BrightPay’s Response to COVID-19

Businesses are continuing to be massively impacted by COVID-19, and for many, their payroll solution may not be up to the challenge. It is important to choose the right payroll software provider that will ensure COVID-19 does not slow down your payroll performance.

In a recent customer survey, BrightPay’s overall response to COVID-19 was rated 99.2%, and this included payroll upgrades, webinars, online guidance and customer support.

BrightPay’s COVID-19 Payroll Upgrades (Rated 99.4%)

BrightPay has two independent tools to assist users who have furloughed employees under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. We have a furlough pay calculator to help users ascertain an employee's furlough pay each pay period, including support for flexible furlough, which is something that many other payroll software providers do not support. BrightPay also includes a CJRS claim report to assist users in completing their grant claim through HMRC's online claim portal.

A BrightPay upgrade was released less than 48 hours after the announcement of the extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, with functionality catering for the November rules and removing previously released Job Support Scheme functionality.

As well as catering for the furlough scheme, we have also amended our Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) functionality to cater for COVID-19 related SSP. BrightPay has been programmed to automatically remove the usual three waiting days where COVID-related SSP applies. An SSP claim report is also available in BrightPay to assist users in ascertaining the amounts needed for input into HMRC's Coronavirus SSP Rebate Scheme online service. 

BrightPay’s COVID-19 Webinars (Rated 99.9%)

Throughout the past few months, we have hosted over 40 free COVID-19 webinars, where we covered what employers and accountants needed to know about COVID-19 and payroll. Our panel of payroll and HR experts answered hundreds of questions in relation to government schemes and employment law issues in live Q&A sessions. Over 30,000 attendees and almost 20,000 views on-demand later, these webinars are still ongoing – Click here to find out more and join our next webinar.

BrightPay’s COVID-19 Online Guidance (Rated 99.1%)

We have a COVID-19 Resources Hub on our website which has all of the latest information in relation to COVID-19 and payroll, and we try to keep this page up-to-date as changes are introduced. The COVID Hub features various online help guides, support documents, blogs, webinars and useful resources, including sample furlough letters and templates. BrightPay’s COVID Hub has been viewed over 50,000 times, and our support documents, help guides and blogs have been viewed almost 300,000 times.

BrightPay’s COVID-19 Customer Support (Rated 98.0%)

BrightPay’s COVID-19 response plan involved additional staffing and increased hours to assist customers. We transitioned 95% of staff to working remotely before the lockdown announcement in March 2020 and increased employee numbers by 40% ensuring that we could help our customers with the new payroll demands.

Our dedicated team answered 74,000 support calls and responded to over 67,000 emails between March and September 2020, a 64% increase compared with 2019. An additional 122 hours of customer support overtime resulted in 97% of support emails being responded to within 24 hours.

Remote Working with BrightPay & BrightPay Connect

While BrightPay remains a desktop solution, the software can be installed on up to 10 PCs. This means that payroll processing is possible by up to 10 users, or from 10 different locations. BrightPay payroll files can be accessed remotely through cloud environments like a shared server, Google Drive or Dropbox. This is very handy for if you have a number of employees working from home, all needing access to the payroll software.

In addition, our optional add-on product BrightPay Connect can also help with remote working, with its secure online backup facility. An administrator can set relevant payroll staff members up as a user and give them access to the companies that they need to work on. Users will be able to log in to their Connect account at home through the software and restore in the latest cloud backup of the payroll file, and once finished, synchronise the completed payroll back to Connect. Care must be taken that synchronisation is up-to-date and that other users are not working on the same data file at the same time.

We are currently working on improved Connect functionality, which will allow for a completely seamless ‘working from home’ process where there are multiple individuals who work on or require access to the same employer files. When you open an employer, BrightPay Connect will check to see if there is a more up-to-date version of the employer file, for example, if changes have been made to that employer on a different PC. You will also be told if someone else is still working on the employer, restricting more than one user from accessing the same file at the same time. This new functionality improves the remote working experience, giving you all the benefits of the cloud while utilising the power and responsiveness of your local device.

Book a demo today to discover why BrightPay is trusted by over 320,000 businesses, with a 99% customer satisfaction rating.