NEOGOV’s Summer 2026 People & Workforce Management release expands administrative control, payroll visibility, employee self-service, audit-ability, analytics, and mobile access across the platform. The release moved into production late July, bringing enhancements to Core HR, Payroll, Time & Attendance, and Benefits. Public sector agencies can now manage employee ID rules more directly, complete complex salary updates through guided workflows, strengthen payroll and timekeeping audits, guide employees through benefits enrollment, and create more consistent cross-product experiences. Some capabilities are being introduced through beta or preview programs, while selected mobile enhancements are scheduled to launch late August.
- What is new in Core HR?
- What is new in Payroll?
- What is new in Time & Attendance?
- What is new in Benefits
A practical release for complex public sector work
Public sector HR, payroll, benefits, time & attendance, and operations teams rarely need technology for technology’s sake. They need tools that make high-volume, high-consequence work easier to manage: applying compensation changes, validating overtime, reviewing payroll exceptions, resolving leave requests, communicating open enrollment information, and helping employees find the right information without another call to HR.
The Summer 2026 release focuses on those practical moments. Across NEOGOV People & Workforce Management, the enhancements give administrators more direct control over configuration, add visibility into changes and calculations, guide employees through common workflows, and make workforce information easier to understand.
These improvements also reinforce the value of an integrated HRIS. When employee information, benefits, time, and payroll processes are connected, agencies can reduce duplicate entry and give administrators a clearer view of the employee lifecycle from one system.
A more consistent preferred-name experience across the platform
The Summer release expands preferred-name support across the NEOGOV experience.
When an employee has entered a preferred name, the system can use it in places such as search results, notifications, and other everyday interactions. The preferred-name field is also being extended across reporting and analytics datasets for products including Core HR, Benefits, Time & Attendance, Payroll, Onboard, Learn, Perform, and eForms.
The employee’s legal name remains available where it is required for payroll, compliance, forms, integrations, audit logs, and certain system-generated reports or records. That distinction helps agencies provide a more respectful and consistent employee experience without changing the information required for official processes.
What is new in Core HR?
The Core HR enhancements give public sector teams more control over employee ID setup and introduce a more modern, guided approach to salary administration.
Manage employee ID configuration more directly
A new customer-facing Employee ID Configuration page allows authorized administrators to manage how employee IDs are generated.
Agencies can choose between automated and manual ID entry, establish the minimum number from which automated IDs begin, apply prefixes, and manage department-based codes. For example, an agency could combine a departmental prefix with an automatically generated number to make employee records easier to identify and sort.
The configuration applies to employee IDs created going forward and does not retroactively rewrite IDs already in the system. That allows agencies to adjust their future approach without changing established employee records.
Complete salary range updates through guided workflows
Salary range administration now has a more consistent user experience and step-by-step workflow. Administrators can work through each part of the process without having to manage every setting on a single screen.
The updated experience supports multiple midpoints for agencies that need greater flexibility in compensation benchmarking. It also allows administrators to import new salary ranges, update existing ranges in bulk, and adjust multiple ranges together.
Bulk salary range adjustments can connect with Mass Salary Update, helping agencies apply approved changes to the appropriate employee assignments without rebuilding the same change in separate workflows.
Preview and validate mass salary changes
Mass Salary Update now begins with employee filtering, allowing administrators to define the affected group before selecting and applying an action.
Users can save commonly used filters, preview the employees who qualify, review a summary of the selected criteria, and see the number of employees affected. Additional guidance explains rounding behavior and group priorities before the update is executed.
Administrators can also export projected wage changes to CSV. That gives HR and finance teams an opportunity to review the proposed results, complete additional analysis, or share the file with other stakeholders before making the changes effective.
Modernize salary schedules, grades, and steps
Salary schedule administration now includes guided workflows for grades, steps, schedules, step progression, and related compensation structures.
Administrators can compare current and future-dated step information side by side. This is especially useful for agencies that begin preparing fiscal-year compensation changes several weeks before they take effect but still need to reference current wage information during validation.
The updated tools also support bulk imports for grades, steps, and schedules; preview and CSV export options before mass changes are applied; and PDF output that can be used when publishing salary schedules on an agency website.
New promotion logic gives agencies more flexibility when determining whether an employee should retain their current step after moving to a new grade rather than automatically receiving a position’s default step.
Expand audit visibility across salary administration
New and expanded audit logs help administrators see who made a change, when it occurred, and what information was changed.
Audit visibility is available across workflows such as approval processes, workflow emails, salary ranges, grades and steps, schedules, and step progression. This gives HR teams a clearer record for troubleshooting, internal review, and documentation without positioning an audit log as a substitute for the agency’s own compliance policies.
What is new in Payroll?
The Summer release adds several layers of visibility and control to Payroll, from qualified overtime reporting and FLSA analysis to tax reporting, payroll review, and proactive error detection.
Support qualified overtime tracking alongside agency-specific rules
Payroll enhancements help agencies separately identify the federally required FLSA overtime premium used for qualified overtime reporting while continuing to apply the state, union, collective bargaining, or internal rules that determine how employees are paid.
The IRS explains that qualified overtime compensation generally includes the portion of overtime pay above an employee’s regular rate that is required under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Separate reporting requirements apply for 2026 and later years. Agencies should continue to confirm their tax, payroll, and reporting obligations with their own legal or tax advisors.
Make FLSA calculations easier to review
The FLSA Audit Note has been updated to make the calculation breakdown easier to access and analyze.
Payroll administrators can open the audit note in an expandable window rather than working within a small scrolling area. The information can be copied for use in another application or downloaded for documentation and further analysis. The note is also available for both open and closed batches, providing access to historical calculations during later reviews.
A new FLSA Details page adds another level of transparency. From an employee’s pay results, administrators can review the regular hours, overtime, bonuses, assignments, earnings codes, FLSA hours, wages, and rates that contributed to the calculation.
The detailed information can be exported in PDF, Excel, or CSV format. Together, the FLSA Audit Note and FLSA Details page give payroll teams both the calculation summary and the underlying earnings information they may need to validate or explain a result.
Centralize ACA and State SUI reporting
Affordable Care Act reporting is now available through the modernized Payroll Dashboard.
Administrators can access the Affordable Care Act report and generate applicable employer-provided health insurance offer and coverage forms from one centralized area. This reduces the need to locate and launch each report through a separate process.
Quarterly State Unemployment Insurance reports have also moved to the Payroll Dashboard. The updated run controls focus on the fields needed to produce the report, creating a more direct self-service reporting experience.
See the tax jurisdiction directly on the payline
Payroll administrators can now see the applicable state or local tax jurisdiction name alongside a tax deduction on the Payroll Payline Results screen.
Rather than relying only on a general work or residence label and tax code, administrators can see which jurisdiction was used in the calculation. That added context can make it easier to review employees who are subject to multiple state or local taxes, identify setup concerns, and investigate discrepancies before payroll is finalized.
The jurisdiction name is also included in related payroll outputs such as pay headers, paychecks, and payroll registers.
Access tax filing documents within the application
For agencies using NEOGOV Payroll Services, tax filing documents can be made available in a centralized location within the application.
This gives authorized users self-service access to records and reduces reliance on email to exchange or retain sensitive tax documents. Keeping the documents together also makes it easier to maintain a consistent history and locate previous filings when they are needed.
Review payroll through a clearer Employee Detailed Pay Register
The new Employee Detailed Pay Register organizes payroll information by employee and presents earnings, employee and employer taxes, tax jurisdictions, and employee and employer deductions in a more readable format.
Payroll teams can use the register to review an individual employee’s payroll information and compare it with the employee’s paycheck. The register can be produced in a printable format or exported to Excel or CSV for reconciliation and further analysis.
Existing payroll registers remain available, giving agencies another option rather than replacing every established report.
Add controls before payroll is finalized
The release also includes several targeted controls intended to help administrators identify and resolve issues earlier.
A new Gross Exceeds Standard Pay filter compares the employee’s current batch gross with the standard pay calculated from the employee’s assignment and compensation information. Potential discrepancies can be surfaced before payroll is finalized rather than discovered after payment.
The gross-up process now lets payroll administrators choose whether an employee’s additional federal or state withholding should be included in the calculation. This gives agencies more control over how a gross-up is configured for a particular scenario.
For agencies using additional cost-center fields, Payroll can display Charge Code 1 and Charge Code 2 only when the corresponding cost-center types are configured in Time & Attendance. Keeping the Payroll interface, imports, and exports aligned with the Time & Attendance configuration supports cleaner data and reduces unnecessary fields.
Additional processing and conversion work is intended to support payroll speed, scalability, historical pay-data handling, and more efficient implementations as agencies and employee populations grow.
What is new in Time & Attendance?
The Time & Attendance enhancements strengthen accountability around work rules, close a gap between pending leave and timesheet submission, and give agencies more options for controlling where employees can record time.
See the history of work-rule changes
An Audit Logs link is now available on individual work-rule detail pages.
Each entry can show when the change occurred, which user made it, the action performed, and a summary of the information that changed. Because work rules can affect timesheet creation, pay headers, payroll transactions, overtime, and other calculations, having the change history available at the rule level can help agencies investigate issues and document administrative activity.
Resolve pending leave before a timesheet is submitted
When a leave request within a timesheet period is still waiting for approval, the timesheet Submit button is disabled for employees, managers, and administrators.
An informational message explains that the outstanding request must be approved or canceled before the timesheet can be submitted. Once all pending requests within the period are resolved, the timesheet can move forward.
This control helps prevent a timesheet from being approved or sent to Payroll without the related leave information. It also helps keep paid hours, leave requests, and attendance-bank balances aligned before the pay cycle continues.
Use Geofencing to Control Where Employees Clock In and Out
Agencies can configure punch restrictions based on GPS location, an approved IP range, or both.
For mobile punches, the employee’s location can be compared with the configured work location and permitted radius. For Unified and mobile clock experiences, agencies can also use approved network ranges. When the configured conditions are not met, the punch can be blocked rather than simply flagged for review afterward.
The rules can be configured based on the agency’s environment. A field workforce may rely more heavily on GPS-based boundaries, an office-based workforce may use an approved network, and a hybrid environment may use both. This gives supervisors another way to support accurate time entry while reducing manual exception review.
What is new in Benefits?
The Summer release introduces a more guided open enrollment experience, additional plan-comparison information, and AI-assisted message creation.
Some of these Benefits capabilities are being introduced through a beta program, so availability may depend on agency participation and configuration.
Help employees compare similar benefit plans
Benefit Attributes and Compare Plans allow employees to review similar plans side by side within the enrollment workflow.
For example, an employee comparing two medical plans can see relevant coverage and cost information together instead of moving repeatedly between separate plan pages or documents. Benefits administrators can define the attributes employees should see so that comparisons reflect the information that is most meaningful for the plans being offered.
The goal is not to make the decision for the employee. It is to give the employee clearer information within the workflow so they can make a more informed selection.
Create a more guided open enrollment path
Open Enrollment Navigation introduces a modern, guided enrollment wizard with real-time cost visibility, plan-dependency logic, and more administrative control over the order in which employees move through their available options.
Benefits teams can customize the navigation to align with the agency’s enrollment experience. Employees continue to see only the plans included in the event for which they are eligible. When a plan is part of the event but has not been assigned to a customized step, it can still appear in an additional “Other” step so that it is not unintentionally hidden.
For employees, the experience is intended to make it easier to compare, price, and select plans. For benefits administrators, the added structure can reduce confusion, limit avoidable enrollment mistakes, and lessen the number of questions that require HR intervention.
Draft and refine open enrollment messages with AI assistance
Agencies that have enabled the applicable NEOGOV AI capability under Core HR can use an AI Writing Assistant when creating open enrollment messages.
The assistant can help benefits administrators draft or refine instructions, explanatory text, important links, and other communications included in an open enrollment event. The administrator remains responsible for reviewing and approving the final message.
This applies AI to a practical administrative task: reducing the time required to start a message while helping teams communicate enrollment information more clearly and consistently.
One release, one more connected workforce experience
The Summer 2026 release includes large workflow upgrades, targeted administrative controls, and smaller usability improvements. Their shared value is how they support the work surrounding an employee record.
A preferred name can appear more consistently across the employee experience. A salary change can be configured, previewed, audited, and applied through a guided process. Pending leave can be resolved before time moves to payroll. Payroll administrators can see the calculations, jurisdictions, earnings, and exceptions behind a pay result. Employees can receive clearer benefit information, while agency leaders can turn connected workforce data into dashboards and summaries that are easier to act on.
Together, those changes move public sector teams toward a more connected experience across Core HR, Benefits, Time & Attendance, Payroll, reporting, web, and mobile. All without losing the configuration and controls agencies need for their own policies and workforce structures.
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Continue the conversation at Ignite 2026
The Summer release is only part of the conversation. The agenda for Ignite 2026 is now live, with three days of public sector-focused training, product education, best practices, and networking in Orlando, Florida, from October 21–23.
Join NEOGOV product experts and public sector peers to explore current capabilities, learn new ways to use your solutions, and get a closer look at what is ahead.