Aug 2016
29
BrightPay Reviews & Testimonials - Find out what our customers think?
At BrightPay, we enjoy exceeding our customers’ expectations. We are constantly improving our payroll and auto enrolment software and the support that we provide for all our users enhance your customer experience.
To do this, BrightPay recently carried out a Customer Satisfaction Survey to find out what our customers really think. The results were overwhelming! We were delighted to discover that both BrightPay and our customer support team have a satisfaction rate of 99%.
Customers left remarkable comments, praising BrightPay’s simplicity, reliability, functionality, value for money, customer support… the list goes on! Here is a selection of some of the comments…
- I have used BrightPay for nearly two years now and I love it! Its great value for money. It saves me time a does a great job. I can't recommend it enough
- BrightPay is the very best software I have ever purchased!!
- From day one it's been a delight to deal with BrightPay - it's improved my relationship with HMRC - I can't recommend them enough - it's almost a pleasure to do the wages each week!
- This is a great program for any size of company and it is very easy to use, has everything you need, and is it very good value for money, I would recommend this program to everyone who need payroll
BrightPay saves time & money…
- I absolutely love using BrightPay. It has reduced the time it takes to do my payroll to less than an hour when it used to take nearly three! It links to Nest and creates bank files making payments faster. It has built in letters and reminders for auto enrolment and really does the work for you
- Using BrightPay has made my life so much easier - time spent would have been easily 70% longer if I didn't have BrightPay
Switching to BrightPay…
- I used Sage for many years and was nervous about changing. The changeover from Sage to BrightPay was quick and easy. The payroll experience is now a pleasure!
- Transition from other software was so easy any queries are answered professionally and in a timely manner
BrightPay vs. competitors…
- IRIS, ADP and other outdated payroll systems have had their day, the new world is BrightPay for payroll processing. User friendly, practical and versatile software making running payroll easy and me look good
- I regularly recommend BrightPay to those I know who have need of payroll software, it does everything that the more expensive software will do but it is in my opinion more efficient, easier to use and with greater benefits
- In my opinion BrightPay is about the best payroll and Auto Enrolment software in the market, easy to use and efficient. Totally reliable and always up to date software. Keep up the excellent work
BrightPay’s value for money…
- BrightPay is extremely functional and very good value for money. We moved from Iris in April 2015 and have not regretted the decision
- I couldn't believe how affordable it is, definitely customer focused as they put customers first instead of their own pocket
BrightPay’s support team…
- Telephone support is rarely needed as the software is intuitive with "help" feature that provides 99% of the answers. For that rare 1% that persist I find telephone support is easily accessible, patient and they know their product well.
- From the start I found it easy to understand the programme; when I needed advice, I found it easy to obtain through the Helpline. I thoroughly recommend BrightPay
BrightPay’s functionality & ease of use…
- Very user friendly payroll software. Compared to other packages I used before this software was breeze to use and the tutorials on their website are great
- I can't recommend this highly enough. Super reliable, super-fast, well supported. It's a pleasure to work with something which has been so thoroughly well designed and built.
- BrightPay is so easy to use anyone with a little knowledge can use it with ease. You can rest reassured that your duties as an employer are being satisfied and all in less time than with other payroll software. I would recommend BrightPay to everyone
- Since changing to BrightPay it has not only been cost effective for the business but extremely easy to use and has made the auto enrolment process easy and stress free
BrightPay for bureaus…
- I wouldn't hesitate to recommend BrightPay to both professional payroll bureaus, employers and single people alike. I have found very few problems with our switch over and I am a bureau processing well over a hundred payrolls
- I have used BrightPay for several years with the bureau service and it has never let me down. The aftercare and personal attention is second to none. I have recommended BrightPay to several of my colleagues and I know I can do this with every confidence they will never look at another software program for payroll
BrightPay for employers…
- Would recommend to any small start-up business as a MUST to have peace of mind and your PAYE all secure and HMRC fully up to date
- If you're a payroll novice, like me - don't worry. Get BrightPay. Use it and know that you're getting it right
- This software has transformed the process of handling employees in small enterprise - the previous burden has been lifted off my shoulders, and it helps me keep abreast of my commitments to report and pay over money to HMRC like a dream.
This is just a fraction of the hundreds of wonderful comments that BrightPay received! You can also find out more about what customers have to say on the BrightPay testimonials and BrightPay case studies pages on our website.
If you haven’t yet seen BrightPay, you can book a demo with our sales team. The 20 minute online demo will take you through processing both payroll and auto enrolment. You can also download a 60 day free trial of the software with full functionality.
Aug 2016
25
Declaration of Compliance - Don’t risk a fine!
With holiday season upon us, if you are a payroll bureau and your client's declaration of compliance deadline is fast approaching, you can help them to avoid a fine by starting the declaration as soon as possible and ensuring that it’s completed on time.
A declaration of compliance must be submitted to the Pensions Regulator within 5 months of your client’s staging date to inform them of what actions they have been performed to meet their auto enrolment duties.
If you are performing some auto enrolment tasks on your client's behalf, it is important that you both agree in advance who will be completing the declaration so that there is no confusion.
The Pensions Regulator produces a declaration checklist to help gather all the information needed to complete the declaration.
Aug 2016
17
Payroll giving to charity on the rise
According to provisional figures recently released by HMRC, approximately £130 million was donated to charity during tax year 2015/16 through payroll giving.
This represented an increase of 3% compared to the previous tax year, but this is still somewhat down on the amounts donated in tax year 2012/13 when a record £155 million was raised via payroll giving.
Payroll Giving is a simple, tax effective way to give to charity directly from an employee's pay.
Employers can set up a scheme with a Payroll Giving agency of their choice. Employees can then authorise their employer to deduct charitable donations from their pay.
Such donations are deducted after NIC but before PAYE is calculated, and are then sent to the payroll giving agency, who pass them on to chosen charities.
For employers who have set up a scheme with a payroll giving agency, BrightPay provides a preset 'Payroll Giving' deduction to facilitate employees who wish to donate in this manner.
Further information on payroll giving can be found at Payroll Giving - GOV.UK
Aug 2016
17
Auto Enrolment: Over 200,000 Employers have Complied
In The Pensions Regulator's monthly declaration of compliance report over 200,000 employers have completed their automatic enrolment duties and over 6.5 million employees have been enrolled in an automatic enrolment pension scheme. In July's Declaration of Compliance Report shows that more than 6.5 million employees have began contributing to their pension after having been automatically enrolled by their employer.
Over 156,000 small and micro (up to 9 employees) employers have now declared that they have complied with their automatic enrolment duties. This is over 3 times the amount of medium and large employers that have complied, over 44,000. Over 960,000 employees employed by small and micro employers have been enrolled under automatic enrolment.
Aug 2016
17
Employers failing to pay National Minimum Wage details published
The current National Minimum Wage was introduced on 1st October 2015 and will change on 1st October 2016. The current rates are:
• Workers aged 21 and over: £6.70 an hour
• Development rate for workers aged 18-20: £5.30 an hour
• Young workers rate for workers aged 16-17: £3.87 an hour
• Apprentices under 19, or over 19 and in first year of the apprenticeship: £3.30 an hour
197 employers have failed to pay their employees the National Minimum Wage. These employer details have been published, this list is the largest list to date. These employers range across a number of industries such as hairdressers, hotels, football clubs and care homes.
A total liability of £465,291 was owed by the 197 employers to their employees and The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have confirmed that all these monies have been repaid to the employees. Since the scheme was introduced in October 2013, a total of 687 employers details have been published and a total liability of £3.5 million.
The onus is on the employer to ensure the correct rate of pay is paid to the relevant employee, depending on their circumstances. The National Living Wage was introduced on 1st April 2016, for employees aged 25 and over, which is £7.20 per hour. The National Living Wage will be enforced equally along with the National Minimum Wage!
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.
