Jun 2022
9
How many times have your employees had problems locating their payslips? Whether employees forget their passwords to access payslips, lose their payslips, or their payslips never got sent to them in the first place, following this up can take a lot of your precious time away as a business owner. If you’re sending paper-based payslips, problems that crop up can take even longer to rectify. Tracking down old payslips from weeks, months, or maybe even years ago can also take up a chunk of your day-to-day admin work.
Payroll should be a smooth and intuitive process, even after payslips have been finalised. Payslip distribution and locating employees’ payslips shouldn’t be a burden or cause unnecessary stress. It should be an automated process, allowing you more time to attend to other matters of your business. Here’s how our employee app can streamline payslip distribution for you.
Once the payslips have been finalised, they’re automatically synced to the employee app, allowing your employees to easily access, download and print their payslips from anywhere, at any time. They will also receive a push notification on their phone when a new payslip has become available to view, eliminating the hassle of follow-up emails or re-printing payslips. This gives your staff complete control over when and where they can access their payslips, improving their employee satisfaction.
Say goodbye to the eons spent searching in file cabinets and desktop files for employees’ old payslips. With the employee app, a complete history of all your employees’ payslips are stored securely on the platform, and are accessible at a moment’s notice. Whether an employee wants to double check an old payslip or is applying for a mortgage – their payslip history is readily available from one centraliszed location, at the tap of a button.
Not only does the employee app save you time distributing payslips, improve employee satisfaction, and increases your business’ efficiency, but it’s also better for the environment. Payslips can stack up a large portion of paper weight each year and can be a costly expense for businesses.
It can be difficult to stray from systems that we’re more familiar with, but digitalising payroll processes can help your business stay in line with competition, by evolving to more modern and tech-savvy practices.
Interested in learning more about BrightPay Connect? Watch this short one-minute video on how it works. We offer free 15-minute demos for you to see in more detail how our cloud-extension works, and how it can take your business to the next level.
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Jun 2022
1
It’s time to work smarter and faster when offering payroll services to your clients. Join our upcoming webinar on the 9th of June where BrightPay’s Marketing Manager, Rachel Quinn, will explore 6 current payroll trends, and how they can be used to transform your practice.
During our upcoming webinar on the 16th of June, BrightPay will discuss the benefits of integrating your payroll and accounting software. Our experts will demonstrate how you can streamline the entire process from start to finish using API technology.
The NIC thresholds are increasing from 6th July 2022. BrightPay has been updated to reflect these changes, so please ensure that you are using the latest version of the software. These rates will then automatically apply to payments due to be made on 6th July or later.
Processing payroll for your clients can and should be profitable. In this guide, find out how using BrightPay and BrightPay Connect together, can help your practice save time and money. By introducing cloud innovation and automation, you can run payroll more efficiently while making a profit.
BrightPay Connect takes the stress out of managing annual leave. With a company-wide calendar and employee portal, your clients can easily approve holiday requests, on the go. The leave will automatically be added to the employee calendar, and synchronised to the payroll software.
As part of the BrightPay journal process, users can now add further adjustments to their payroll journal before posting into their accounting software. For example, to record HMRC Payment adjustments, such as employment allowance and recoverable statutory pay.
Last year, we introduced new prompts in BrightPay. Now, we want your feedback. Click here to complete a quick, 1-minute survey, so that we can evaluate these changes.
May 2022
24
Managing employees’ annual leave can be a stressful process. For you as the employer, having email or even paper requests sent from multiple locations can be frustrating, especially during busy holiday periods. Likewise, employees having their leave rejected because of double bookings or mismanagement can sometimes sour working relationships. An inefficient annual leave system can also make managing and tracking payroll to become more difficult.
Having a system in place that can automate these tedious aspects of annual leave management can improve your working relationships with employees, as well as increasing their job satisfaction levels.
It’s time for your employees to say goodbye to printed letters, excel spreadsheets and long email threads to book annual leave. While these more traditional methods can be still used, they’re becoming less and less reliable, and there are more effective alternatives to take their place.
Moving annual leave management to a secure online portal offers many benefits for your business, including:
Using BrightPay’s cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, automates the entire annual leave process for you. Our employee self-service app allows staff to request annual leave through an easy-to-use calendar format on their smartphone or tablet device, where you will then receive a notification on your own employer dashboard. From here, you can view the company calendar through the same and choose to either approve or reject employees’ requests. Managing annual leave has never been so easy!
Our cloud extension comes with a host of other benefits to increase your service offering, such as:
Interested learning more about BrightPay Connect? Sign up for a free 15-minute demo. Interested in staying up to date on all the latest payroll trends and legislative changes? Sign up to our newsletter below for weekly emails so you can stay in the loop.
May 2022
23
It’s hard to believe it’s that time of the year again, to start preparing your P60s, where did the time go? With the new tax year well underway and payroll processors settled back into their routines, it can be easy for to forget about upcoming HMRC deadlines. Luckily, we’re here to keep you informed with all the latest up-to-date payroll news and legislative updates. The next upcoming due date is the P60 deadline, on May 31st.
By May 31st, all employees who were working for you on the last day of the tax year (April 5th, 2022) must receive a copy of their P60. Failure to provide employees with their P60s by this deadline can result in costly fines from HMRC, that can build up quite quickly. However, accidents happen and if you can provide proof of a genuine mistake, the likelihood of receiving a fine is lessened. Fines start out at £300 , with an added £60 per day penalty thereafter.
This is why we strongly advise to start preparing now for this year’s P60 deadline, to avoid the possibility of any fines cropping up in the coming weeks.
Preparing P60s can seem daunting at first, and depending on what payroll software provider you use, it can be either a tedious process or one that is automated, requiring minimal work. If you’re using BrightPay Payroll Software, we’ve made the process of preparing and sharing P60s as smooth as possible for you. In the payroll software, the P60 option is located within the “Employees” tab. From there, you can generate the P60 of individual employees, or you can generate P60s for multiple employees at once.
Once the P60s have been created, you can email the files to your employees, directly from the payroll software. You also have the option to print or export the documents in PDF format. If you use our cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, once generated, your employees will automatically be able to access their P60s from the online employee portal or through the employee app on their smartphone.
By using our cloud extension, you don’t have to worry about your employees misplacing their P60s. All employees’ P60s are stored conveniently in one location, on the employee self-service app. From here, your staff can view, print and download their P60s, as well as their payslips and any other important payroll or HR documents.
If you’re still distributing physical documents to employees, there’s a chance that these documents could fall into the wrong hands. Likewise, if you accidentally send these files to the wrong email address, there’s a possibility of unauthorised persons viewing employees’ sensitive personal and financial information.
Having your employees’ documents stored in the cloud, accessible from one central location, improves the safety of your employees’ data. It also reduces your administrative workload and saves your business time.
To make thinks easier for employers, we’ve created a list that summarises all of the key dates for the 2022/23 tax year. For the latest payroll news and legislative updates, sign up to our weekly newsletter to stay in the loop.
Did you know that by the 6th of July 2022, you must report any employee expenses and benefits for the 2021/22 tax year? For further information on this, please read here.
Interested in using BrightPay? We are a fully compliant HMRC payroll software with both the credibility and reputation behind us. Why not take a look at our 5-star ratings on Trustpilot or book a free 15-minute demo of our award-winning payroll software.
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May 2022
5
Paying employees and making payments to HMRC, each pay period can be a timely task for bureaus. Not only from an admin point of view, but also the time it takes to manually create bank files, rectify any errors that crop up, and ensuring that payments land in employees’ bank accounts on time. It’s a lot to juggle on top of everything else on your to-do list.
Imagine if there was a sophisticated system that integrated with your payroll software. A system that allowed you to pay employees, subcontractors and HMRC easily and smoothly, eliminated manually uploading bank files, and improved the security and time-efficiency of your payments…
Modulr, a direct payments platform, is integrated with BrightPay Payroll Software and can do all of the above for you. Modulr completely streamlines the entire payment process of your payroll workflow, leaving you with more time to attend to other business matters. Here are three key ways that BrightPay’s integration with Modulr can take your bureau to the next level.
Modulr allows you to pay employees in just 90 seconds from within the payroll software. It’s an all-in-one seamlessly integrated payments system. The integration can save you time by removing the need to double and triple-check that all pay amounts are correct, as this information flows directly from the payroll software.
Modulr allows you to schedule payments in advance and you can make any last-minute changes to clients’ employees’ payments if needs be, on any day of the week. This gives you much greater flexibility when making payments, in comparison to more traditional payment methods.
Modulr provides added layers of protection for payments through a range of security features. Their partnership with the authenticator app, Authy, is an optional feature that provides two-factor authentication when logging in. Two-factor authentication means that there are two forms of identification required when logging in. These can include a code that is sent to your phone number or email address, or can include biometrics such as a fingerprint. This ensures that only authorised users can approve payments within the client’s company. If the client would rather that you authorise the payments for them, this can be done also. Once the payments have been approved, they will be sent straight to employees’ bank accounts within 90 seconds or at the scheduled time. Modulr’s network is also fully encrypted, protecting your payments from any potential cyber-hacks or ransomware.
Having a direct payments system in place eliminates the likelihood of any data input errors and uploading issues to occur, saving you time rectifying any payment submission problems should they arise. This gives you peace of mind, knowing that your clients’ employees will be paid on time, every time.
BrightPay is a fully HMRC complaint payroll software. This integration with Modulr automates most of the workload involved in submitting HMRC payments. No longer do you have to export and upload files from multiple locations – it can all be done from one centralised location – within your payroll software. Your HMRC payments will also be sent and received by HMRC in just 90 seconds.
To discover more about BrightPay’s integration with Modulr, please read our webpage on the topic.
Interested in learning more about BrightPay? Sign up for a free 15-minute demo today. We are one of the leading providers of payroll software for accountants in the UK, are a fully HMRC complaint payroll software and have a 5-star rating on Trustpilot.
Apr 2022
26
Whether you have one or 10,000 employees, automatic enrolment is a legal requirement for all UK employers. Automatic enrolment was brought in to make it easier for people to save for their retirement, by bringing pension schemes into the workplace.
Although this is great for employees, it has added to employers’ workloads, as they’re required to handle auto enrolment duties on top of everything else already on their to-do list.
Automatic enrolment does affect payroll, and has become an extension of the payroll process. The Pensions Regulator encourages businesses to use payroll software that can handle auto- enrolment duties. Such duties include:
The payroll software you choose can either make or break the auto-enrolment part of your payroll process. Whichever software you pick, it should at least complete employee assessments for you for each pay period.
BrightPay includes full auto-enrolment functionality at no extra cost in all of our licences. This includes an array of features that simplify the automatic enrolment process, including:
Re-enrolment is required for certain staff members every three years. It is simply enrolling employees back into an auto-enrolment pension scheme, if they’ve opted out. To apply for re-enrolment, you must complete a re-declaration of compliance with The Pensions Regulator. This is to make sure you’ve completed your mandatory re-enrolment duties.
To do this, you must first choose a re-enrolment date. Next, you must assess your staff to find out which employees need to be re-enrolled. After that, you are then required to put those employees back into a pension scheme within 6 weeks of the re-enrolment date.
Once this is setup, your employees must be sent a letter, letting them know that they are re-enrolled into an auto enrolment pension scheme. You are then required to submit a re-declaration of compliance, which applies even if you don’t have any staff. Further details of re-enrolment requirements and processes can be found here.
BrightPay simplifies the re-enrolment process for you by notifying you of when an employee should be re-enrolled, allowing you to re-enrol them within the software and automatically generating a re-enrolment letter for each employee.
BrightPay is integrated with a number of pension providers, allowing you to submit pension data directly within BrightPay. These include:
We are also compatible with a number of other pension schemes for upload via CSV files. Click here to view a full list of pension providers.
As mentioned above, BrightPay provides full auto-enrolment functionality at no extra cost. Once your duties start date has been entered into BrightPay, you will receive notifications on-screen from that point onwards of any auto- enrolment duties you need to take care of.
Once the duties start date is reached and you’ve set up your pension scheme provider, BrightPay assesses all of your employees automatically, and will keep an eye on any changes to their work status for each pay period.
BrightPay also automatically generates and prepares enrolment letters that can be emailed or exported as PDFs and are personalised for each employee. If you need to enrol any new employees, this is easily done in BrightPay too.
We have a range of online resources to support you around auto- enrolment, including video tutorials and support documents, covering a whole range of automatic enrolment topics.
"BrightPay is an excellent payroll program. What stands out for me is how it takes care of Auto Enrolment automatically, which is even more of a godsend now re-enrolment dates are coming up. Slick modern interface too makes it a dream to use."
- Craig Thornton , CST Accountancy Services Ltd
Take the hassle out of automatic enrolment today – learn how BrightPay can help streamline your entire payroll process, so you can tend to more important matters of your business. Book a free 15-minute demo today.
Apr 2022
22
Backing up your payroll data is a crucial step in the payroll process to ensure the safety and security of your clients’ data and the data of their employees.
Whether you back up your payroll data daily, weekly or monthly – manually backing up your clients’ payroll data can be another dreaded monotonous task on your never-ending to-do-list.
Not only that, but by not backing up your payroll data, it can leave your clients’ in quite a vulnerable position. What happens if you spill coffee all over your keyboard, or get a virus on your laptop? This could result in weeks, months, or maybe even years of payroll data gone before your eyes.
That’s where automatic backups come in. Automatic backups do all the work so you don’t have to, by storing your payroll data on the cloud. This not only saves you time, but also gives you peace of mind. See it as insurance for your payroll data, providing a secure safety net should a crisis occur, allowing you time to focus on other tasks at hand.
There are many other perks to automatically backing up your payroll data too, such as GDPR. Having your clients’ and their employees’ data stored in a secure and remote location improves your GDPR compliance.
BrightPay Connect is the cloud extension to one of the UK’s leading payroll software providers, BrightPay.
BrightPay Connect automatically backs up your payroll data every 15 minutes securely to Microsoft Azure data stores. This is fully encrypted and tested regularly to ensure its safety, security and resilience. It also stores chronological backups of data, so you can restore your payroll data from anywhere, at any time.
That’s not all, BrightPay Connect provides many other features, such as a bureau dashboard, a client self-service portal, client payroll entry and payroll approval request functionality. This reduces your admin workload, while also improving your client engagement across the board.
You can also personalise your BrightPay Connect account by adding your own company logo, name and contact details, which will be visible to clients while they access the software. Watch this quick two-minute video on how BrightPay Connect can work for your accounting firm.
Check out how this user found peace of mind after signing up to BrightPay Connect:
“After using other payroll packages for several years, I was highly delighted when I discovered BrightPay. It was the easiest, fastest and operator friendly software I had ever used. The reports are very comprehensive and emailing payslips and reports to clients and employees is so easy. The time I save per payroll is great and the affordability of the package and the different scales make this the package to choose.”
- Irene Hopkinson, Westmill Accountancy
It’s time to take your clients’ payroll data security seriously, book a demo with BrightPay Connect today and never worry about losing your payroll data again!
Apr 2022
5
This year’s Spring Statement or “mini-budget” has brought some small changes to how payroll is processed, which will be happening in April and July 2022.
The first change was made to Employment Allowance, which will increase from £4,000 to £5,000 per year. This will take effect from 6th April 2022.
The National Insurance Primary Threshold will increase from £9,880 to the same level as the tax threshold, £12,570. This will take effect from 6th July 2022.
If you’re using BrightPay, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to these changes. Our software is up to date with these new regulations, and they have been implemented in the software. You, as the payroll processor, can simply continue using BrightPay the way you always have.
Here at BrightPay, as one of the leading payroll software providers in the UK and Ireland, we aim to provide you with the most up-to-date and innovative solutions to your day-to-day payroll processes and workflow.
BrightPay is a fully HMRC compliant software, ensuring that your business’ payroll aligns with the latest legislation. BrightPay also stores all communication logs that you have with HMRC, letting you know if your submissions contain any errors in a user-friendly format, which can save you lots of time.
Find it hard to get your head around Automatic Enrolment requirements? BrightPay streamlines the entire process for you and provides full automatic enrolment functionality within the payroll software. From setting up employees’ pensions schemes and enrolling them, to sending out personalised automatic enrolment letters and re-enrolment – BrightPay makes all of this possible in a simple and user-friendly format, saving your business a hefty amount of admin workload.
Unsure when it comes to paying subcontractors? BrightPay has an entire tab dedicated to CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) within the payroll software that caters to all types of subcontractors – including companies, partnerships and sole traders. You can also verify new subcontractors through HMRC from within the payroll software.
Our cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, helps ensure GDPR compliance by storing your employees’ payroll data securely in the cloud. These backups are done automatically every 15 minutes, ensuring the safety and security of your employees’ payroll.
BrightPay hosts regular free online webinars including webinars on updates to changes in payroll legislation. As well as this, through our website you can find support documentation, video tutorials and payroll guides, available for you to read at any time.
Interested in learning more about BrightPay? Why not sign up for a free 15-minute demo to see how our software can enhance your business in more detail. You can also try our software for free with our 60-day free trial, so you can get the best use of our software before making any commitments.
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Apr 2022
1
As an accountant, switching payroll software providers can be an overwhelming decision, given the amount of options available. It’s important to choose a payroll software that can not only meet your clients’ expectations but exceed them as part of your service offering.
Here are seven reasons why accountants are making the switch this new tax year to one of the UK’s leading payroll software providers.
Switching over to new software can sometimes be a complicated and time-consuming task to undertake. On top of that, many software providers who offer migration support to their customers, require a service fee. To help take the hassle out of migrating from one payroll software to another, BrightPay offers free migration support.
When you choose to switch over to BrightPay payroll software, you will be assigned an account manager who will guide you throughout the entire setup process, at no extra cost. This ensures that you’re on your feet and ready to go once the switch over has been made.
Book a free migration call with us today and find out why accountants are switching to BrightPay. We are an award-winning payroll software provider, winning AccountingWEB’s ‘Top Payroll Product of the Year 2021’ and ‘Payroll and HR Software of the Year 2021’.
With BrightPay, you can batch process payroll for multiple clients at the same time, which is especially useful for single-director clients whose payroll doesn’t change each pay period. This includes batch finalising payslips, batch sending any outstanding RTI and CIS submissions, along with batch checking for coding notices.
With our cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, you can view all of your clients’ payroll information in one secure location, through an online bureau dashboard. Here, you can send payroll requests to clients and in turn, they can enter their payments, additions and deductions for that pay period through their own employer dashboard. You can review the information the client has entered and once happy with it and you have accepted it, the information will automatically update in the payroll software. This feature means you won't have to manually add the payroll information or upload a CSV file.
You can also send a payroll summary to clients for approval before the payslips are finalised. This ensures that your clients are accountable for the accuracy of their employees’ payslips.
BrightPay Connect’s employer dashboard can also benefit your clients by streamlining HR processes. These include:
BrightPay Connect also comes with other benefits for accountants and bureaus, such as customisable branding options. Through this, your clients can see your own company name, logo and contact details when they login, enhancing your relationship with them.
Interested in learning more about BrightPay Connect? Watch this short one-minute video on how BrightPay Connect can enhance your business or book a free online demo.
Our integration with direct payments platform, Modulr, allows you to pay employees in as little as 90 seconds, directly through BrightPay. Through the integration, you can also schedule payments, which lets you make any last-minute changes, allowing greater flexibility in how you pay employees.
When using BrightPay, you can create your own customised reports, with over 100 data items to choose from. These reports can be viewed, printed or downloaded, at your convenience. Clients also have the ability to run reports themselves through their employer dashboard, meaning less emails and less admin work for payroll processors.
BrightPay includes full CIS functionality at no extra cost, allowing you to process subcontractors’ payroll quickly and easily. You can also send subcontractor verification requests directly to HMRC from within BrightPay.
Setting up automatic enrolment pension schemes is also a breeze with BrightPay, simplifying the entire automatic enrolment process. BrightPay is integrated with a number of the UK’s leading pension providers and automatically assesses your clients’ employees for you, and notifies you of any changes to their work status. BrightPay also goes the extra mile by automatically generating enrolment letters for you that are customised for each employee, streamlining this task for you even further.
With BrightPay, the payroll software can be installed on up to 10 different devices. This means that up to 10 different users can process the payroll or from 10 different locations. It also means that if you have employees who process the payroll working remotely, they have the ability to access the software from multiple locations.
Apr 2022
1
To assist customers in completing the tax year and transitioning to 2022/23, we’ve created a step-by-step guide and video tutorial on 5 Steps to Completing the Tax Year 2021/22. We have also combined a list of frequently asked questions about the transition.
If your bureau has a lot of single-director companies or payrolls that don’t change from week to week, BrightPay gives you the ability to batch process multiple employer files, all at once. Our cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, offers additional impressive features, including a bureau dashboard, as well as a self-service dashboard for your clients.
As summer approaches, annual leave requests can be difficult to manage. With our cloud-extension, BrightPay Connect, your employees can simply request leave via their smartphone, on the employee app. You, as the employer, will then receive a notification and can simply approve/reject the request.
It can be easy to miss HMRC payment deadlines, which unfortunately can result in hefty penalties. In our upcoming webinar on 26th April, we discuss how our integration with Modulr can guarantee payments being sent and received to HMRC, in just 90 seconds. We’ll also discuss:
The May bank holiday weekend will be moved to the 2nd of June, with an additional bank holiday on Friday, the 3rd of June. This four-day weekend is to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Our recent blog post on the topic covers employee entitlements around the holiday.
In a world where customers have infinite choices, it can be difficult to stand out from competitors. There are many factors businesses should take into consideration when outsourcing their payroll, such as security, compliance and reliability. In our guide, we examine the impact cloud platforms have on this decision-making process, and how you can use this to differ yourself in the industry.
We are delighted to announce that following our successful merger with Relate Software in 2021 to become Bright, we have now acquired AccountancyManager, the UK’s leading practice management software. This acquisition will provide customers with an end-to-end suite of award-winning software. We'll keep you updated on our progress.