Aug 2017
21
Customer Update: August 2017
BrightPay Customer Survey: The Results are in
In our recent survey, we were delighted to discover that our customer satisfaction rate has slightly improved since last year from 99.2% to 99.8%. The satisfaction rate for BrightPay’s customer support is 98.6% which is also an improvement on last year.
Employers warned by The Pensions 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 Pensions Regulator into this company offering what is described as 'Certificates of Auto Enrolment Exemption' to employers.
Bright Contracts Webinar: Keeping your business compliant with Employment Law
As busy employers it can be difficult to keep up-to-date with the constant changes in employment law. In this webinar we discuss what is new in employment law, give you key facts about the legislation that you need to know and highlight areas that will help ensure your business remains compliant.
News for Bureaus
Watch our latest video to see how BrightPay Connect can benefit your payroll bureau
BrightPay Connect our latest cloud add-on works alongside BrightPay Payroll. Payroll information is stored in the cloud and can be accessed online by you and your clients anywhere. BrightPay Connect offers additional innovative payroll and HR features that will enhance client relationships and increase revenue for your bureau.
Free CPD Auto Enrolment Webinars with NEST, Workplace Pensions Direct, Aviva & Pension PlayPen
Join BrightPay and our guest speakers to understand what the future holds for auto enrolment covering re-enrolment, auto enrolment and new employer's, Basic PAYE tools and all you NEED to know about choosing a pension scheme. Registration is free.
New Employers & Auto Enrolment
From the 1st of October 2017, clients who become an employer for the first time will immediately have AE duties to complete for any staff they employ. Worryingly, according to research conducted by The Pensions Regulator (TPR), 49%, almost half of accountants asked did not know that new employers would have AE duties.
Find out more Register for free CPD webinar
News for Employers
Watch our latest video to see how BrightPay Connect can improve your annual leave processing
BrightPay Connect our latest cloud add-on works alongside BrightPay Payroll. Payroll information is stored in the cloud and can be accessed online by you and your employees. BrightPay Connect offers additional innovative payroll and HR features that streamline your annual leave management and payroll processing.
Understanding your Declaration of Compliance
An employer's declaration of compliance is one of the most important automatic enrolment duties and it should not be left until the last minute. It is never too early to start preparing. This blog will take you through the various steps employers will need to understand to successfully complete their Declaration of Compliance.
Proposed State Pension Age Changes: How will it affect you?
Under current legislation, the State Pension age increase from 67 to 68 is to be phased in between the years 2044 and 2046. The Government, however, now plan to implement this increase seven years earlier. Should this proposed change go ahead, this means that the State Pension age will thus increase to 68 between 2037 and 2039 instead.
Aug 2017
18
Customer Survey - The Results are in!
Opinions and feedback from BrightPay customers matter to us. We love to hear comments and suggestions from users in order to improve the customer experience.
We recently conducted a customer survey in August, to get an insight into what customers think about BrightPay and find out what new features our customers want. Some of this year’s suggestions included more integration with pension providers, improved reporting and full functionality for the Mac version of BrightPay. Our development team are currently working on these improvements.
The survey also looked at customer satisfaction rates, software performance and customer support. We were delighted to discover that our customer satisfaction rate has slightly improved since last year from 99.2% to 99.8%. The satisfaction rate for BrightPay’s customer support is 98.6% which is also an improvement on last year.
Similar to last year, many customers agree that BrightPay saves them time (99.5%) and money (99.3%). Our new features that have been added to BrightPay within the last 12 months have been beneficial to customers, including batch RTI submissions, payroll journal export, integration with pension providers and improved importing processes.
BrightPay Connect
Our optional HR & cloud add-on, BrightPay Connect, is 1 year old this week. BrightPay Connect offers a secure online backup to the cloud, with online access for both employers and employees. 100% of BrightPay Connect customers rated both the secure online backup and the online access for employers and employees as excellent, very good or good.
Watch this short video for an overview of how BrightPay Connect can meet your payroll and HR needs.
Customer Testimonials
We also received a number of customer testimonials from the survey - all of which will be added to the BrightPay website in due course. Some of our favourite testimonials received include:
- “I was more than a little stunned to find BrightPay - I phoned on 3 separate occasions just to make sure that they really didn't charge for emailed payslips, or have a fixed charge per payslip for enrolled employees and it was unlimited companies and unlimited employees. The plus side goes on and on, as yet I have to find a minus.”
- “We found BrightPay two years ago but allowed our payroll manager to talk us out of changing because of the disruption. What a waste of a year! There was nothing on the market that came anywhere near BrightPay in cost and ease of use and the more we use it the more we love it.”
- “BrightPay defines what a software company should be. You continue to stand head and shoulders above any other software vendors that we deal with as far as quality of the product, quality of support, and knowledge of the product by those who do the supporting.”
- “I was daunted by the prospect of running a payroll for the first time, but BrightPay has made it simple and fun! I cannot wait until the end of the month to press on the bp icon on my desktop now!”
Prize Winners
As a thank you for taking part in the survey, we are giving away four £50 Amazon vouchers. We are delighted to announce that the winners are:
- Alex Smith - TaxAssist Plymouth
- Laurie Carpenter - B&N Regal (Abingdon) Ltd
- Simon Close - SICA Support
- Richard Penney - Dr Penney's Surgery
The BrightPay team will be in contact with the winners shortly.
We appreciate all the feedback received from this year’s survey and would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who took part.
Aug 2017
14
Voluntary Overtime must now be included in Holiday Pay Calculations
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has dismissed an appeal by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, ruling that voluntary overtime should be taken into account when calculating holiday pay. This landmark legal victory now means that employers must now incorporate regular voluntary overtime when calculating holiday pay. Unite Union are now advising employers to urgently address this issue and ensure they are compliant.
This ruling will affect a large number of employees throughout the UK who get paid for regular voluntary overtime but do not receive any annual leave entitlement payment for working it. This legal victory sets a legal binding precedent that employment tribunals throughout the UK are obliged to adhere to.
This landmark case involved an appeal that was brought by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council and this is the first case that the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided to confirm that payments to employees for voluntary duties only should be included in the calculation of employees’ annual leave entitlement pay. In the EAT findings, under the European Union’s Working Time Directive, there is no distinction between contractually required work and tasks that are performed voluntarily under other special or separate arrangements, because levels of normal remuneration have to be maintained when calculating holiday pay in relation to the guaranteed four weeks of annual leave provided under EU law.
The EAT also upheld that where voluntary shifts, standby and call-out payments form part of normal pay, they should be included in holiday pay calculations so that no employee would be deterred from taking annual leave at no financial disadvantage.
The findings in the case of Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council v Mr G. Willetts and others builds on previous findings in the case Unite legal services took in 2014. This appeal resulted in a ruling covering holiday pay for employees that were contractually obliged to perform overtime.
56 employees of Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, who were Unite members, took the case against Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. These employees are employed by the Council as tradesmen who worked on maintaining the council’s stock of houses. They worked regular overtime on a voluntary basis only, which included working overtime on Saturdays. In order to deal with emergency call-outs and repairs, the employees decided to organise and a standby rota every four weeks.
For some employees, this additional voluntary overtime equated to approximately £6,000 per annum along with their basic salary. The Council paid the employees the amount due for the voluntary overtime worked, but the voluntary overtime was not included in their holiday pay calculations. The omission of this additional holiday pay was costing the employees between £350 and £1,500 per year, depending on the amount of voluntary overtime undertaken.
Howard Beckett, Unite’s Assistant General Secretary for legal services said:
“The ruling means unscrupulous employers no longer have carte blanche to fix artificially low levels of ‘basic’ hours and then contend the rest of time as ‘voluntary’ overtime that did not have to be paid in respect of annual leave.
Unite will be liaising with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council and its legal team over reaching a satisfactory settlement for our members. In the meantime we would urge other employers who have been fleecing workers of their holiday pay to get their house in order or face legal action…”.
Aug 2017
9
Mothers potentially missing out on millions in pension rights
Based on a new report, Royal London estimates that the number of mothers missing out on vital credits towards their State Pension has more than doubled in the last two years and now stands at around 50,000. The increase has occurred since the introduction in January 2013 of the ‘High Income Child Benefit Tax Charge’.
This rule means that couples where one partner earns more than £60,000 per year have the value of their Child Benefit wiped out by a tax charge. In response to this, growing numbers of mothers starting a family since January 2013 have declined to claim Child Benefit at all. This means however they are missing out on vital National Insurance credits towards their state pension. Each year missed could cost 1/35 of the value of the state pension of around £231 per year or over £4,600 over the course of a typical 20 year retirement. Together, these mothers have lost hundreds of millions of pounds in retirement.
Prior to the 2013 changes, the number of families receiving child benefit had risen every year since 2007. Since then, the number has been falling. HMRC themselves say: “The number of children for whom Child Benefit is being paid is now at its lowest level since HMRC began producing these statistics (in 2003)”.
A woman who started her family in early 2013 and decided not to claim Child Benefit could have missed out on state pension credits for five years so far. The total loss over those five years could be 5/35 of a state pension. This is over £1,000 per year in retirement. Over the course of a twenty year retirement, such women could be more than £20,000 worse off in total. Worse still, as things stand, Child Benefit claims can only be backdated for three months so they will never recover the lost pension rights.
BrightPay - Payroll and Auto Enrolment Software
Bright Contracts - Employment Contracts and Handbooks
Aug 2017
1
Proposed State Pension Age Changes: How will it affect you?
Millions of men and women may have to wait a year longer to receive their state pension after the Government have announced plans to raise the retirement age to 68 earlier than planned.
Under current legislation, the State Pension age increase from 67 to 68 is to be phased in between the years 2044 and 2046. The Government, however, now plan to implement this increase seven years earlier. Should this proposed change go ahead, this means that the State Pension age will thus increase to 68 between 2037 and 2039 instead.
Who will be affected?
Based on the new proposal, men and women born between April 6 1970 and April 5 1978 will be affected. This equates to approximately six million people, who are currently aged between 39 and 47.
No one born before April 5, 1970 will be affected by the change. Currently, those born since April 6 1978 already face a state pension age of 68.
Will these changes go ahead?
At present, this is simply a Government proposal and will therefore need to be approved by Parliament. In response to the new plans, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, David Gauke said:
“Combined with our pension reforms that are helping more people than ever save into a private pension and reducing pensioner poverty to a near record low, these changes will give people the certainty they need to plan ahead for retirement”.
Auto enrolment has helped more than 8 million people to save into a workplace pension, in order to boost their retirement pot.
