What We're Working On | HCM UK | 12 Nov 2026

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

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

Update since the 29 Oct 2026 edition: development is still in progress on the items listed under Still to do below. There are no new updates to report since the previous edition.

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

🟢 Approaching Release | 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, and the system calculates each employee's Cash Equivalent day by day, apportioning shared vans on a fair and reasonable basis in line with HMRC rules. Where you consider a different split to be fairer, you can manually adjust each employee's percentage share. 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 fewer mandatory fields than car records, making van records simpler to set up.
• Vans can be assigned to employees, including shared availability between several employees, creating the Van benefit.
• Van and Van Fuel benefits are calculated from those assignments, so each employee's share of the benefit is worked out automatically.

In progress:

• Final development on the apportionment calculation. The calculation is in place and working, and we are refining it so that shared vans are apportioned on a fair and reasonable basis, in line with HMRC rules.
• Manual percentage split override, so you can adjust each employee's share of the Van benefit where you consider a different method of apportionment to be fairer and more reasonable.
• Benefit stop date behaviour, so that stopping a benefit manually, or terminating an employee, correctly updates the Van benefit and its assignments.

Still to do:

• Final end-to-end testing of the full user journey, confirming that calculated values feed into Payroll and RTI as expected, ready for payrolling van benefits from April 2027.

More info:HMRC: Expenses and benefits, company vans

Payrolling Benefits in Kind: Salary Sacrifice for Van & Van Fuel

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

What it is: A new Company Van and Van Fuel (Salary Sacrifice) benefit type in the BIK Module, following the same approach as the existing Car Salary Sacrifice benefit. It 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.

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.

In progress:

• Updating the company benefit setup, so a separate Salary Sacrifice version of the Van benefit can be configured.
• Adding the ability to enter salary sacrifice amounts against an employee's Van benefit.
• The salary sacrifice calculation, comparing the standard BIK value with the salary sacrifice amount and using the higher value.

Still to do:

• Automatically generating the salary sacrifice deduction in payroll for the Van benefit.

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

Payrolling Benefits in Kind: Salary Sacrifice for Private Medical Insurance

✅ Released | Released: 12 Nov 2026 | Area: Payroll - BIK

Good news: this feature was developed, tested and released within the two weeks since our last edition, so it moved straight from On the horizon to Released without appearing as In development or Approaching Release in between. It is now live and available in your portal.

What it is: A new Private Medical (Salary Sacrifice) benefit type in the BIK Module, following the same approach as the existing Car Salary Sacrifice benefit. It 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, and supports the same three methods of providing private medical treatment or insurance.

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.

More info:Release Note | 12 Nov 2026 | BIK Module: Private Medical (Salary Sacrifice) user guide | 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

Update since the 29 Oct 2026 edition: nothing has changed for you or your users since the previous edition. Behind the scenes, we have made significant progress preparing for the legislation, and the latest position is set out below.

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've completed:

• A central place to hold the legislative values for each right. It is in place and can be configured, ready for the new Employment Rights Act functionality to use as soon as the regulations confirm the values.
• The navigation and basic pages for the new Guaranteed Hours screens for managers.

In progress:

• Bringing all the employee and employment details the new rules need into one place, for every customer, not only those using our scheduling products. This work is progressing well.
• 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.
• Preparing the move from My Rotas to My Schedules. This is backend work only at this stage, and there is nothing for you or your employees to do yet.
• Connecting the central legislative values to the new functionality, so it can pick up each value as soon as it is set.
• Building out the Guaranteed Hours screens, using test data, so we can check how managers will 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, ahead of the functionality going live in 2027.

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

Employment Rights Act 2025: Average vs Contracted Hours Report

🟢 Approaching Release | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: HR - Reports

Timing: this feature is on the line between In development and Approaching Release. We are marking this as approaching release, but due to the release freeze over the festive period, we currently expect this to release in January 2027. If this is to be released earlier than January 2027, this will be confirmed in the 26th November edition of this article, or the release note of the same date.

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.

Hours worked are taken from an employee's main employment and any multiple employments, and compared with their contracted hours. As the reference period for guaranteed hours has not yet been set in the legislation, you choose your own reference period of between 1 and 52 weeks. You also choose the date the report runs back from, either today or an earlier date, such as 4 weeks ago.

You can filter by location, employment type, employee number, or employees contracted below a set number of hours. For each employee, the report shows who they report to, 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, so you can see who is working over or under their contracted hours. 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 does not currently include absences such as sickness or holiday, and does not include employees who are not in Rota or Scheduling.

New since our last edition: the report no longer relies on full, completed weeks. It now looks at hours worked day by day across Rota and Scheduling, so your reference period can start and end on any day. If a rota or schedule is adjusted after hours have been finalised, re-running the report picks up the change, so the figures always reflect the latest hours worked, accurate to the day.

What we've completed:

• The new report menu option and access permission.
• The report filters, including the reference period and effective date.
• The report grid, comparing total hours worked across main and multiple employments with contracted hours, and showing the difference for each employee.

In progress:

• Adding who each employee reports to, such as their line manager or site manager.
• Refining the report layout and tightening the average versus contracted hours calculation.

Still to do:

• Stretch goal: the option to include holiday and absence hours in the total hours. It is not yet known whether these will count towards guaranteed hours assessments, so this will be an option you can turn on or off. We are aiming to deliver it in Q4 2026, but it may follow in a later quarter.

Employee Probation Export

⚪ On the horizon | Target: Q4 2026 | Area: HR - Reports

Update since the 29 Oct 2026 edition: no change. This feature remains on the horizon and is ready to be scheduled for development.

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.