What's new?

A big sprint for visibility and control. Employees can now see the full monetary value of their benefits, itemised and live-synced, right on the Kota home screen. Our Rules engine got a major upgrade, with country-scoped rules, group targeting, and per-benefit enrolment modes. And the new employer Activity Log gives HR admins a single timeline of every benefit change across the org.

Watch Luke and Tadhg walk through the highlights:

Total Reward: see the full value of your benefits

Up to 20% of your total compensation lives in your benefits — but almost no one sees it that way. Most people still think comp equals pay. Part of the problem is that total reward has always been badly served: a one-off PDF emailed by a broker, or a clunky web dashboard nobody ever checks.

Now employees can see a complete, itemised breakdown of their total compensation package — salary plus every employer-funded benefit, each listed individually by name and provider. When enabled, employees see exactly what their employer is contributing to their health cover, pension, and any other active benefits, in real monetary terms, live-synced from provider data.

The breakdown appears on the home screen of the Kota mobile app and in the employee web portal — your full package, in the palm of your hand, every time you open Kota.

Automation Rules: smarter, more powerful benefit assignment

Assigning the right benefits to the right people is fiddly and manual at scale. The Rules engine has had a significant upgrade so employers can set the logic once and let Kota handle the rest. Employers can now:

• Scope rules by country: a rule applies to employees in a specific region, making multi-country benefit setups cleaner and more precise.
• Target real employee groups: aim rules at named groups of employees, with an optional time window (for example, enrol someone 30 days after joining a group).
• Choose enrolment mode per benefit: each rule can auto-enrol employees immediately, or send an invitation for them to opt in themselves.
• See blocked employees at a glance: the rules list now shows a count of employees with missing information directly on each rule card, so admins can spot and fix issues without digging into individual records.

Rules also re-run automatically when a blocked employee's profile or salary is updated, rather than waiting for the next daily cycle. The result: real control over eligibility without the busywork, and far less risk of enrolling someone in the wrong plan or missing the date they became eligible.

Activity Log: a unified timeline of benefit changes

Kota does a lot under the hood, and until now it wasn't always obvious what was happening or when.

The employer portal now includes an Activity Log — a paginated, newest-first feed of meaningful events across your organisation. Custom benefit enrolments, profile changes, and other benefit activity now appear in a single view, making it easier for HR admins to audit what has happened and when.

Want to see any of this live? Talk to us →

Employees can now see a complete, itemised breakdown of their total compensation package - salary plus every employer-funded benefit, each listed individually by name and provider. The value breakdown appears on the home screen of the Kota mobile app and in the employee web portal.

Employers control whether the feature is visible to their employees via a simple toggle in Organisation Settings. When enabled, employees see exactly what their employer is contributing to their health cover, pension, and any other active benefits - in real monetary terms.

The billing entity detail page has been restructured. Invoices and payroll reporting data are now presented in separate tabs with paginated rows, replacing the previous layout where all rows were stacked. This makes busy billing entities significantly easier to navigate.

A heavy month of shipping. Spend cards now have the admin tooling and digital wallet support Finance teams have been asking for. Our benefits library expanded into Spain and deepened across the UK and Ireland. And Irish employers can now automate compliance with the new Auto-Enrolment rules.

Watch Luke and Tadhg walk through the highlights:

Kota Spend

Digital wallets

Kota Spend cards now work in digital wallets. Employees add the card from the app in about a minute, then tap to pay anywhere contactless is accepted. Lunch allowances, wellness budgets, and work-from-home stipends now work the way employees actually spend.

Admin dashboard

Finance teams see every transaction in one place. Opening balance, all spend, closing balance, exportable as a single ledger. Per-card detail is still there, but you no longer have to assemble the bigger picture by hand.

Stripe alerts in-portal

If Stripe ever needs information from your account to keep cards working, you'll now see a clear alert in the portal with a link to resolve it. No more cards quietly stopping without warning.

Receipt tracking with OCR

Every Kota Spend transaction triggers a push notification that takes the employee straight to the upload screen. They take a photo, OCR reads the receipt and fills in the details. On the admin side, you can see whether the receipt amount actually matches the transaction, not just whether something was attached. Audits move a lot quicker.

New benefits and providers

Seven new benefits went live across the UK, Ireland, and Spain:

• Bupa Health Cash Plans in the UK
• Unum income protection and life cover in the UK
• Sanitas health insurance in Spain
• Several new UK provider integrations

That brings whole-of-market coverage to every major employee benefit in Ireland, and meaningfully deeper options across the UK and Europe.

Auto-Enrolment for Ireland

Irish employers now have automated flags and rules to make staying compliant with occupational pension rules. Set the enrolment criteria once and the platform applies them to every new joiner, eligibility change, and opt-in/opt-out. HR teams no longer need to manually track who's in and who's out via spreadsheets.

Want to see any of this live? Talk to us →

Irish Life Health quotes now process more reliably, with improved handling of high-demand periods so employees get their quotes without delays.

Employers can now download employee receipts as PDFs directly from the portal, and the transactions table shows at a glance which transactions have a receipt attached. Pension dashboards now reflect opted-out employees accurately.

Employees are notified the moment a transaction is made on their Kota card — no more waiting hours to find out what was spent.

Employees can now add their Kota spend card to digital wallets. Employers setting up a custom benefit plan will also find the recommended tier pre-selected, making configuration quicker.

Employers now have a dedicated transaction dashboard with date range, receipt status, and card filters. Employees see a missing receipts banner on their dashboard and receive a weekly Friday reminder for any outstanding receipts. Employers can also require receipts to be submitted after every transaction when setting up a card.

Irish Life Health quotes now include full CPC disclosure — employers can see the exact loading percentage and discount in euros for each member on their plan. The health billing report now includes employee IDs, making it easy to reconcile health costs against payroll.

Employees can now upload receipts directly from their phone - snap a photo, choose from their library, or attach a file. The app pre-fills receipt details using OCR, tracks outstanding receipts across all allowances, and sends a push notification with a direct link when a receipt is needed.

The Kota mobile app now supports real-time push notifications, keeping employees informed about their benefits and spend activity as it happens.

Override or set an employee's pension contribution percentage directly — no action needed from the employee.

Admins can now adjust the employee contribution rate from the member configuration panel. It's built for onboarding and for teams managing contribution changes at scale, where asking every employee to update their own setting isn't practical.

Mid-cycle joiners are now billed for their pro-rated pension contributions straight away, instead of waiting for the next full billing run.

A supplemental billing pass automatically picks up any newly enrolled employees and bills their pro-rated contributions. The gap where mid-cycle enrollments were missed is closed — pension funding is accurate and timely from day one.

Secure your account with any RFC 6238-compatible authenticator app as an alternative to SMS codes.

Use Google Authenticator, 1Password, Authy, or any compatible app to generate verification codes at login. SMS and TOTP can be active at the same time, so you can choose the method that fits best — or layer both for extra assurance.

When auto-enrolment is active in Ireland, newly enrolled employees have their pension contributions set to compliant levels automatically — no employer action required.

Employees turning 23 who lose their age-based exemption are also handled each month without manual intervention. Your organisation stays compliant by default, without anyone having to track thresholds by hand.

Employers who report variable compensation now get a professionally designed, templated email reminder ahead of every billing date.

Every reminder includes the organisation name and due date. Reminders are now configured at the organisation level rather than per employee — fewer moving parts, more consistent delivery.

See which employees have pension contributions below the regulatory minimum, and fix them in one click.

A new compliance dashboard surfaces under-contributing employees at a glance. The auto-fix tool calculates and applies compliant contribution rates on your behalf, cutting manual intervention and compliance risk in a single step.

Employees can now see their health insurance policy numbers directly in the Kota app and the employee web portal.

Both group and individual policy numbers are displayed, so employees can look up their cover details the moment they need them — without pinging HR.

Employers in Ireland can now offer Aviva, alongside Irish Life and Zurich.

Employees get direct access to Aviva's fund range — including MyFutureFund — through the Kota platform, with a dedicated setup flow and fund evolution visuals on both web and mobile.

Organisations using identity providers like Okta can now enforce SSO login for both admin and employee accounts.

Employees at SSO-enabled companies are automatically redirected to their company login, and phone OTP login is disabled for those accounts — making access both more secure and more seamless.

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We've rebuilt the reporting section of the Kota admin dashboard from the ground up, giving HR and finance teams cleaner, more actionable data.

New reports available

• Cost per employee — total monthly employer benefit spend broken down by individual
• Enrolment status report — see at a glance who is and isn't enrolled in each benefit
• Joiner/leaver log — full audit trail of benefit changes triggered by HRIS events
• Contribution history — exportable pension and spend card contribution records by pay period

All reports are exportable as CSV. Scheduled email delivery (weekly or monthly) can be configured under Settings → Reports.

We've launched a free Benefits Benchmarking Tool at benchmark.kota.io, giving HR and People teams an instant read on how their benefits package compares to similar companies.

What the tool covers

• Health insurance coverage levels by company size and sector
• Pension contribution rates — employer and employee
• Flexible benefit allowance benchmarks
• Life assurance multiples across industries
• Spend card allowance averages

Results are generated instantly with no signup required. Use the tool before your next renewal cycle to make sure your package is competitive.

Kota Employee App — Redesigned Experience

We've shipped a major redesign of the Kota employee app (iOS & Android), focused on helping employees understand and actually value the benefits their employer provides.

What's new in the app

• New Benefits Summary home screen showing total employer investment per employee
• Clearer health insurance policy details — excess, coverage limits, and how to make a claim
• Pension dashboard with live contribution tracking and projected retirement pot
• Push notifications for policy renewals, contribution changes, and new benefit additions
• Improved onboarding flow for new joiners — takes under 3 minutes to get fully set up

Update your app via the App Store or Google Play to get the new experience.

Kota now supports the Irish Auto-Enrolment pension scheme, allowing employers to set up an Auto-Enrolment exempt occupational pension in minutes — avoiding the complexity of the state scheme entirely.

Key highlights

• Full setup in under 10 minutes from the Kota dashboard
• Automatic employee enrolment based on eligibility rules
• Contribution calculations and deductions handled automatically
• Payroll integration ensures contribution data flows back without manual intervention
• Employees can view contribution history and projected retirement figures in the app

For guidance on whether an exempt scheme is right for your organisation, our benefits team is available to advise. Learn more about Auto-Enrolment.

We're excited to announce the launch of the Kota Flex Spend Card, a new way for employers to issue and manage employee benefit allowances directly on debit cards.

What's new

• Instantly issue virtual and physical cards to employees via the Kota dashboard
• Set automated spending controls by category (e.g. wellness, travel, meals)
• Real-time transaction visibility for finance and HR teams
• Employees can view their card balance and transaction history in the Kota app

The Flex Spend Card is available to all customers. Contact your account manager to enable it for your organisation.