There’s a nice moment that happens every December. Someone in payroll remembers to tell the team the Christmas pay date has moved earlier because of the bank holidays, and someone else forgets, and a handful of employees end up wondering where their money is. It’s a small thing, but it happens every year, and it’s entirely avoidable.
From October 2026, it will be. We’re introducing Elementary Announcements, a new feature built directly into Elementary that lets you send messages straight to your employees, right where they already check their pay.
Why we built this
A lot of what payroll teams need to say to employees isn’t complicated.
- It’s a Christmas pay date moving earlier.
- It’s the office being closed between Christmas and New Year.
- It’s letting everyone know about the summer social, or a change to how holiday requests work.
None of it needs a formal email chain or a notice pinned to a board that half the team never walks past. It just needs to land in front of people, clearly, at the right moment.
We wanted managers to be able to send that kind of message in a couple of minutes, and know it’s actually been seen, Elementary takes care of this problem.
What you can do as a manager
You’ll get a dedicated Announcements page in Elementary, accessible straight from the side navigation. From there, you can write a title and message using a simple rich text editor, and send it to exactly who needs to see it.
Targeting is flexible. Send a general announcement to everyone, like your Christmas closure dates or details of the summer social, or narrow it down to a specific payroll and department, say, letting one site know their pay date has moved for Christmas while everyone else’s stays the same.
You can also link an announcement to a specific pay date. This is where it gets nice. If you’re applying a Christmas bonus, an end-of-year thank you, or any one-off payment, you can attach a personal message to that exact payslip. It turns a bonus from a line on a payslip into something that actually feels like a thank you, without any extra admin.
Once a message is live, you’re not locked in. You can edit the title, content, targeting, or pay date link at any time, and the changes take effect immediately. Said something wrong, or the message has served its purpose? Delete it, with a confirmation step first so nothing disappears by accident.
There’s also a “show to new starters” toggle. Switch it on and anyone who joins after you’ve published will automatically see it too, handy for onboarding messages or policies that should apply to everyone from day one.
Knowing who’s actually seen it
This is the part managers have asked for most. Every announcement comes with a read audit, so you can see exactly who opened it and when, and who hasn’t yet. You can filter down to just the unread list, and export the whole thing as a CSV if you need it for your own records, useful if you need to show that everyone was told about a closure or a pay date change.
If you edit a published announcement’s content or targeting, the read status resets for anyone affected, so the picture you’re looking at is always current.
What employees see
For employees, it’s simple. Log in and, if there’s something new waiting, they’ll see a clear notification on the dashboard with the title of the message. Tap it and they’re taken straight to the announcement list, where read and unread items are clearly marked.
Every announcement stays available to look back on, so if someone wants to double check when the office reopens after Christmas, or reread that thank you message that came with their bonus, it’s still there.
Why we built it this way
Communication should live where the work already happens. Managers already use Elementary to manage payroll, and employees already use it to check their pay. Putting announcements here means one less system to juggle, and one less chance for a message to get lost between an inbox and a noticeboard.
It also means the little moments don’t get missed either. A thank you attached to a bonus payslip, a heads up about an earlier Christmas pay date, an invite to the summer social. Small messages, sent well, go a long way.
When it’s landing
Announcements are scheduled for release in October 2026 as part of Elementary’s ongoing rollout. We’ll share more detail on exact dates and any setup steps closer to launch.
If you’ve got questions about how Elementary Announcements will work for your organisation, get in touch with your Ascend account contact and we’ll walk you through it.
