beqomPay Suite 1.9 - Feature release notes
This article details the latest improvements introduced in version 1.9 of the beqom Pay Suite application, their benefits for our end-users and their principles of use.
Compensation
Payout curves
The latest update to payout curves delivers precise control over compensation distribution with refined configuration options for granular rounding based on individual performance, while also streamlining the setup process through improved filtering, validation, and usability.
Payout curve configuration
On the configuration side, payout curves are managed under Workbench > Compensation and are available to users with the compensation admin role. The new list view offers an overview of all payout curves, with filters for status (Ready, Draft or Deactivated), type (Step or Linear), and usage (whether or not it is assigned in a bonus plan). In addition, a search function lets users filter curves by name or partial name.
Payout curve creation
To create a payout curve, a new Create payout curve button guides users through a step-by-step setup process. The form includes required fields for Name and Code, with an optional description. The Payout curve settings section lets users define minimum and maximum ranges for results and payouts, choose a default unit such as percentage, select between Linear or Step curves, and set thresholds for achievement distribution. A real-time chart preview displays the payout curve as users configure it. New validation checks ensure all values comply with payout rules set by compensation administrators.
Payout curve management
Regarding management, validated payout curves can be published and made available for selection in bonus plans. A view mode lets users review payout curve settings without editing. The Duplicate option creates a copy of an existing curve for easy adjustments. Deactivation removes a curve from the list of available options in bonus plans. Usage details show where each curve is applied, with direct links to the associated bonus plans.
Limitations
It is not possible to edit published (Ready) payout curves. As a workaround, beqom recommends users duplicate the curve, edit the copy, and deactivate the original.
The following figures illustrate the payout curve creation and management interfaces in the Pay Suite platform:
Payout curve list in Workbench > Compensation
Payout curve creation wizard
Payout curve management
Threshold definition
Payout curve chart preview
Demo
Bonus plans
Version 1.9 of the Pay Suite platform introduces an update to the bonus plans feature that enhances the configuration and management of bonus compensation rounds, allowing organizations to define structured payout models for employees. Compensation administrators can now set up, configure, and manage bonus plans efficiently under Workbench > Compensation, with a more structured approach, improved filtering, and new validation mechanisms to ensure accurate and efficient bonus distributions.
Bonus plan configuration
Bonus plan configuration is available under Workbench > Compensation in the Bonus Plans section for users with the compensation admin role. Users can view and manage bonus plans using filters for type (Discretionary bonus or STI with KPI curves) and status (Draft or Ready). A search function is also available to quickly find bonus plans by name or code.
Bonus plan creation
Creating bonus plans starts with a new Create bonus plan button that guides users through a step-by-step configuration wizard. The form requires entering a Name and Code, as well as selecting a Type (Discretionary bonus or STI with KPI curves). Selecting STI with KPI curves adds an extra configuration step for performance indicator goals, where users can upload and select a goal plan from Data management, limited to one goal plan per bonus plan. Goals are organized into types, each with configurable payout curve distribution and weight assignments. Validation checks ensure that all payout curves are assigned correctly.
Bonus calculation & factors
Bonus calculation and factors allow users to decide whether to include Leave of absence or Time in role in bonus calculations. A real-time preview of the bonus formula updates automatically based on the selected factors. Although the standard formula is defined during the bonus plan setup, it can be adjusted later under Bonus type in compensation rounds.
Bonus plan management
Bonus plans are first saved as drafts and can be edited until they are ready for publishing. Once validated, plans are published and move to the Ready status. A view mode lets users review all plan details, including payout curve distribution and calculation formulas.
The following figures illustrate the bonus plan creation and management interfaces in the Pay Suite platform:
Bonus plan list in Workbench > Compensation
Bonus plan creation wizard
Bonus plan management
Bonus plan prorating factors
Bonus plan calculation formula
Demo
Populations in compensation rounds
Version 1.9 introduces improvements to the population service that enhance the management of populations in compensation rounds. This release offers better control over worker selection, allowing compensation administrators to define populations dynamically, but also to manually include or exclude individual workers for increased flexibility and control in managing populations within compensation rounds, ensuring a smoother and more precise configuration process.
Population selection in compensation rounds
Compensation administrators can now attach predefined populations created in Workbench > Data Management > Populations when setting up compensation rounds. A new Compensation population summary section shows an overview of the selected populations along with any manually adjusted worker lists. The Population drop-down is now a required field to ensure that every compensation round has a defined population.
Manual worker adjustments
Manual worker adjustments enable compensation administrators to fine-tune population management by including or excluding specific employees. Admins can search for and add workers who are not part of the predefined population or remove workers to exclude them from the compensation round, even if they belong to a selected population. A search and selection tool makes it easy to find and manage workers for inclusion or exclusion. The summary overview updates automatically to display the number of predefined populations, manually included workers, and manually excluded workers.
Improved visibility & usability
Improved visibility and usability features include a top summary section that gives a quick view of the population distribution. Workers selected manually are listed in a dedicated table with clear statuses indicating whether they are included or excluded.
The following figure illustrates the population definition screen in the compensation round configuration wizard:
Population management in compensation rounds
Performance Management
Career development localization
This release introduces comprehensive localization for career development plans , enabling administrators to create and manage templates in multiple languages. This improvement delivers a more personalized and accessible experience for all users, regardless of their preferred language.
Localization plays a key role in improving the worker experience by providing content in their native language, which fosters inclusion, understanding, and engagement. It also supports global scalability by making multilingual content management essential as organizations grow internationally. Template localization allows the Pay Suite application to support distributed teams without additional effort.
Administrators can now localize all template elements, including plan details, workflows, career plan questionnaires, and sidebar widgets, into any language supported by the platform. To ensure accessibility, administrators must now provide a translation in the company’s default language before publishing a template. This guarantees that every template contains at least one available translation.
The application displays template content based on each worker’s preferred language. If a translation is missing for that language, the system will automatically show the content in the company’s default language to ensure consistency.
Existing templates have been migrated to the new localization model, making the transition seamless for all users. Workers will now see templates in their preferred language when available, while administrators gain better control over content and language versions, ensuring accurate and consistent information. The required default language translation makes sure that all workers can read and understand templates without exception.
The following figure illustrates the new language selection field in the career development plan configuration wizard:
Career development localization
Published career development plan view mode
Template creators and owners can now review published career development templates in a dedicated read-only view mode. This new view mode makes it easier to check templates for accuracy and consistency before broader deployment.
Additional answer types & mandatory questions in career development plans
Career development plan creators now have more flexibility and control over question design with the addition of new answer types and mandatory question settings. This release introduces checkbox and radio button answer types, that allow creators to design more diverse and targeted questions to improve data collection and analysis.
Checkbox questions come pre-filled with one empty option, while radio button questions start with two empty options. Additional options can be added, reordered using drag-and-drop, or deleted, with a 250-character limit per option.
Administrators can also mark questions as mandatory, ensuring process participants complete key information before submitting their inputs. Mandatory questions are identified with a red asterisk. Question creation now happens in a dedicated drawer, making the interface easier to use, and includes a language drop-down showing the number of translations.
Validation rules ensure that default language content is completed before saving, and error messages are displayed for empty answers or mandatory fields. Save and Cancel buttons include proper warnings for unsaved changes, supporting a smoother question management process.
The following figure illustrates mandatory questions in a career development plan from an end-user perspective:
Mandatory fields in a career development plan
PDF generation for career development plans
Career development plans now benefit from enhanced documentation capabilities with the introduction of PDF generation. Career development plan creators can activate this feature during the setup of career discussions and choose which communication rounds to include. Once enabled, employees and managers can generate, save, and send PDF versions of career development plans at any stage.
The resulting PDF document includes key details such as worker name, photo, discussion process name, status, dates, and creation timestamp, followed by sections covering self-assessment, manager feedback, career plan questionnaires, skills, and goals. Content is generated in the user’s preferred language, and files follow a clear, localized naming convention.
All in all, this improvement makes it easier to document, share, and store career development plans, offering employees and managers offline and printable access to essential information.
The following figures illustrates a few pages of the career development plan PDF:
Career development plan PDF
Pay Transparency
Enforcement of configurable hierarchies for communication manager access
Starting in Release 1.9, the hierarchy configured in communication round settings now fully controls communication manager access. This replaces the previously fixed line manager hierarchy and allows organizations to define custom access based on their specific needs. Both primary and secondary hierarchies, if set, are applied to determine which workers Communication Managers can view and manage. This update gives greater flexibility in deciding who can communicate with which workers during a communication round.
Secondary communication manager
This release introduces the ability to configure secondary communication managers within a communication round, giving organizations more flexibility in managing access. In addition to managers defined by the primary hierarchy, administrators can now assign additional managers through a secondary hierarchy to ensure broader coverage in the communication process.
The primary hierarchy remains mandatory, while the secondary hierarchy is optional and available when needed. Communication manager access is now fully enforced based on the selected hierarchies, ensuring that only designated managers can view and manage worker documents.
This improvement supports complex organizational structures where multiple managers may need access to worker communications and helps streamline workflows by allowing several managers to oversee and support employees.
Multiple communication managers for a single worker
Enable/Disable Summary Documents for Communication managers
Release 1.9 introduces a configurable option to enable or disable summary documents for communication managers in the communication round configuration wizard. This feature gives organizations more control over document visibility and helps simplify the review process when summary documents are not required.
A new checkbox, labeled Include summary documents is now available when creating or editing a communication round. The setting is disabled by default but can be enabled if necessary.
When summary documents are disabled, API and SFTP imports marked as "summary" are blocked or logged as errors, preventing these documents from being added to the round. The HRBP review screen are automatically exclude summary records, showing only one document per worker, and both the Role” column and filter are hidden.
On the communication manager review screen, the My document section no longer appears, ensuring a simplified view.
This improvement reduces confusion by eliminating unnecessary document placeholders, prevents unwanted document imports, and allows organizations to adjust communication round settings to match their processes.
The following figure illustrates the summary document inclusion setting in the communication round configuration wizard:
Include summary documents checkbox
Advanced filters for HRBPs
This release introduces advanced filters in Planner > Documents, giving HRBPs the ability to filter documents based on recipient and communication manager attributes. These filters improve search precision and bulk action execution, allowing HRBPs to manage document workflows more efficiently for targeted populations.
This is an note/information message.
Advanced filters are available exclusively to HRBPs in this release.
In addition to existing document filters such as Recipient, Communication manager, Read status, Release status, Workflow step, Filename, Role, and Generation date, HRBPs can now filter by attributes including Worker ID, Organization, Region, Country, State, City, and Cost center, using multi-select lists for each, as illustrated in the following figures:
Advanced filter definition
Applied advanced filter
These filters improve the ability to quickly locate specific groups and apply bulk actions like changing workflow steps or releasing and unreleasing documents. This enhancement increases efficiency, reduces manual work, and sets the foundation for expanding these filters to communication managers in upcoming releases.
Pay Intelligence
Analytics Hub
The Pay Suite Analytics Hub keeps evolving to make the data & analytics experience of end-users more and more seamless.
Better UX with a new loading indicator
When exporting a report or dashboard, a brand new loader now informs the user of the progress of the export process.
Improved exporting process
The export process was improved to make it more user-friendly.
The 3 dots menu is now always visible next to the name of the report for quick and easy access to the export options. Now, it is possible to export full reports by clicking the 3 dots next to the section name and export individual dashboards by clicking the 3 dots next to the page name.
Clicking the 3 dots now opens a drop-down menu with export formats instead of redirecting to another page. Current formats available for export are PDF and PPTX. Selecting a format automatically triggers the export, eliminating unnecessary steps.
Access to Analytics Hub
The manager access to the Analytics Hub is now dependent on the activation state of the hub, i.e. when Analytics Hub is disabled, the Analytics for managers setting is also unavailable.
Dependent activation settings
Analytics Hub report enhancement
In this version, the following improvements were performed on the Goals report:
The measurement criteria set in the goals are now visible and two new columns were added to the Goal Details report page table: (1) Measurement Criteria containing a concatenation of all measurements and their detailed information, (2) #Measurement Criteria defined as the total of measurement criteria added to the goal, (3) #Measurement Criteria Achieved defined as the total number of measurements that have been set to achieved or have a result value equal or higher to the target, (4) %Measurement Criteria Achieved calculated as the % between #Measurement Criteria Achieved and #Measurement Criteria.
Because the widespread usage of the shared goal functionality, the % Public goals visual was expanded to show the % Shared goals.
Platform
Data Foundation
Organization Entity Update
New field added to the Organization entity: OrganizationType [Enum, Optional]
New enums
OrganizationType: defines categorization of organizations.
This update offers greater flexibility in defining and managing organization structures within the platform.
Authentication
Extended security attributes for Performance Management
In this release, we have enhanced security subject attributes, providing greater granularity and control when assigning security attributes to users. These improvements allow for more precise access management within Performance Management.
The following attributes are now available for security configuration:
WorkRegion: derived from the Worker entity
LocalGrade: derived from the IndividualPayRange entity
GlobalGrade: derived from the IndividualPayRange entity
These enhancements offer more refined role-based access control, ensuring that security policies can be tailored to meet your organization’s needs.
On the configuration side, these additional attributes provide finer control over access management, ensuring security is enforced at a more granular level. Users can configure these attributes via:
CSV upload: navigate to Workbench > Platform Setup > Security & Roles.
API: refer to our Knowledge Base for API configuration details.
Security attributes can be managed by users with the Security Role assigned to them.