EmpowerHR 2026.1 release notes

We are pleased to present EmpowerHR 2026.1 – Release Notes

What's new

Pay Day Super – 2026.1 picks up where 2026 left off

The next wave of Payday Super work lands in 2026.1. Five targeted changes to how SG is calculated, capped, reported, and extracted.

Maximum Contribution Base cap: edge cases covered

A negative adjustment that brings an employee's year-to-date qualifying earnings back below the $250,000 cap triggers an automatic SG reversal, with the correction written to the SG audit log.
A negative adjustment paired with current-period earnings now produces both the reversal on the over-cap correction and the positive SG on current earnings in the same pay run.
An ad-hoc pay run processed after the cap is reached no longer adds extra SG. The cap check looks at the full financial-year pay history.

SG rate effective date

Cross-financial-year backpay uses the SG rate effective on the paid date rather than the period date, in line with ATO guidance. June earnings paid in July pick up the new financial year's rate. Same-financial-year backpay is unchanged.

Audit and STP accuracy

Multi-period pay runs split qualifying-earnings audit values per period rather than duplicating them, so cumulative QE tracking and STP reporting data stay accurate. Single-period pay runs aren't affected.

SAFFE and MLC Super: single-employee runs

The SAFFE and MLC Super file extracts take a new optional Employee Code parameter. You can run an extract for one employee or a wildcard group instead of the whole payroll. Useful for corrections, re-issues, and quicker UAT cycles. Existing scheduled batch jobs run unchanged.

Display

A character-encoding glitch in the "ATO's Pay Day Super" wording on the Qualifying Earnings pay element description is cleaned up.

What you need to do

Once the release is deployed, take a look at your next pay run audit report to see the corrected SG behaviour in action, particularly for any employees approaching the Maximum Contribution Base cap. The SG reversals and corrections will appear in the SG audit log.

Ticket: EMP-10956

EmpowerHR meets UKG

If your organisation uses UKG for time and attendance, EmpowerHR and UKG can now talk to each other. Two automated exports run on schedule: employee details daily, leave balances weekly. Pay data returns through the existing Pay Data Entry import each pay period.

Your Fusion5 consultant configures the integration. See the UKG integration user guide for how to run and monitor the exports, or speak to your account contact for more.

iHelp: 608820 | Ticket: EMP-10991 | Requested by: Drakes

Hold that payslip

You can now control when employees see their payslip in Employee Self Service. Head to the Pay tab of Installation Constants and you'll find a new field, Display payslip on, with two options.

Pay run (the default) shows payslips as soon as you finalise the pay run.
Pay day holds them back until 12am on the pay date, with the payslip greyed out in the list and an info icon to explain the wait.

The setting applies across all employees and all payrolls.

iHelp: 558650 | Ticket: EMP-9989 | Requested by: Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC)

DoC Tax File Numbers, ready for transfer

Developed specifically for Department of Communities. Two new background jobs are available under Administration > Background Jobs > System Security:

TFN Extract Pre-Process (DoC)
TFN Extract Post-Process (DoC)

The pre-process takes Org Level 1 and Employee Status parameters. Leave Employee Status blank to include everyone. For terminated employees, the Org Level 1 filter checks the last recorded position. The post-process clears the extract table and takes no parameters.

Ticket: EMP-11066 | Requested by: Department of Communities (DoC)

GL Interface (DFES): pick your default project number

The default project number on the GL Interface (DFES) is no longer hard-coded. It now lives in a system parameter set to 100000. The Project Number field on the Parameters tab is pre-filled with that value, and you can override it per-run. An administrator updates the parameter to change the standard default.

iHelp: 607148 | Ticket: EMP-11026 | Requested by: Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

Licence to fill in Skills

Developed specifically for Department of Fire and Emergency Services. The Licence number field on the Skills Request screen in Employee Self Service is now mandatory for all skill categories except Qualification. A red asterisk marks the field, and the screen blocks submission with "Enter a valid licence number" if your employees leave it blank. The underlying field is User Field 1, with severity set to Error in Field Error Validation. Other clients keep the default Ignore setting unless a sys admin or consultant switches it to Warning or Error.

iHelp: 573079 | Ticket: EMP-11053 | Requested by: Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

Prepaid and present on payslips

iHelp: 558650, 556986, 553223 | Ticket: EMP-10729 | Requested by: ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation)

GetEmployeePositions: six degrees of organisation

The EmpowerStandardExtract web service now returns six organisation hierarchy fields in the GetEmployeePositions response: Org level 1, Org level 2, Org level 3, division, branch and section. Existing integrations continue to work unchanged.

Ticket: EMP-10651 | Requested by: TasTAFE

What's fixed
Membership number changes now save correctly in the Super Fund Details - Change screen, and the GESB Super choice file is populated with the updated membership data.
iHelp: 607103 | Ticket: EMP-10700 | Reported by: Department of Communities (DoC)

Employees with a recommencement record can no longer submit leave requests in ESS for dates prior to their recommencement pay start date.
iHelp: 546742 | Ticket: EMP-9644 | Reported by: Catholic Schools Office Lismore Diocese

Pending leave requests now display duration in hours and minutes rather than decimal format for organisations configured to use hours:minutes.
iHelp: 526848 | Ticket: EMP-9799 | Reported by: University of South Australia

Resuming a performance management assessment after it has been put on hold no longer locks the workflow. This is on the Performance Management, Assessment Administration page.
iHelp: 618478 | Ticket: EMP-11032 | Reported by: Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

Pay Certification workflows now generate to the configured fallback position, so approvals route through the standard process.
Ticket: EMP-10841 | Reported by: Department of Communities (DOC)

Long service leave bookings recorded in hours can now be cancelled through Employee Self Service, with the cancellation completing correctly at the Leave Alerter stage.
iHelp: 568138 | Ticket: EMP-10767 | Reported by: Catholic Schools Office Diocese of Maitland (CSOMN)

RAMS weekday overtime over three hours now pays the first three hours at the 150% rate and the balance at 200%.
iHelp: 573705 | Ticket: EMP-10761 | Reported by: Department for Education, Children and Young People - DECYP (DoE) - TAS

STSL tax (code ZHBP) on lump sum bonus and commission payments now calculates correctly and respects the employee's HECS/STSL flag. The calculation had been generating grossly inflated amounts, such as $8,216 of STSL tax on a $20 bonus, and applying STSL tax to employees who no longer had an STSL debt.
iHelp: 606422 | Ticket: EMP-10632 | Reported by: Parliament of Victoria

The new SaaS UKG import background job now fills the parameter with its default value automatically when scheduled.
Ticket: EMP-11041 | Reported by: Fusion5 (internal)

MSS bulk forms now create successfully when employee, position, or organisation based symbolics are set in the default form title. These symbolics are now ignored when generating the default title for bulk forms, where no employee is set
Ticket: EMP-9639 | Reported by: Fusion5 (internal)

The Self Service Org Security builder now completes when an operator has multiple org access records covering the same section.
iHelp: 548211 | Ticket: EMP-9598 | Reported by: John Deere

All screen validation changes for Personal Details fields in Self Service now save correctly, rather than only some fields saving.
Ticket: EMP-9528 | Reported by: Fusion5 (internal)

The ESS login field now accepts passwords up to the full length set by the client's password policy, so users with passwords longer than 10 characters can sign in. The field had been capped at 10 characters regardless of the configured policy, which blocked login for clients whose minimum length is above 10 (for example AMES at 14). This affected the fallback sign-in only.
Ticket: EMP-10820 | Reported by: AMES

On the MSS Compliance Reports tab, the Actions menu now opens in a visible part of the screen for records further down the list. Clicking the ellipsis button on those lower records had been opening the menu below the bottom of the screen, where it could not be used.
Ticket: EMP-10566 | Reported by: Fusion5 (internal)

Self Service now stops a recommenced employee from booking leave or submitting other requests dated before their employment payment start date, displaying the message "Date cannot be before your employment payment start date" in line with the desktop Empower behaviour.
iHelp: 546742 | Ticket: EMP-9791 | Reported by: Catholic Schools Office Lismore Diocese

Workflow links in Self Service notification emails now open the correct pending requests page instead of returning an error.

iHelp: 623779 | Ticket: EMP-11289 | Reported by: Catholic Schools Office Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle

The SAFFE file now keeps each positive superannuation component and zeroes only the negative ones, instead of excluding the employee's whole record when their contributions total a negative amount.
iHelp: 571617 | Ticket: EMP-10627 | Reported by: Catholic Schools Office Lismore Diocese

The STP Checking Report now reports Qualified Earnings for pay periods on or after 1 July 2026, with the amount shown in a column headed Qualified Earnings instead of OTE Amount.
iHelp: 624684 | Ticket: EMP-11367 | Reported by: The Fourth Force (Drakes)

Next topic

EmpowerHR 2026.0.05 hotfix release notes