BrightPay continues to evolve

BrightPay receives excellent customer satisfaction, provides expert customer support and saves time. Over the last year, we identified key features to improve and make the payroll journey easier, including:

• CSV payroll journal export facility for import into accounting software.
• NEST API capabilities to validate groups and payment sources and to send payment approval requests for contributions schedule.
• Easier import processing from other payroll software providers. 
• 30 second import from HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools. 
• Payroll and HR cloud portal to automatically backup payroll data online, with online access to payslips, reporting, annual leave and HR documents.

These improvements make BrightPay a progressive payroll product, continually evolving to maximise time saving benefits for customers. Our latest cloud add-on, BrightPay Connect, offers savings of up to 75% to our payroll bureau customers when bulk purchasing multiple BrightPay Connect licences.

Testimonials

• I recently moved from HMRC Basic Tools. Everything transferred very easily and all the employee information I needed was in BrightPay instantly.
• Submitting PAYE and pensions contributions (including emailing payslips and submissions to HMRC and NEST) takes not more than 3 or 4 minutes on average.
• One of the best payroll portals I have used! I really like the new documents feature.

Click for more testimonials & case studies.

Posted byKaren BennettinNew Features

2016 - 17 Best Year Ever for HMRC Customer Service

HMRC’s Annual Report and Accounts for the tax year 2016-17 revealed the best results for customer service performance. The report sets out HMRC’s latest performance results which includes the collection of £28.9 billion from compliance activities, which exceeded their government target. With total tax revenues of £574.9 billion, this report shows record tax revenues for the seventh year in a row. The Annual Report is available here.

HMRC online services and new improvements have made it easier for customers to obtain information, advice and support.  The improvements have also made it easier to process returns which has lead to an increased number of HMRC customers going digital. For example, over 9.4 million HMRC customers accessed their Personal Tax account online and HMRC conducted over 1.6 million web chats.

Customers can still contact HMRC by telephone or post seven days a week.  The average call waiting time for customers to get through to HMRC during 2016-17 was approximately 4 minutes. Postal levels are the lowest in recent years.

Regarding renewing tax credits, nearly 2.5 million did so ahead of the deadline of 31st July 2016 and around one million people renewed their tax credits online, an increase of 30% on the previous year.

HMRC’s Charter Annual Report sets out the relationship between HMRC and their customers, what customers can expect from HMRC, and the behaviours HMRC expect from their customers. This helps HMRC strive for their commitment to provide excellent customer service. The Charter Annual Report can be viewed here.

Posted byDebbie ClarkeinHMRC

The story behind BrightPay Connect ….. in 60 seconds.

We started out with the idea of automating the payroll backup to a secure location and, while that backup was being stored remotely, to optionally allow employee access to their current and historic payslips.

Then we were asked if we could provide a way for employees to change their personal details and this was followed by a suggestion that maybe the employees could request leave and that the employer, in deciding whether to approve these requests, would be able to view a company wide calendar to see who else was off on the requested dates. BrightPay Connect, an optional cloud add on was born.

More recently, we added the ability to upload documents, for example employment contracts, to the employee portal, so that all such documents would be easily accessible and the employer would also know if and when they had been opened by the employees.

Although it was not our intention starting out, it now appears that we have ended up with a fairly complete HR system suitable for most small businesses and, no doubt, the list of HR features will continue to grow.

As an employer, you can also provide access to your accountant or anyone else you might want to share with. You can also specify different access levels so that, for example, the person approving holiday requests doesn’t get to see how much your employees are paid.

The 2 things that customers really rave about are (1) you are up and running in seconds, as this is all the time it takes to sync all of your employees and (2) you can access your employees’ details from anywhere, from any device.

Book a BrightPay Connect Demo today to see how you and your employees can benefit.

BrightPay - Payroll and Auto Enrolment Software
Bright Contracts - Employment Contracts and Handbooks 

Posted byPaul ByrneinBrightPay ConnectEmployee ContractsNew Features

Employers warned by The Pension Regulator regarding Fake Exemption Certificates

Employers are being made aware of an apparent scam of exemption certificates for automatic enrolment purposes being offered by at least one company. An investigation is being undertaken by The Pension Regulator into this company offering what is described as 'Certificates of Auto Enrolment Exemption' to employers.

Employers were advised by the company when purchasing this fake certificate, that holding it meant that the employer did not have automatic enrolment duties. The cost being charged to employers for this worthless 'Certificate of Auto Enrolment Exemption' is £58. TPR does not have any such documents or accept any such documents as evidence of automatic enrolment exemption.

Any employer who is offered the chance to buy a certificate of exemption or any similar sounding document exempting them from automatic enrolment duties is being urged to decline the offer and contact TPR immediately.

TPR’s Director of Automatic Enrolment, Darren Ryder said:

"Most independent advisers offer legitimate services that assist employers with their workplace pension duties. Nevertheless, employers need to take care when they are seeking help or advice about what they need to do about automatic enrolment. We will work to root out the small number of organisations that are looking to prey on hard-working employers, abusing their trust and tricking them out of their money."

Posted byDebbie ClarkeinAuto Enrolment

Auto enrolment and the new client

All bureau payroll providers will, by now, be very familiar with how to deal with clients who have had a staging date allocated to them by the Pensions Regulator.

However, this staging process is nearing an end and new employers, who take on staff after 1st October 2017, will have immediate automatic enrolment duties. They will no longer be allocated a staging date by the regulator.

These employers will still be able to postpone for up to three months to allow them the time to choose and set up a pension scheme.

Heretofore, it was essential that any postponement communication was sent to postponed employees within 6 weeks of the staging date. Under the new regime, the staging date will now be referred to as the duties start date. This duties start date will be the date that the first employee started. Any postponement communication will now need to be sent within 6 weeks of the duties start date.

If the first employee is a director, then the company will have no AE duties until such time as a second employee commences. In this case it is the start date of this second employee that becomes the duties start date.

Example

ABC Limited commences trading on 1st December 2017 and has one employee, being a director. On 1st March 2018, ABC Limited takes on a new employee.

The duties start date for ABC Limited is 1st March 2018 and ABC Limited has no AE duties until this date. If ABC Limited decides to postpone, a communication will need to issue on or before 12th April 2018. Assuming that ABC Limited is paying monthly, on 31st March, when it is processing its payroll, it may choose to postpone (for up to 3 months) and issue the communication at the time of doing the March payroll.

If the postponement is for 3 months then, when processing the payroll at 30th June 2018, being completion of the postponement period, all employees must be assessed and enrolled if necessary. The same ongoing duties still apply and, each pay period, all non-enrolled staff should be assessed for age and earnings to see if they need to be enrolled or given the option to enrol.

There are transitional rules for employers taking on their first employer between 2nd April 2017 and 30th September 2017.

BrightPay payroll software will guide the user through the process for new employers. Find out how to enter a new employer's duties start date in BrightPay.

Read more at www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk >

Posted byPaul ByrneinAuto EnrolmentPayroll Software