Dec 2020

11

Furlough and holiday during the Christmas period

Can you believe there are only two more Saturdays until Christmas?! I for one am in full on festive mode. My tree is up, the baubles strategically placed on top and out of my cat’s reach, and I’ve been blasting my ‘Xmas Hits’ playlist at full volume throughout my apartment, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering partner. It feels like a well deserved holiday at the end of a very crap year and even more well deserved time off.

But this Christmas has posed a new problem for the world of payroll - what happens with furloughed employees, especially as many would normally take Christmas and New Year’s as annual leave? Can they be furloughed for this period?

Where a bank holiday (namely Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day) falls inside an employee’s period of furlough and that employee would have normally worked this bank holiday anyway, then their furlough will be unaffected. However, if the employee would normally have taken these days as part of their annual leave then you, as the employer, have two options:

a) They can take the bank holiday as leave - If the employee does take the bank holiday as annual leave whilst on furlough then holiday pay must be paid instead.

b) They defer the bank holiday - if the employee doesn’t take the bank holiday as annual leave then this must be deferred as the employee will still be entitled to these days as leave. So they can take them at a later date.

So what happens with holiday leave during furlough then? Furloughed employees still continue to accrue annual leave entitlement as per employment law. Employees can agree to vary their holiday entitlement with their employers as part of their furlough agreement but workers are still entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks of statutory paid annual leave each year. This is non-negotiable.

Employees can still take holidays whilst on furlough though if they are being flexibly furloughed then any hours they take as holiday during the claim period should be counted as furloughed hours and not working hours. You should not place employees on furlough just because they’re going to be on paid leave or because you usually do less business over the festive period. (However, if you expect your business to be shut down completely or to be severely affected over the 2 week period due to the pandemic then you can of course still claim under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme).

A nice succinct summary of this I read online reads as follows:
“If you were going to furlough [employees] anyway then there is nothing to stop you doing it whilst they are on (pre-booked) holiday, or forcing them to take holiday (provided you give them adequate notice). If, however, you are 'furloughing' them because they've booked a couple of weeks off, then you are abusing the system and do not have a valid claim.”

This does mean that you will have to pay the employee’s holiday pay at the normal rate of pay and will be required to pay employees who are on holiday additional amounts over the grant to make up their usual holiday pay. If an employee usually works bank holidays then you can agree that this is included in the grant payment.

Whew! So a lot to digest but I hope that helps to clear things up a little bit. But as always, if in doubt please check the full guidance on the HMRC website. And once that’s all sorted, get your tinsel headdress on, pop open the mulled wine and start looking forward to the coming festivities!

 

Posted byAoibheann ByrneinAnnual LeaveGDPRPayroll Software


Dec 2020

4

BrightPay win COVID Hero Award

I’ve been called a hero a couple of times in my life. There was that time at uni when I whipped out a bottle of Apple Sourz at an afterparty. Or there was the time when I saved a baby bird from being eaten by my dog. But none of these times hold a candle to how good it feels to be part of the team at BrightPay Payroll Software who have won the COVID Hero Supplier Award at the Accounting Software Excellence Awards 2020.

Sure, it would have been great to do a clean sweep and win all the awards going, (we were nominated for 3 in total) but this one has a special place in our hearts as we have put so much into making sure our customers have felt supported during what has surely been one of the toughest periods of time in living memory. So to be not only recognised for our efforts but awarded for them, well - let’s just say *gulp* sorry I just need a moment I have something in my eye.

There were a number of criteria that were considered by the panel for this award. Judging took into account the speed, time and relevance of businesses’ COVID-19 response and how many customers accessed it. They were looking for businesses that really went the extra mile and thought outside the box to make their customers feel supported, whilst also managing to reflect their brand values.

As BrightPay’s core brand value is to provide outstanding payroll software with amazing customer support at affordable pricing, the fact that we managed to maintain this during the pandemic and up our ante to match the ever-changing needs of our clients AND be awarded for it is very special indeed.

Speaking at the Accounting Excellence Awards, host extraordinaire Mike Goldsmith said “the judges saw that BrightPay went above and beyond to support their clientbase and payroll professionals at a time when they were under pressure with furlough claims and interpreting guidance. BrightPay did this through a coordinated strategy that went beyond product enhancement. Their success in this was evidenced by high customer satisfaction and impressive reach with their support material.”. Brb, off to print this off on t-shirts for all the staff.

So thank you to all our customers as, without you, we really would be nothing! This will be an extra reason to celebrate at our virtual Christmas party this weekend (any excuse for an extra glass of bubbly!).

Related articles:

Payroll & COVID-19: Growth and profit opportunities
Free Webinar: Extended Furlough Scheme Explained
Why are BrightPay the perfect payroll partner during challenging times?

Posted byAoibheann ByrneinAwardsCoronavirus


Dec 2020

1

Customer Update: December 2020

Welcome to BrightPay's December update. Our most important news this month include:


Important HMRC update: Extended furlough scheme 

Still confused about the extended furlough scheme? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In this webinar, we deep-dive into what you need to know about the extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and what it now means for your business.


Is moving to the cloud the best way to manage compliance during COVID-19? 

Anyone involved in managing a payroll will acknowledge that compliance is one of their biggest challenges. COVID-19 has made this task even more difficult. The big question was, how do we maintain strict control over payroll data and processes while away from the office? With workforces now dispersed, here’s how BrightPay Connect can help you. 


Payroll & COVID-19: Growth and profit opportunities in challenging times 

Payroll bureaus are urged to plan and prepare for the upcoming challenges COVID-19 brings to their payroll services. Now is the time to plan and future-proof your payroll bureau for survival. This guide lifts the lid on how to safeguard your payroll services for profit and mitigate against upcoming COVID-19 scheme changes. 

Safeguard your payroll against COVID-19

COVID-19 and the challenge of pricing your payroll services

GoProposal and BrightPay discuss how to address the challenge that most accountants face, over-servicing and under-charging. We look at how technology will be key to the future profitability of your payroll service (and why clients should expect to pay for it). Learn how new automation turns daunting payroll tasks into smooth and profitable tasks. 


Furlough Extension: Full Guidance Published - Here’s a Recap

With the furlough scheme due to end back in October, and a replacement Job Support Scheme due to begin in November (and then promptly being cancelled again) you could be forgiven for being a little confused over the current status of the furlough scheme. Here we look at what the newly extended furlough scheme means for your business. 


Streamline Annual Leave Management this Christmas

It’s safe to say that Christmas is going to look very different for all of us this year. But the one thing that will remain the same is employees wanting time off over the holiday period. But don’t worry, we’re here to take the pain out of managing your employee leave this Christmas with BrightPay Connect. 


Posted byRachel HynesinCustomer Update


Nov 2020

18

New Real Living Wage Rates Announced

The Living Wage Week took place from 9th to 15th November 2020 and as part of this week the new living wage rates details were announced. The new rates apply to employees aged 18 years of age and older from 9th November 2020, but employers who are already part of this scheme will have six months to apply the new pay rises.

The new London Real Living Wage announced by the Living Wage Foundation, has increased by 10p from £10.75 to £10.85 per hour. This helps reflect the higher cost of living facing families in the city. The UK Living Wage rate has increased by 20p from £9.30 to £9.50, an increase of 2.1%. The Government's current national minimum wage for over 25s is £8.72, which is £78p less than this rate.

It is estimated that over 250,000 employees will be affected by the new real living wage increase. An employee working 37.5 hours per week being paid the new Living Wage rate of £9.50 will earn more than £1,500 more annually compared to an employee on the current national minimum wage for over 25s. And an employee working the same hours per week in London being paid the new Living Wage rate of £10.85 will earn more than £4,000 per year compared to an employee on the national minimum wage for over 25s.

The total number of accredited Living Wage organisations is nearly at 7,000. Over 800 employers have been accredited by the Living Wage Foundation since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. New companies that have signed up include Capital One, Tate & Lyle and All England Lawn Tennis Club.

An upgrade to BrightPay payroll software has now been released catering for the new Living Wage rates. For information about the Living Wage Foundation visit the Living Wage Foundation website here.

Posted byDebbie ClarkeinPay/Wage


Nov 2020

12

BrightPay Shortlisted For Two Top Payroll Awards

We are delighted to reveal that we have been shortlisted for both ICB LUCA Payroll Software of the Year 2020 and ICB LUCA Friendliest Software of the Year 2020. Having won the LUCA Award for Payroll Software of the Year last year, 2019, we are hoping to make it two years running.

The LUCA Awards are the ‘Oscars’ of the bookkeeping profession and are presented in recognition of the year’s outstanding bookkeepers and the many organisations and vendors that complement the valuable work that they do. It will be down to ICB students and members to vote and determine which payroll software provider is the best and friendliest.

Our recent BrightPay customer survey suggests some of the reasons why we have been shortlisted:

  • We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay Payroll Software?
    You said: 47% of our customers said they were extremely satisfied, 43% said they were very satisfied and 9% said they were satisfied with BrightPay. This comes together to a total of 99.6% customer satisfaction rate, which is fantastic news for everyone on the BrightPay team.

  • We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay Connect?
    You said: An incredible 97.9% of our respondents said they were satisfied with BrightPay Connect, our optional add-on to the payroll software. The most highly rated BrightPay Connect features included automatic cloud backup (99.6%), online employer dashboard (99.5%) and employee self-service portal & app (99.4%).

  • We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay's Customer Support?
    You said: The majority of customers rated BrightPay's telephone support (97.35%), email support (98.2%), online help documentation (98.1%) and online video tutorials (99.2%) as excellent, very good or good, giving our customer support team an overall satisfaction rate of 98.2%.

  • We asked: How would you rate BrightPay’s handling of COVID-19?
    You said: 98.6% of customers answered that they found our handling of COVID-19 overall to be either excellent, very good or good - in particular, our free online COVID-19 webinars (99.4%), payroll upgrades (98.8%), online help and support (98.3%) and phone and email support (97.4%).

The winners will be announced as part of the 11th Annual Bookkeeping Summit, being held virtually at the awards evening on 17th November. Best of luck to all the finalists!

Related articles: 

Posted byZoe ColverinAwardsBookkeepingPayrollPayroll Software


Nov 2020

3

Customer Update: November 2020

Welcome to BrightPay's November update. Our most important news this month include:


The Original Furlough Scheme is back: Who can claim? 

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was due to come to an end on 31st October 2020. However, with further COVID-19 restrictions announced, the CJRS has been extended for another month until 30th November 2020. This also means that the introduction of the Job Support Scheme, which was due to start on 1st November 2020, has been postponed until December. 

Free Webinar

COVID-19 & achieving business continuity in the cloud 

In the ‘new normal’, employers and employees expect to access their payroll information in the cloud. Self-service online portals are changing the way businesses interact and communicate with their employees, whilst providing the cloud functionality to get things done smarter and faster. BrightPay Connect enables clients to submit employee hours, approve the payroll run, manage their employees’ leave, run payroll reports and much more.


Safeguard your payroll against COVID-19

In this guide, we look at how you can overcome payroll processing inefficiency in a crisis. Discover top tips to ensure COVID-19 does not slow down your bureau’s payroll processing and how you can respond quickly and effectively to avoid disruption in the future. 

Safeguard your payroll against COVID-19

Free webinars: HMRC updates, redundancy and safeguarding your payroll 

Join our payroll and HR experts in our upcoming webinar as they talk through a range of topics, including the extended CJRS, the Job Support Scheme, HMRC updates, redundancy, API integration with accounting software and safeguarding your payroll against COVID-19. Guest speakers include AccountsIQ & GoProposal. Limited places available.


Reduce payroll overheads to futureproof against the impact of COVID-19

As businesses look at creative ways to save jobs, many are moving to reduce their business overheads. Savvy businesses have already saved thousands by opting for a payroll provider that does not have an additional charge for auto enrolment, CIS or customer support. BrightPay is one of the most competitively priced payroll software on the market with no contract ties. Making simple changes and investing in payroll solutions with integrated cloud access can save money, improve productivity and increase profits.


Posted byRachel HynesinCustomer Update


Nov 2020

2

Why are BrightPay the perfect payroll partner during challenging times?

Businesses are continuing to be massively impacted by COVID-19, and for many, their payroll solution may not be up to the challenge. At BrightPay, we believe that our COVID-19 response plan means that we are the perfect payroll partner to help you adapt to an ever-changing world.

How to find the right payroll partner for your business

Making simple changes and investing in payroll solutions with integrated cloud access can save money, improve productivity and increase profits. It is important to choose the right payroll software provider that will ensure COVID-19 does not slow down your bureau’s payroll processing.

Research different payroll software providers and compare them against what you are currently using. Choose the right payroll technology that not only streamlines your payroll processes but supports your business continuity needs.

Ask other providers what their customer satisfaction rating is, what are the hidden costs and how they are helping their customers through COVID-19.

How BrightPay are helping with payroll performance during unprecedented challenges

  • Support payroll remote working: BrightPay customers can process their payroll from 10 different locations.
  • Help you achieve business continuity: BrightPay Connect, the optional cloud add-on, will automatically backup your payroll data every 15 minutes, enabling you to restore your data should the unforeseen happen.
  • Competitively priced payroll software: BrightPay includes unlimited employees, no additional charge for auto enrolment, CIS or customer support.
  • Quality and speed of COVID-19 updates: In a recent survey, BrightPay achieved 98.6% rating for our overall handling of COVID-19 including customer support, payroll upgrades, COVID-19 webinars and online support.
  • Automation of scheme calculations: We have released 15 software upgrades across three payroll products to assist users with calculations and make it easier for the user when making a claim via HMRC.
  • No disruption to our customer support service: We transitioned 95% of staff to working remotely before the lockdown announcement in March 2020.
  • Loyal customers say it all: In a recent survey, 97% of our customers said that they would renew with us next year and gave us an enviable Net Promoter Score of 69.3 for customer satisfaction.
  • Management of mandatory COVID-19 employee documents: BrightPay Connect enables users to upload contracts of employment and COVID-19 HR documents and gives the employer or manager visibility as to when the employee views the document.
  • Increased employee numbers by 40%: ensuring that we could help our customers with the new payroll demands (March to October 2020).
  • Automation of your bureau’s payroll workflows: Using BrightPay Connect, you can not only give your client’s employees access to their own self-service payroll portal, but you can also give your clients access to their own employer dashboard.
  • Streamlining of employee payroll and HR admin: BrightPay Connect gives your employees the ability to self-service, allowing them to browse and download historic payslips, request annual leave, view leave remaining and update their personal details.
  • We’re prepared to put in the hours: An additional 122 hours of customer support overtime resulted in 97% of support emails being responded to within 24 hours.
  • Excellent communication and education: The BrightPay COVID-19 help guides have been viewed over 136,600 times and the COVID-19 Resources Hub has been viewed over 32,000 times.
  • We expertly answer your questions: We have hosted over 30 COVID-19 payroll webinars with live Q&A sessions joined by payroll experts and key government bodies (over 26,000 attendees and 15,500 views on-demand).
  • Regular legislation updates: To date we have published 265 blogs detailing COVID-19 payroll legislative changes, with 540,125 users accessing our website, a 57% increase compared to last year.

What BrightPay customers have to say…

''Complex CJRS claims, 4 weekly pay periods crossing into July, the beginning of flexible furloughing. We could be in the middle of a logistical nightmare, but thanks to @BrightPayUK our lives have been made considerably easier.’’ Lucy Stupples @autumn_ cottage – Twitter

‘‘BrightPay have made it easy for us during this difficult time. They have kept us up to date on their information hub on all matter COVID-19 related, with free webinars on CJRS matters and other resources.’’ Linda Nicholls – Trustpilot

''We have worked around the clock since COVID disrupted life as we know it to support our clients. However, it would have been a lot harder to provide that support if we didn’t use BrightPay. Well done team @ BrightPayUK.Investment Bookkeeping @InBookkeeping – Twitter

Download the guide now: ‘Safeguard your payroll against COVID-19 and the (hidden) cons of the Job Support Scheme’ 

 

Related articles:

BrightPay Covid-19 Resources Hub
Webinar: CJRS Changes & Flexible Furlough - What you need to know
Blog: The Results of our Customer Survey are in, and we want to say Thank You!

Posted byZoe ColverinCoronavirusPayrollPayroll Software


Nov 2020

2

The Original Furlough Scheme is back: Who can claim?

Originally introduced in March, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme & Furlough Leave has been extended beyond the original October deadline.

What has changed?

The Furlough scheme had been winding down over the last couple of months, with 70% government contribution to hours not worked in September and the employer paying 10%. In October the government paid 60% of the furloughed employees wages for their unworked hours, up to a maximum of £1,875, with employers contributing the remaining 20%.

The announcement made on 31st October in line with the second lockdown means that businesses can receive grants covering 80% of wages throughout November and the JSS implementation has been delayed to 1st December. The employer must pay for all the employer’s NIC and employer’s minimum workplace pension contributions on those wages and the grant will be for time not worked, up to £2,500 per month.

What is it?

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme allows all UK employers to access financial support to continue paying part of their employees' salary that would otherwise have been laid off due to the second lockdown. It prevents against layoffs and redundancies.

What organisations are eligible?

All UK companies are eligible: limited companies, sole traders who employee people, LLPs, partnerships and charities.

Which employees are eligible?

Employees who were on the employer’s payroll on 30 October 2020 will qualify to be included in CJRS claim for November; they don’t have to have been included in an earlier CJRS claim. The employee must have been paid by the employer, and that pay must have been reported on a RTI return before midnight on 30 October.

Furlough leave is available to all employees on a contract, including;

• full-time employees
• part-time employees
• employees on agency contracts
• employees on flexible or zero-hour contracts

Does Flexi Furlough still run?

Flexible furlough will still run alongside full-time furlough, so staff may be brought back part-time to say, prepare the premises for the lifting of national restrictions, or to prepare for Christmas.
The same rules for flexible furlough will continue to apply as they have done since 1 July, so the employee may be furloughed for a couple of days or hours per week. No minimum time set for furloughed hours or working hours has been communicated.

However, each furlough claim must be for a period of at least seven consecutive calendar days.

How does it work?

• The employer must designate affected employees as furloughed workers.
• They should notify the employee that they have been marked as Furlough. Agreement from the employee may be required.
• HMRC must be notified of the employee designated as furloughed workers as well as details of their earnings. This is done through an online portal (not currently set up).
• HMRC will reimburse 80% of furloughed workers wage costs, based on the February earnings of salaried workers, up to a cap of £2,500 per month.
• Wages for those on variable hours, can be calculated based on the higher of either:
              o the same month's earning from the previous year
              o average monthly earnings from the 2019-20 tax year

If the employee has been employed for less than a year, employers can claim for an average of their monthly earnings since they started work.

• Employees remain employed, their continuity of service is not impacted.
• Employer may choose to top-up the other 20% of salary. If they don’t top-up the 20% it will be a deduction in wages.
• Wages paid through the scheme are subject to the usual income tax and other deductions.

What are the employment issues?

Changing the status of employees to a furloughed worker remains subject to existing employment law. Generally, where an employee’s contract contains a layoff or short term clause employers should be able to place employees on furlough leave. Where there is no such clause, it is best advised to get agreement from the employee.

Additionally, a 20% reduction in salary will be a change in terms and conditions of employment. Where employers are not topping up the government payment, they should also seek agreement from the employee.

Given the current situation and the alternatives for those employees should they not agree, one can expect that most employees will agree. That said, prudent employers will seek to get their employees agreement as part of their furlough leave process.

BrightPay Software Update

A BrightPay UK (Windows) upgrade has just been released to cater for the extension to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. This upgrade also removes previously released Job Support Scheme (JSS) functionality. 

Get the details right

During COVID-19, BrightPay have been running regular webinars to keep businesses and accountants up-to-date with the latest changes and the impact on payroll processing don’t miss the latest webinar.

Free Webinar: New Job Support Scheme Explained and how to safeguard your payroll against COVID-19

18th November – 10.30am

Register Now - For Free

In this webinar, we look at what you need to know about the re-instated Furlough scheme and new Job Support Scheme, including which employees are eligible, the level of government funding, and how the scheme is actioned through payroll. We will also share top tips to ensure COVID-19 does not slow down payroll processing. Plus, we will explore the rise in redundancies and the new changes regarding statutory redundancy and notice pay for furloughed employees.

What you'll learn:

• What the extended CJRS means for your business
• Everything you need to know about the Job Support Scheme
• Tips for safeguarding your payroll
• How BrightPay’s Job Support Scheme Calculator & Claim Report works
• How to calculate notice pay and redundancy pay for furloughed employees
• Top tips to ensure COVID-19 does not slow down payroll processing

Register Now

Related articles:

BrightPay Covid-19 Resource Hub
On-demand webinar: Redundancies & Furloughed Employees
Guide: Safeguard your payroll against COVID-19 and the (hidden) cons of the Job Support Scheme

Posted byZoe ColverinPayrollPayroll Software


Oct 2020

28

BrightPay wins Best Payroll Software of 2020 by Digital.com

Digital.com has added BrightPay to its list of best payroll software of 2020. The top 20 solutions were selected based on basic payroll functions, reporting, and additional features. 


 

BrightPay and other companies were required to offer essential functions such as supporting all RTI submission types, full automatic enrolment functionality and HMRC recognised.

It was also necessary for the payroll software to offer additional features such as payroll journal integration and the ability to batch process multiple employers at the same time.

Digital.com’s research team conducted a 40-hour assessment of over 210 payroll software companies across the web.

Digital.com reviews and compares the best products, services, and software for running or growing a small business website or online shop. The platform collects twitter comments and uses sentiment analysis to score companies and their products.


Payroll Software you can trust…

The award comes just one year after BrightPay was announced as the winner of ‘Payroll Software of the Year’ 2019 at the ICB Luca Awards. This also follows BrightPay winning Payroll Software of the Year 2018 at the AccountingWEB Software Excellence Awards.

With nearly 30 years of payroll experience, our products are used to process the payroll for over 320,000 businesses across the UK and Ireland. BrightPay also has an impressive 99% customer satisfaction rate and a 5-star rating on Software Advice.

BrightPay for SMEs

BrightPay includes several useful payroll features and support that are very beneficial for employers:

  • Since COVID-19 started impacting life as we know it, BrightPay introduced a comprehensive payroll response plan which to date includes 34 webinars, with over 26,000 attendees and released 15 software upgrades to automate the new scheme calculations.
  • This year we introduced payroll journal API integration with a number of new accounting packages. This allows users to send the payroll journal directly to their accounting software from within BrightPay. BrightPay currently has direct integration with AccountsIQ, FreeAgent, KashFlow, Twinfield, Sage One, Quickbooks Online and Xero with many more currently in development.
  • With BrightPay Connect, we have also launched the employer payroll dashboard which gives an overview of the payroll information in one place. It also automatically backs up your payroll file every 15 minutes when open and again when the payroll file is closed.

These are just a few of the many features we have in BrightPay that can help SMEs, but there’s so much more on offer.

See how BrightPay can help your business

Don’t miss out - book a payroll demo today to see these features in action and to discover more ways that BrightPay’s award-winning software can improve efficiency and save you time.

Thanks again to Digital.com for the award and all our customers supporting us during this challenging period.

Related articles:

Blog: BrightPay wins ‘Payroll Software of the Year 2019'
Blog: BrightPay wins ‘Payroll Software Product of the Year’
Digital.com: The Best Payroll Software of 2020 - BrightPay

 

Posted byZoe ColverinAwardsPayrollPayroll Software


Oct 2020

26

Solving the recent "blank screen" issue with BrightPay's Quickbooks integration.

BrightPay is built on a technology called WPF, which is part of Microsoft’s very popular .NET Framework. For .NET development on Windows, WPF has been the first-choice framework for over a decade, and is still very much going strong.

From its beginnings, WPF has included the ability to display and interact with web-based content in a special user interface component called WebBrowser. BrightPay uses WebBrowser to display the “log in” web pages that are required for certain API integrations (e.g. when submitting pension contributions or posting payroll journals to certain providers). WebBrowser has worked well, but it has one aspect that is beginning to cause problems.

WebBrowser is based on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which has an end-of-life support date of 21 August 2021, meaning that from then on it will no longer receive security updates. Apart from that, Internet Explorer lacks support for many modern technologies, and the web development community has been cheering on its deprecation for years.

In September 2020, BrightPay customers started to notice that our integration with QuickBooks (for posting payroll journals) is no longer working – the log in process results in a blank screen. This is happening because Intuit (the creators of Quickbooks) have dropped their support for Internet Explorer – they are now using technology that is simply too modern for Internet Explorer (and therefore BrightPay's use of WebBrowser) to handle. In the coming months and years, one by one, many other cloud-based software providers will no doubt be doing the same.

So where does this leave BrightPay? Well, you might be aware that in 2015, Microsoft released the first version of their successor to Internet Explorer: the Edge browser. It wasn’t until 2019 that a WPF component for using Edge in Windows applications was made available. This component, called WebView, is not perfect, however, and comes with some technological shortcomings that made us decide to not adopt it right away.

Despite the shortcomings with WebView, when Intuit made their announcement that they would not support Internet Explorer anymore, we created a version of BrightPay that uses WebView and began testing it internally. But not long after, Intuit revised their announcement, confirming that they would not be supporting the Edge browser either. This left us in a bit of a quandary.

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a new version of Edge, based on the same technology that powers the Google Chrome browser. Although it has the same name as the Edge browser from 2015, it is completely different (and Intuit have confirmed that the new Edge will be supported by Quickbooks). Microsoft have also since announced that they will be releasing a component to allow WPF applications to use the new Edge browser, called WebView2, in Q4 2020. This is a much better component than WebView, with wider support, less restrictions and improved deployment. It’s the obvious solution to our Quickbooks problem, except that at the time of writing this, it has still not been released. But it will be soon.

And so, our only real choice is to wait until the WebView2 component is available. As soon as it is, we will prioritise its integration. When that's done, BrightPay customers who need to post journals to Quickbooks should no longer have any issues.

In the meantime, BrightPay version 20.6 contains the WebView component (based on the legacy Edge browser), as we have found that despite Intuit’s claim to not support legacy Edge, it seems to still work for posting journals to Quickbooks anyway. Hopefully, it will continue to do so until WebView2 is available.

Please note that to use WebView in BrightPay 20.6, you (i) must have Windows 10 version 1803 or higher and (ii) you must not run BrightPay in administrator mode. Otherwise, BrightPay will fall back to using the Internet Explorer-based WebBrowser, and the Quickbooks integration will not work. Also, to be able to support WebView (and in preparation for supporting WebView2), BrightPay now requires the .NET Framework version 4.7.2 or higher. If your computer does not already have this version, you will need to download and install it manually to be able to continue using BrightPay.

NOTE: BrightPay for Mac users are not affected by any of this.

UPDATE (January 2021): WebView2 was released in November 2021, and we were able to integrate it into BrightPay and complete a successful pilot test run with some of our customers. I'm pleased to confirm that BrightPay 20.8 (now available for everybody) contains WebView2, and so should put an end to browser incompatibility problems for once and for all.

Posted byRoss WebsterinCustomer UpdateSoftware Upgrade