Aug 2016
15
BrightPay shortlisted for Payroll Product of the Year Award
The Payroll World Awards finalists have just been announced. We are delighted to reveal that BrightPay has been shortlisted for the ‘Payroll Software Product of the Year’ award for the second year running.
A panel of 12 judges now face the daunting task of deciding on winners for each category. 142 companies have been shortlisted for all the awards. For the payroll product of the year, the judges are looking at each finalist to examine where the payroll software can offer business benefits to their customers.
The payroll software industry has become increasingly competitive and the Payroll World judges want to see evidence that BrightPay can provide the following;
- Offering significant cost savings/business benefits to clients
- Customer satisfaction including client testimonials
- Innovative client solutions
A few interesting statistics from BrightPay’s recent customer survey include:
- BrightPay has a 99% customer satisfaction rate and 98% for customer support.
- 99.7% of customers rate BrightPay as excellent, very good or good for overall quality.
- Customers describe BrightPay as reliable, high quality, useful, unique and good value for money.
- 99.5% think BrightPay’s interface is user-friendly.
- 99.8% agree BrightPay is automated.
- 99% of customers save time and money.
- 88% save on administration. 99.5% of customers believe that BrightPay is committed to keeping up with changes in payroll legislation
- 98% of customers rate our customer service as excellent; very good or good.
- BrightPay has a 98% satisfaction rate for customer support.
- 97% agree customer support are knowledgeable and 99% agree they are professional.
- 98% of customers find it beneficial that BrightPay includes free email and phone support.
- 90% of customers agree that BrightPay's customer support has improved in the last year.
The winners will be announced this November at the Payroll World Awards Event. Best of luck to all the finalists.
Check out the list of finalists for the payroll software product of the year here.
Aug 2016
11
Introducing BrightPay Cloud
We’re pleased to announce that BrightPay Cloud is now available.
We’re pleased to announce that BrightPay Cloud is now available.BrightPay Cloud brings several new features to BrightPay. These are described over on the dedicated BrightPay Cloud section of our website, and they aren’t covered in the same detail here. In this article, I’ll give you a background to BrightPay Cloud, where it currently stands, and where we’re heading next.
Background
When we launched BrightPay in the UK back in 2011, the payroll software landscape was different. There was no RTI, and Auto Enrolment was still half a decade away for most employers. After noticing that the majority of payroll software product options had stagnated and were drawing many complaints from their customers, we entered BrightPay into the market as a nice, modern, easy to use and fairly priced alternative. We had our work cut out for us over the subsequent years adding features and responding to the big industry changes as they transpired. We’re very pleased to have been successful in our endeavours, as attested to by a browse through the BrightPay customer testimonials.
One feature area that has been trending in recent years is cloud functionality. BrightPay has always had a certain amount of cloud connectivity – software updates, licensing, emailing payslips and help documentation are all powered via the cloud, as are features like RTI and NEST submissions, as well as Auto Enrolment staging date checking. But there have been a number of big requests from customers over the years that we have not provided a solution for.
Until now.
Automatic Cloud Backup
Your payroll data is important. You need it to pay your employees accurately and on-time and to comply with HMRC reporting requirements. It’s not something you want to lose.
But backing up this important data often succumbs to human error. For example, we’ve heard from many customers over the years who requested that BrightPay would regularly remind them to backup their payroll data, simply because they forget. But a problem with a solution like this is that manually backing up data adequately is complicated. It’s not good enough to keep a backup of your files on your computer, as you can lose everything if your computer breaks. USB keys are handy, but they get lost. An off-site storage solution with data redundancy and geo-replication works great, but not everyone’s an IT expert.
So we wanted to provide a backup solution for BrightPay that just works.
With BrightPay Cloud, your payroll data gets automatically backed up to a secure cloud repository without you having to do anything – it’s that simple. As you run your payroll or make any other changes to data in BrightPay, it synchronises in the background. And it doesn’t just keep the latest backup - it keeps a history of backups, so even if you accidentally delete or change anything only to realise the mistake much later, you’re still covered. You can restore a cloud backup onto your current computer, or onto a new computer, at any time.
Employee Self Service
Many employers have already transitioned from printed payslips to digital payslips, often delivered via email. But wouldn’t it be great if employees had somewhere they could go to not only get their latest payslip, but to also access their entire history of payslips and other payroll documents at their own convenience? And what if they could easily see their own calendar of leave and personal tax details without having to contact HR?
BrightPay Cloud provides this facility through a feature called Employee Self Service. Using Employee Self Service, employees can do all the aforementioned tasks using their PC, Mac or smartphone. They can also make requests for leave and submit updates to their personal details, which, if approved, automatically synchronise back down to BrightPay on your PC or Mac.
You can set up Employee Self Service for your entire workforce or just a subset of employees, and you can control what they see and which features they have access to. Self Service will automatically notify your employees via email when their latest payslip or P60 is available.
How does BrightPay Cloud ensure employees always have access to the latest data? Well, as mentioned above, BrightPay Cloud automatically backups up your data to the cloud as you make changes. Self Service is powered by your most recent backup, and so, it just works.
Bureau Client Self Service
Accountants and payroll bureaux get both of the above features with BrightPay Cloud – employer data files are automatically backed up, and your client’s employees can all get access to Employee Self Service.
But there’s more. Using BrightPay Cloud, you can provide an Employer Dashboard for your clients as well, allowing them to not only view their employees’ information, but also see an employer-wide calendar, access payroll reports that you define in BrightPay, and view the schedule of HMRC payments and liabilities.
Your clients can also use their Employer Dashboard to approve the leave requests and personal details update requests made by their employees, all of which synchronises back down to your data in BrightPay. You can give access to as many contacts for your clients as need be.
Data Protection and Security
Our number one priority when creating BrightPay Cloud has been security. We spent a lot of time getting the best possible foundation and architecture in place before doing anything else.
The various data repositories and services which make up BrightPay Cloud are built using a compartmentalised design that maximises security. Strong encryption is used to store all data, as well as in communication with your PC or Mac. All popular kinds of attack are protected against. Your data is accessible only by you.
We selected the Microsoft Azure platform to power BrightPay Cloud, giving us reliability, scalability, data redundancy, geo-replication and timely security updates out of the box.
It’s worth noting that the most common weakness in any system like BrightPay Cloud is a poor password, so when choosing a password please remember to select something adequate, keep it safe, and change it often.
Pricing
BrightPay Cloud costs just £49 per employer, per tax year (plus VAT). That price gives you a full year of cloud backups and Self Service for ALL your employees. When you renew BrightPay Cloud in the following year (at the same price), we will maintain the previous year’s data.
Bureau users, who may wish to purchase BrightPay Cloud for multiple clients, can get a bulk discount depending on how many employers they require (see pricing for details). The BrightPay Cloud pricing model is employer-based, unlike that for BrightPay on your PC or Mac, because it runs on a cloud platform that costs us in direct proportion to its usage. But we're competitively priced, and you still get the same support at no extra cost.
So What’s Next?
Our immediate plan is to continue making improvements to BrightPay, while enhancing BrightPay Cloud with advanced configurability, more features and additional access options.
We received a lot of responses to our recent BrightPay customer survey, which we have used to build a prioritised development plan. You can expect see several more BrightPay upgrades during the 16/17 tax year, and some nice new features for 17/18.
We’ve started building Self Service mobile apps for BrightPay Cloud to make it even easier and more convenient for employees to access their payroll information. And we have plans for improved branding and customisation, timesheets and more HR features.
We get asked from time to time about any plans we may have for a complete cloud version of BrightPay which could be used entirely via your web browser. While this is something we are continually looking at as we monitor the industry and customer expectations, we don’t have any announcements at this stage. Rest assured that even if we do go down that route in the future, the existing PC/Mac version is not something that would go away any time soon – we foresee a long lifespan for BrightPay and BrightPay Cloud, and look forward to working with you for many years to come.
Aug 2016
3
Employment Intermediaries - Ensure you avoid Penalties for Incorrect Reporting
Employment Intermediaries that have the contract with the client have to send a report to HMRC periodically. The report contains the details of all workers they place with clients where the intermediary does not operate Pay As You Earn (PAYE) on the workers' payments. The Intermediary can decide how frequently they send this report to HMRC - they have several options available including sending these reports weekly or monthly. But the report has to be send to HMRC at least once every 3 months.
From next week, 5th August 2016, penalties will start to apply for late filing of these reports. The report for the first 3 months - 6th April to 5th July 2016 - will be due for filing on 5th August 2016. The amount per penalty depends on the amount of infringements in the prior 12 month period. The penalties are £250 for the first infringement, £500 for the second and £1,000 for the third and other charges will apply for further infractions. If a report is submitted late, but is after 12 months since the last report was late it will be only deemed as the first offence.
If a report sent is incorrect or is missing any information, penalties may occur. These penalties are determined on a case by case basis. If the incorrect report is replaced by a corrected report before the deadline approaches without being prompted by HMRC, this will be taken into consideration if a penalty has to be paid. Where reports are consistently late or are failed to be submitted a penalty of up to £600 per day that the report is late may apply.
Jul 2016
15
BrightPay Customer Survey 2016 - the results are in!!!
This June our annual customer survey was sent out to more than 20,000 customers and the results are in. Customer feedback is fundamental to the success of BrightPay. The survey was designed to give us an insight into what we can do to continuously improve our product for the benefit of our growing customer base. It is important to understand and value what our customers think so we can provide a superior customer experience. In today’s competitive world, we believe we can intertwine our product development with our customer feedback to offer customers a superior experience.
BrightPay has a customer satisfaction rate of 99% which is a slight improvement on last year’s rate of 98.5%. Our customer service and support team performed well receiving a 99% customer satisfaction rate which was also an improvement on last year. 99.5% of customers agree that our customer support has improved in the last year, while 94% agree that BrightPay has improved in the last year. Customers described BrightPay as reliable, high quality, useful, unique and good value for money. 98% believe BrightPay is an innovative product. 98% of customers rate BrightPay’s value for money as excellent or above average.
Jul 2016
14
National Insurance Numbers - KC Prefix
Recently new National Insurance Numbers have been issued with the prefix of KC by Jobcentre Plus (on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions). These National Insurance numbers are valid. Unfortunately there have been issues with these NINOs with the KC prefix as HMRC has not included the KC prefix as a valid prefix on their list of valid prefixes to software developers. So currently HMRC's systems do not recognise the prefix KC and most payroll softwares will not recognise it either. You may not be able to enter the National Insurance number into your payroll software as it may not be recognised and even if you can your Full Payment Submission may be rejected by HMRC due to the prefix not being recognised by HMRC.
HMRC have issued a message regarding the problem "We are aware that a small number of National Insurance numbers with prefix 'KC' were issued recently and that these are causing some problems for our customers."
If you have an employee with a NINO with a KC prefix you should take the following steps when entering their details in your payroll software for the moment, as your RTI returns will successfully submit to HMRC:
• Do not enter the NINO for the employee - this field should be left empty
• The employee's address has to be entered, the first two lines minimum requirement
• You do not need to request a new NINO as the NINO with the KC prefix is valid.
Per HMRC " We are working hard to resolve this issue quickly and will provide more information shortly"
Jul 2016
1
P11D & P11D(b) - Deadline for filing 6th July 2016
If you’re an employer and provide expenses or benefits to employees or directors, you may need to tell HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and pay tax and National Insurance on them. The means of reporting these details to HMRC is on a P11D or P9D form and P11D(b) form.The P11D is a statutory form required by HMRC from UK based employers detailing the cash equivalents of benefits and expenses that they have provided during the tax year to their directors, and employees earning at the rate of more than £8,500 per year (inclusive of any BIK amount). Your P11D(b) tells HMRC how much Class 1A National Insurance you need to pay on all the expenses and benefits you’ve provided.
Examples of expenses and benefits include:
• company cars
• health insurance
• travel and entertainment expenses
• childcare
The deadline for reporting these details to HMRC for the tax year 2015-16 is before the 7th July 2016, so have to be received by HMRC on or before the 6th July 2016. Recent communication from HMRC's Software Developer Support Team stressed that - “Where employers fail to submit their P11D and P11D (b) returns employees may have incorrect tax codes (and tax bills) and any delays beyond 19 July might result in the employer being charged a penalty.” The charge per month is £100 for every 50 or part-batch of 50 employees provided with benefits. Per the HMRC’s CWG5 booklet Class 1A National Insurance Contributions on Benefits in Kind the filing date for the return is the 6th of July but if the return is late the penalties start to be calculated but it will only be enforced if the returns are still outstanding at 19th July. This “grace period” does not apply to the employer’s obligation to ensure that employees employed on 5 April receive their P11D / P9D by 6 July. So:
• Copy to HMRC – by 19 July at the latest
• Copy to employees – by 6 July
BrightPay can produce a P11D for sending to HMRC after year end which includes your Class 1A NICs declaration and details of the expenses and benefits provided including cash equivalents.
Jun 2016
29
Declaration of Compliance - Automatic Enrolment
A declaration of compliance needs to be completed and submitted to the Pensions Regulator within five months of the staging date. A Declaration of Compliance is the employer informing The Pension Regulator that they have met their automatic enrolment duties. For example, if the staging date is 1 July 2016, you must submit your declaration of compliance to the pension regulator no later than 31 November 2016. This deadline can be also called your registration deadline. If your registration deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, you can provide your registration on the next working day. If you’ve postponed automatic enrolment for any of your staff, you mustn’t submit your registration until after the postponement period has ended.
If you do not submit your declaration of compliance in time you may be fined. It is a legal duty that the declaration of compliance is fully completed with the correct information and submitted on time.
Should you be experiencing any issues regarding your automatic enrolment process or collecting the relevant information for your Declaration of Compliance contact The Pension Regulator immediately. The Pension Regulator's website has a help section: http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/automatic-enrolment-registration-questions.aspx.
Jun 2016
29
Bringing forward your Staging Date - Changes by The Pensions Regulator
An employer who wanted to bring their staging date forward had previously to give The Pensions Regulator (TPR) notice of one month. Employers are no longer required to give The Pensions Regulator one month's notice. If an employer wants to bring forward their staging date now they will still have to notify the Pensions Regulator but only will have to do so at any time on or before their new staging date.
But employers who do have employees for automatic enrolment need to agree the date with the Pensions Regulator and like all staging dates it has to be the 1st day of the month. Employers with no employees for automatic enrolment can bring forward their staging date to a date of their choice and also complete their declaration of compliance at the same time thus fulfilling their automatic enrolment duties as an employer. The requirement for employers with no employees for automatic enrolment to set up a pension scheme is no longer required. They only need to do this once they have an employee for automatic enrolment purposes.
Jun 2016
28
BrightPay interviewed at Accountex
Our very own Paul Byrne was recently interviewed by Richard Hattersley at Accountex about automating the process of auto enrolment. We understand by automating automatic enrolment, businesses can increase efficiency and streamline an otherwise labour intensive process. Watch this video to understand how your business can process automatic enrolment more productively.
BrightPay can not only facilitate auto enrolment but the software has the power to tell you when you need to enrol your employees and when to send the auto enrolment letters. Once the staging date is entered, BrightPay knows to complete the employee assessment. BrightPay will then tell you which worker category each employee falls into.
From there, BrightPay will automatically create the relevant letter for each employee. These letters are personalised with employee details and are customised to suit each employees worker category. It is possible to email, print or export all of these letters for all employees in minutes.
With BrightPay automatic enrolment is easy. Book a free online demo of BrightPay today. We also offer a 60 day free trial which includes full functionality of all features. Don’t worry we won’t ask you for any credit card details. If you are an employer with three or less employees, BrightPay is completely free. You can download your free licence here.
Click here to find out about BrightPay's auto enrolment features.
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Jun 2016
17
HMRC claims Customer Service Better than ever - Do you agree?
HMRC claims it is offering its best customer service in years presently. This is a reaction from a report that the National Audit Office published in May 2016 stating that the quality of customer service HMRC provides has deteriorated over an 18 month period in 2014 and 2015. In this period some people calling HMRC were waiting up to an hour, treble the average call waiting time, costing taxpayers the equivalent of £97 million last year.
HMRC says it has achieved improvements to customer service by:
• recruiting more than 3,000 additional advisers who can work outside normal office hours;
• introducing more flexible working to deal with large fluctuations in customer demand throughout the year, underpinned by a new telephone system that enables HMRC to move calls around the country in response to demand;
• launching online services that enable customers to manage their tax affairs when and where they want, including by smartphone, with online support such as webchats.
HMRC have also indicated that they may make the following changes that were in Chancellor George Osborne’s 2016 budget, including:
• the introduction of a seven-day service by April 2017, with extended hours and Sunday opening on main phone lines, as well as online support services such as webchats;
• the recruitment of more than 800 new staff into the customer services teams, to reduce call answering times and further increase the flexibility to respond to demand;
• a new secure email service – operated through customers’ online tax accounts.
Ruth Owen, HMRC’s director general for customer services, said: “Over the past six months we’ve consistently answered calls in an average of six minutes, and have launched new online tax accounts and webchat for everyone, enabling customers to manage their tax affairs wherever and whenever they want. There’s never been a better or more convenient service for our customers.”
Research conducted by CIPP has shown that HMRC's response times in recent months have improved.
