KeyPay 5.051 available

Details

Last Updated: Wednesday, 06 January 2021 09:06

KeyPay 5.051.0105

This January update contains tax tables for April 2021 and implements the IRD Ver 2 upload formats which includes the old KED return and the additional KiwiSaver states, plus some bug fixes and new features.  
Changes to just the build number - a date as MMDD - will be considered optional to provide for quick bug fixes and any changes, such as those occurring frequently in the current time of Covid-19, that may or may not be relevant to your situation.

Registered users should be able to download and install this update automatically from within KeyPay. On the main menu, select configuration and installation and then choose check for updates. If an update is available, i.e your version number is lower, you will be offered the option to download and install it when leaving KeyPay using the F to Finish option. Closing the window itself will not trigger the download.

 View all the changes made in recent builds

PAYE Calculator

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 06 January 2021 09:13

Tax Calculator 3.22

New version for Tax years 2020-2022 now available for free under Downloads Calculators.

Includes the new 39% rate on both the M and a new secondary SA tax code that apply from 1st April 2021.

Windows 7 End-of-Support

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Last Updated: Sunday, 05 July 2020 18:08

Reports of My Death are greatly Exaggerated

On January 15th 2020 Microsoft provided the final security updates for Windows 7 and discontinued further support.  What does this mean?

Most users will notice nothing, other than a notice from Microsoft that support has ended, that the sky is falling and they should immediately upgrade to Windows 10, or buy a new Microsoft Surface Book for $3000 odd. Otherwise it will continue to work the same as it always has and there is absolutely no need for panic. You also won't be alone in that about 25% of all computers running MS Windows are still on version 7. (Estimated at 300 million.)

In fact, Microsoft is still providing security updates to Windows 7 but only by subscription for corporate clients, and then only to the professional and enterprise versions.  Users of the Home version are not supported. Various sources have put the cost of the subscription as starting from as low as $25 per machine per year, with this doubling each further year for the next three years. We doubt anyone will get this rate and expect it to be more like $100 P.A and for small businesses its unlikely you can subscribe at all.

What are the risks of not upgrading?

Read more: Windows 7 End-of-Support

RansomWare 2020

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Last Updated: Sunday, 05 July 2020 18:08

Ransomware in 2020

It was the biggest internet threat in 2017, up by a further 11% in 2018 and even more in 2019.

Recent reports are showing a preference for targeting larger businesses and organisations rather than individual users, probably because they are easier to manage and owners place a much higher value on their data so the rewards are much greater. Also the cost of downtime and effort to recover from backup can be more than just paying up for a quick fix.

It has been estimated that victims of ransomware paid over 1 Billion US dollars in 2016 to recover their data and in future it's expected to be much greater. Are you prepared?

Checkout our page about it and how to avoid becoming a victim and if the worst happens to recover without paying up!

KeyPay Latest Changes

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 06 January 2021 10:03

KeyPay 5.051 Changes

Includes support for 39% from April 2021 and the IRD Ver 2 Pay-Day filing uploads which combine an enhanced KiwiSaver KED return with the ED (NDE) CSV file and matching report.  Full details about the following changes are the included release notes.

• IRD Pay-Day filing must use V2 from April 2021 but currently optional.
• EI Return minor changes. SLCIR and SLBOR codes dropped and become columns instead of additional lines.
• NDE return (now named ED for Ver 2) has 12 new fields and IRD codes mostly to include those on the KED return and more.
  New employees now get more KiwiSaver options - A auto enrolled, Y for an existing member, I Opt In, C casual or temporary.  The default is now A and the user must change as deemed necessary. Opting out process similar to previous, but now has provision for a late opt out with reasons including correction of errors and mistakes, such as later finding employee should have been exempt.
  Existing employees can also use these but coded IRD details on the ED are different.
• On posting after IRD filing has been done entry codes are adjusted to their next state as applicable. e.g. I goes to Y and O to N.
• New Option to exclude a single taxable allowance from leave earnings. The intention being to correctly tax each employees share of any collected tips, but without the employer having the liability of increased leave costs on the basis that such income is not part of negotiated employer provided wages.   May not be legal under the Holidays Act.     

Previous KeyPay 5.050 builds

New builds are optional and include more frequent changes. Be sure to check the release notes for full details afterwards and to review this page. Option now provided to do this when a build changes.

1. Build 0507 Added subsidy Top-Up option which allows the Normal hours to be optionally prefilled with the hours required to achieve a full normal pay (or to 80%), excluding overtime, allowances and leave, in dollar terms. The actual percent rate, if chosen, uses the ACC 80% setting which can be made higher if required. N.B this will also change the default ACC %, but that can still be overridden during entry.
   Most changes for Time of Corona apply only to defaults for new pay entry and do not affect the edit of a pay. Also, the prefills only apply for each employee when chosen, except for #2 when it replaces all employees Normal default times and can still be changed as usual.  Thus there is really no reason to not enable these features if they might be useful and they can easily be turned off again using Page 8.  
2. Build 0520 Added a choice on Control Report Options to increase some columns on the report to 4 decimals. Shows any top-up and subsidy times more accurately.
3. Build 0526 Bug fix to prevent entry of a blank employee type. About 9 months ago it became possible to leave it blank, causing payment reports to not show the employee even though paid. (Leaving the employee type blank is valid for some report filters and implies no filtering and therefore includes everyone. Most current pay reports reverse this by showing all possible types to include, and in removing one or more letters to exclude them must treat blanks as valid.)
4. Build 0610 Changes for flexible subsidy top-ups and bug fixes.  New Menu added to choose how to top-up the subsidy or not for each employee. Allows entry of actual hours worked and splits these between Normal and the configured Subsidy payment slot with a single time entry.  Other menu options provide for topping up to: Standard, 80%, global override hours, subsidy only, or to just proceed with a usual non-subsidised pay.  i.e Should now cover all likely bases for any employee. After a pre-fill, manual override of entries is still possible.
5. Build 0703 Added option to override the subsidy value for individual employees.
   Covid-19 option settings on Page 8 revised and some items separated to make the functions clearer. Sick-Other description on payslip moved to page 20 to free up space on Page 8. 
   Bug fix to rate slot subsidy prefill sometimes not adding to Gross during pay entry. (Analysis report imbalanced.)
   Control report includes new Entered Hours column when paying subsidy via a rate slot. (Adds the split hours between Normal and Subsidy columns together for entry checking.)
   Relevant reports showing payments for bank and IRD now refer to pay-day instead of period end. Now clearer when using a pay-day offset to ensure entry period and end of month PAYE totals synchronise with the IRD month.
   Some Menus improved with description messages added.
   
6. Build 0721 Fixed bug in Student Loan SDR expiry date.
   Now separate from IR23 expiry. Need to check this date if SDR in use as maybe empty.
   Bug fix to Menu 0 (Config) overflow.
   New option to apply the pay offset to PE for filename dates. Affects some reports and backups when a payday offset is in use. Filename dates can now be either the pay-day or period end. Ref 195 or Configuration page 22.
7. Build 0105  A whole new non-optional 5.051 release with the changes ready for April 2021

Windows 10

Details

Last Updated: Tuesday, 18 August 2020 03:40

Windows 10

Running KeyPay on..

KeyPay will function on Windows 10, however, new and somewhat experimental features have been added to the Windows 10 console that KeyPay does not support. In particular, the console window is now resizeable, has line wrapping, and the number of rows and columns change when resized rather than scaling the font size as previously. This causes some strange effects in KeyPay which expects a fixed 80 columns and 25 rows. (KeyPay Ver 6 uses the windows GUI.)

Recent updates to Windows 10 added options that can prevent KeyPay from even starting, (it appears and then closes again) unless the correct console window sizing is applied first. Also, from Windows build 14295.1, the unicode 8 standard for raster fonts is not applied correctly and it defaults to the USA characters and changes the line drawing characters to diamonds. The solution is to select a true-type font and window size in the window's system menu properties.

The following instructions describe the steps required to fix these issues and we recommend that you print a copy using the icon button near the top of this article and read them through first.

These instructions will likely vary a little depending on what version of Windows 10 is currently installed on your PC. An upgrade from Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 will be different from a new PC or after a fresh install. Also the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows differ significantly, with only 32 bit supporting legacy 16 bit applications such as those built for DOS and Windows 3.1. The 64 bit versions only support device drivers digitally signed by Microsoft. Microsoft also updates Windows 10 with new features about every six months and there have been considerable changes at these times, but it should be easy to get KeyPay working again.

(To create a new short-cut, if you don't now have one, find the KeyPay program name of epcsl5.exe in Windows file explorer inside the C:\KeyPay folder and right-click, then choose Send to->Desktop - create shortcut. Then edit the properties of the shortcut as described below.)

On a new Windows 10 installation it can sometimes be difficult to get KeyPay running at all as it closes shortly after starting. If creating a shortcut as above doesn't configure the defaults correctly, open a standard command prompt window and change its system menu Defaults as described below.

To create a command window, right click the Windows start button and choose Command Prompt from the menu or type and run CMD.EXE. Next left click the icon in the top left corner of the command window, choose Defaults and change the options.
Note: changes to the defaults are not applied until the window is closed and re-opened. Property editing changes tend to be applied immediately.

On the shortcut properties select the Options tab. At the left under Edit Options there are check-boxes that change old and new features.
Untick:- Quick Edit, Filter clipboard, Enable line wrapping and Extended text. This should leave just Insert mode and Ctrl key ticked. Next select the Layout tab and set the Window size to 80 wide and 25 high and also set the buffer size to match if allowed. Untick Wrap text here also if available. Finally, click OK and then start KeyPay with the shortcut. On re-starting, KeyPay should again work as normal.

Once KeyPay is working, its own system menu defaults, properties, or the startup short-cut can be refined to suit your personal preferences. Changing the font and point size can make the window larger and more readable with different aspect ratios and is worth experimenting with. The old raster fonts may no longer be available with Consolas now the default instead, but do try other fonts for readability to suit yourself as the differences can be quite significant.

If you find these settings to still be a problem, or have other related and unexpected issues, all these new behaviours can be reversed by changing Windows 10 console back to legacy mode. To switch back, left-click a command prompt window icon as above, and choose defaults. The legacy option is located at the bottom of the options tab as a checkbox named Use legacy console which can be re-enabled and windows restarted.

N.B. It has always been possible in previous versions of Windows to resize the KeyPay window and alter it's aspect ratio by using the window's system menu to change the font and size. Raster fonts are traditional and stored as tiny pictures each with a fixed size and aspect. True-Type fonts describe how to draw themselves in any point size. Scaling the window to suit the font size can make KeyPay's text much larger along with different aspect ratios. The Font tab of the short-cut properties also allows the same changes.

Finally, if on a new PC its likely that some folders previously used to save various files no longer exist or perhaps didn't get copied across from your previous PC. You can check and alter these if necessary using KeyPay's menu options: 0-Configuration settings,  Installation and then #4 Export / Backup paths.  Generally these must be created manually in Windows although KeyPay will create some itself where the date is involved. Also, Windows dialog boxes try to use these as initial locations when saving or loading, and if incorrect or missing will likely just default to the My Documents folder, which is a pain if you have to then navigate back to where you expect or want them.