What’s New

Version 10.0 | Version 9.0 | Version 8.0 | Version 7.0 | Version 6.0.1

Aren Payroll 7.0, released in October 2016, is a major revision of version 6.0.1. It includes numerous changes made in response to user feedback.

Here are the main improvements as of Update 32 (post-release changes are shown in blue):

Payroll Processing

  1. Insurance premium field type has been added and linked to insurance relief.
  2. Up to two pension deductions are permitted, instead of just one, to cater for voluntary contributions and arrears.
  3. Interest rates for company and co-operative loans can be set centrally so that all employees are charged the same rate for a particular loan.
  4. Interest on company loans can be charged at statutory market interest rate.
  5. User can select which earnings are pensionable. NSSF is computed only on the pensionable earnings.
  6. Payment, deduction and benefit data can be imported into the payroll from a text file. (Premier edition only)

Reports

  1. Annual reports can be printed for a range of months within a calendar year (e.g. Jan-Jun or Jul-Sep).
  2. Insurance company return has been added.
  3. Co-operative and pension returns are always in the local currency, regardless of the payroll currency in use. (Premier edition only)
  4. Output file format for several reports, including payslips, muster roll, control account, cash list and P9As, changed from tab-separated text to Excel 2003 XML.

Statutory Returns

  1. For better iTax compatibility:
    • Employment type (primary or secondary) and residential status (resident or non-resident) are captured explicitly.
    • House allowance and car benefit field types have been added.
    • Tax adjustment in December has been removed to ensure tax in December matches that of iTax.
  2. NSSF self-service return file has been added.
  3. NSSF and NHIF returns are saved in Excel 2003 XML format instead of plain text.
  4. HELB remittance schedule can be saved in the lastest CSV format.
  5. NSSF return file for iTax has been added.

Email

  1. P9As can be emailed to employees.
  2. Reports can be sent in batches, instead of just one or all of them at one go.
  3. When sending reports, the user can adjust the timeout period for mail server responses. Previously this was fixed at 60 seconds.
  4. Should the connection fail while sending reports, the software no longer tries to send the remaining messages.

Other Refinements

  1. The login dialog box defaults to single-user or multi-user mode depending on which mode was last used. (Premier edition only)
  2. Report options have been moved from the Organisation menu to the dialog boxes for opening individual reports. This makes it much easier to locate and edit the options for a specific report.
  3. NHIF return file, which was previously generated by saving the NHIF report, has moved to the Procedure menu. Saving the NHIF report generates a text version of the report.
  4. Importing employee data could lead to duplicate job titles, administrative units or stations. For example, if the imported data had both Nairobi and NAIROBI stations, both would have been added to the payroll.
  5. Electronic payslips can include the company logo.