday year and switch between two views:

• Entitlement & Accrual: how holiday entitlement was calculated, accrued, carried over and closed at year end, with a Year End Summary or a Detailed (Weekly) view.
• Leave & Pay: each leave instance, the pay calculation method applied, and the amount paid.

Every view can be exported to Excel, PDF and CSV, and the holiday year filter looks back seven years, so the full six-year retention period is always covered. This supports your record keeping duty under Section 35 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 and gives you a clear audit trail for Fair Work Agency or tribunal requests. Records are available from April 2026 onwards, and pay figures in Leave & Pay need the payroll module to be in use.

What we've completed:

• Built the new Holiday Record Audit Output page, with employee search, a seven-year holiday year lookback, and a stream toggle.
• Added a permission to control who can access the page.
• Made carry-over reason codes mandatory and updated them to the current approved list.
• Created a data table that stores entitlement and accrual snapshots, so historical years can be evidenced.

Still to do:

• Finish the Stream 1 Year End Summary and Detailed (weekly) View.
• Finish the Stream 1 entitlement and accrual breakdown popup.
• Build the Stream 2 pay calculation breakdown popup.
• Add indicators showing known data limitations.
• Add Excel and CSV export for audit and tribunal requests.

More info:Employment Rights Act 2025, Section 35

Payrolling Benefits in Kind: Van & Van Fuel

🔵 In development | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: Payroll - BIK

What it is: Van and Van Fuel benefits in the BIK Module will be calculated for you, based on who had the van and when, instead of values being entered manually. You record which employees a van is assigned to, either with date-based assignments or a percentage split, and the system calculates each employee's Cash Equivalent day by day. This covers:

• Exclusive and shared use: a van used by one employee, or shared between several, including assignments that start or end partway through the tax year.
• Unavailability: periods when the van could not be used, such as repairs. In line with HMRC rules, only continuous periods of 30 days or more reduce the van and fuel charge.
• Van Fuel: recorded separately from the van, with its own start and withdrawal dates. If fuel is withdrawn and then provided again in the same tax year, the charge is not reduced, in line with HMRC rules.
• Electric vans: can be recorded and assigned as normal, but are nil-rated for Van Benefit and cannot have a Van Fuel benefit, as electricity is not treated as fuel.

Each van's assignments and calculations are kept separate, so a company with several vans keeps each one's data independent. Each employee's Van benefit will show on their Employee Benefits screen as a calculated, read-only record with a full calculation breakdown.

What we've completed:

• Van vehicle records can be created manually and by import, with only van-relevant fields required.

In progress:

• Assigning vans to employees and creating the Van benefit.
• The day-by-day calculation, covering shared vans, partial-year assignments and gaps between assignments.
• Recording periods when a van is unavailable.
• Van Fuel calculation.

Still to do:

• Percentage split as an alternative to date-based assignments.
• Recording a benefit stop date for payroll purposes.
• Final testing of calculated values feeding into payroll.

More info:HMRC: Expenses and benefits, company vans

Payrolling Benefits in Kind: Salary Sacrifice for Van & Van Fuel and Private Medical Insurance

⚪ On the horizon | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: Payroll - BIK

What it is: Two new salary sacrifice benefit types in the BIK Module, following the same approach as the existing Car Salary Sacrifice benefit:

• Company Van and Van Fuel (Salary Sacrifice): uses the standard Van & Van Fuel calculation above. Unlike cars, no van receives an OpRA exemption, including electric vans. Shared vans are split equally between the employees sharing them.
• Private Medical Insurance (Salary Sacrifice): uses the same fields as the existing Private Medical benefit (Benefit Value, Employee Contribution, Start and End Date), plus the amount of salary given up.

For both, you record the amount of salary the employee gives up, and the taxable value is the higher of the standard benefit value and that amount, in line with OpRA (Optional Remuneration Arrangements) rules. The salary sacrifice deduction can also be generated in payroll automatically, if you choose to set it up for that benefit. In-product guidance explains how the taxable value has been worked out.

Progress: Development is due to begin shortly. The van salary sacrifice calculation builds on the Van & Van Fuel feature above.

More info:HMRC: Salary sacrifice and the effects on PAYE

Employment Rights Act 2025: Preparation

🔵 In development | Target: Ahead of the legislation (2027) | Area: HR, Rota & Scheduling

What it is: The Employment Rights Act 2025 gives workers three new rights that affect how you schedule and employ your teams: guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts, and compensation when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice. All three are expected to come into force during 2027, but much of the detail, such as thresholds, notice periods and compensation amounts, is still waiting to be set in regulations.

We are not waiting for those details to start. There is nothing you need to do right now; we are sharing this so you know the groundwork is already under way and your platform will be ready when the rules are confirmed. Our approach is built on three principles:

• One set of rules, wherever you schedule: the same rules are applied in the same way across your Fourth products, producing the same evidence.
• Your evidence starts building before the deadline: shift compensation is worked out by looking back at what was published and what changed afterwards, so we are putting that record in place early. You will have history behind you on day one, rather than starting from nothing.
• Ready for whatever the final rules say: notice periods, rates and reference periods are held as settings we can update, not fixed into the product, so we can bring your platform up to date as the regulations are confirmed, and if they change later.

What we're working on now:

• Making sure employee and employment details are available for the new rules for every customer, not only those using our scheduling products.
• Recording every published shift, and every change made to it afterwards, including shifts approved in Rota, so your compliance history starts building ahead of the legislation.
• A central place for us to hold the legislative values for each right, ready to be filled in and updated as soon as the regulations confirm them.
• New Guaranteed Hours screens for managers, to review and action guaranteed hours offers, see past offers, view a full audit of every assessment, and set the contract hour increments your business actually uses.

Still to come: the compensation and guaranteed hours calculations, once the regulations set the values, and the move from My Rotas to My Schedules, so employees can see their full schedule and be notified when it changes.

More info:Employment Rights Act 2025: Our Approach

Employment Rights Act 2025: Average vs Contracted Hours Report

🔵 In development | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: HR - Reports

What it is: A new, read-only report in the HR Module that gives you early visibility of the hours your employees actually work compared with their contracted hours. It is designed to help you prepare ahead of the Guaranteed Hours right coming into force, without waiting for the full Employment Rights Act functionality.

You choose a reference period and can filter by location, employment type, employee number, or employees contracted below a set number of hours. For each employee, the report shows the weeks included, total hours, contracted hours per week, average hours per week, and the difference between the two, as hours and as a percentage. Results are sorted by the biggest difference first, any column can be sorted, and the report can be exported to CSV, Excel or PDF.

Good to know: this is an early insight report, not a guaranteed hours assessment. It does not decide who qualifies for an offer, as the qualifying rules are still to be set in regulations. It counts full, completed weeks from Rota and Scheduling only, does not include absences such as sickness or holiday, and does not include employees who are not in Rota or Scheduling.

What we've completed:

• The new report menu option and access permission.

In progress:

• Report filters.

Still to do:

• The average versus contracted hours calculation.
• The report results, sorting and export.

Employee Probation Export

⚪ On the horizon | Target: Not yet scheduled | Area: HR - Reports

What it is: A new standard export under HR Module > Reports > Exports, giving managers and HR teams a single view of probation information for the employees they can access. You told us there was little opportunity to report on probation in enough detail to manage reviews, and that reviews were being missed or completed late as a result. This export is designed to fix that.

For each employee, the export shows their employee number, name, location, division, job title, employment start date, whether they are a current or former employee, probation length, probation end date, probation status (Complete or Incomplete), days remaining and line manager. You can filter by location, division or employee number, and:

• Approaching probation end: show Incomplete probations ending within a chosen number of days, along with any that are already overdue, so reviews are not missed.
• Exclude terminated employees: remove leavers, or keep them in to see when someone on your review list has left and no action is needed.

Showing the line manager makes it clear who needs to complete each review, and removes the need for manual spreadsheets or cross-referencing other reports.

Progress: Scoped and ready to be scheduled for development.