IRIS Cascade summer 2026 software update

Our IRIS Cascade team have been busy these last few months, working on a number of exciting software updates and new features.

In our latest Cascade webinar, the product team walked through what we’ve delivered and how it’ll help customers.

In this blog, we’ve rounded up the recent updates across four key areas: HR, payroll, API and support.

IRIS Cascade: HR updates

Over the past few months, we’ve shipped a number of HR improvements to IRIS Cascade, in addition to a new, larger feature that customers have been asking for.

Many of the recent IRIS Cascade improvements are centred around usability, accessibility and housekeeping, including:

• Details menus renamed across ‘admin’, ‘payroll’ and ‘workflows’ for consistency
• Dark mode extended to ‘admin’, ‘awards’, ‘user themes’, ‘login pages’ and ‘MyCascade’
• Entitlement summary redesigned to show all rows, supporting accessibility
• MyCascade user interface (UI) refresh
• New housekeeping job auto-clears requests older than two years
• Bradford Factor can now be unticked for sick attendance categories
• MyCascade zero-entitlement message redesigned for clarity
• Upcoming holiday/bank holiday dashboard chart restyled
• Pagination added to workflow catalogue
• DocuSign documents can now be merged and sent to multiple employees in one go
• Query builder: new ‘DocuSign status’ field shows signed/awaiting-signature
• Employee screens: accessibility and usability improvements for keyboard and screen-reader users
• Removed unused ‘theme (old theme builder)’ field and renamed ‘theme (new UI user theme)’ to ‘user theme’
• Task list popup styling improved
• Global salary review: review status column and sidebar key restyled with new status icons and accessibility text

New IRIS Cascade HR feature: edit your own email templates

This feature was asked for by a lot of customers, and it addresses a long-standing pain point.

Previously, if you created a new screen with custom fields and wanted to use those fields in a workflow email, you had to come to us to set it up, which took time.

Now you can do it yourself!

In email design, create a new email and go to the ‘fields’ tab.

From there, you can:

• Search for any screen you’ve created, whether custom or standard
• Select multiple fields at once using the new multi-tick boxes
• Pick fields from an email you’ve already built, if it already has what you need
• Choose which record to pull, using options such as ‘primary’, ‘most recently added’ and ‘last modified’

IRIS Cascade: payroll updates

Payroll’s recent updates have been driven largely by legislation, including:

• Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) overhaul from 6 April 2026: waiting days removed, LEL threshold removed, new weekly rate calculations and transitional protection for 2025/26 claimants
• New 2026/27 legislation: Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP) for Northern Ireland and Student Loan Plan 5
• Legislation settings updated for 6 April 2026 changes across National Insurance (NI), tax, student loans, Apprenticeship Levy, Employment Allowance and all statutory payments
• New Parental Bereavement Leave fields: country of SPBP entitlement and miscarriage flag
• Gender pay gap report: negative values now supported via new ‘display as negative’ pay element parameter
• New pay element parameter to zero the standard value after payment (prevents re-payment of cloned elements)
• Approved mileage rates increased to 55p/mile for the first 10,000 miles (2026/27)

New IRIS Cascade payroll feature: gender pay gap bonus-only reporting

Customers asked for a way to show only bonuses on the gender pay gap report, without the other elements.

Previously, payroll only offered a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on ‘include in gender pay gap’.

Now there are two options:

• Gender pay gap and bonus: the equivalent of the old ‘yes’
• Bonus only: shows only the bonus elements on the report

IRIS Cascade: HR API updates

We’ve spent the year improving the IRIS Cascade HR API’s usability, adding the following updates:

• Record limit increased: /Jobs to 1,500, /BankDetails to 2,000, /EmergencyContacts to 4,000, /Hierarchy to 5,000, /AbsenceDay to 5,000 and /AbsenceReason to 5,000
• New benefits endpoint: create, update and delete
• New emergency contacts endpoint: create, update and delete
• New fields: Jobs PositionID, SalaryWithCurrency, BenefitsCurrency, AbsenceReason and ParentName
• CreatedBy and LastModifiedBy now populate as ‘HR API’ for API-made changes
• New PATCH method trialled on /BankDetails
• Level partner integration: full API-driven seamless connection
• Employee calendar now shows ‘absence category’ instead of ‘type’, for privacy
• Failure Notification Service extended to ‘benefits’
• 12 new nested convenience endpoints added
• New ‘lieu’ added to /AbsenceReason

IRIS Cascade: support update

We’ve had a focused effort on significantly reducing our open defect backlog, concentrating on critical and high-priority issues.

Since our last update, we’ve resolved a batch of product defects across HR, payroll and API, driving a decrease of 59% in the number of support tickets waiting.

We’re now holding more regular touch points with our support team and they’re helping the product team prioritise the critical and high-priority defects.

We’ll keep working through the rest, and you’ll see those numbers continue to drop.

Watch the IRIS Cascade update webinar

For more information on the above, as well as a look at what’s coming next, watch the full webinar.

To see our previous IRIS Cascade update blog, click here.

For more information on IRIS Cascade, visit the product page here, or download the software brochure below.