BrightPay Release Notes

24.0

20/03/2024

Support for the 2024/25 tax year.

23.4

03/04/2024

Updates:

Includes updated National Living/Minimum Wage rates that apply from 1st April 2024.
Fixes issue in which a tax refund could be incorrectly calculated when an employee's pay is below the free pay threshold in week 53.
Other minor fixes.

23.3

08/12/2023

Legislative updates:

Autumn Statement - updates employee/director NIC rates for pay dates on/after 6 January 2024.
Updates EXB submission for compatibility with HMRC’s 2023/24 specifications.

Other updates:

New branding! The BrightPay logo has been updated in line with the new common and recognisable theme applied across all products in the Bright portfolio.

23.2

10/07/2023

Updates:

Modulr – new feature allows a single approval for a batch of multiple payments.
Corrects Penfold pension scheme reference validation.
Other minor improvements.

23.1

12/04/2023

Updates and fixes:

Updates beneficial loan rate to 2.25%.
Corrects 2023/24 Scottish tax rates.
Fixes an issue in which certain bank payment file templates would produce incorrect output.
Other minor fixes and corrections.

23.0

20/03/2023

2023/24 first release.

22.6

24/03/2023

Updates and fixes:

Fixes issue in which P60 documents are not made available in Connect after finalising the last pay period of the tax year.

22.5

07/12/2022

Updates and fixes:

Fixes issue in which the list of RTI submissions is scrolled to the bottom by default.
Other minor fixes to recent bugs and issues reported by customers.

22.4

25/10/2022

Mini Budget Autumn 2022

New NIC employer and employee rates from 6 November.
New Class 1A NIC rate from 6 November.
H&SC Levy note no longer appears on printed/PDF payslips from 6 November.

Other updates and fixes:

September 2022 UK and London Living Wage rates.
Adds support for new Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider: Penfold.
Supports vouchers & credit cards benefits that are liable to Class 1 NICs.
Other minor bug fixes and corrections.

22.3

30/05/2022

Updates and fixes:

Adds support for new Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider: Collegia
Updates third-party importers for compatibility with latest file formats.
Fixes company car rate for cars without an approved C0₂ figure.
Stability updates to help prevent issues in which BrightPay crashes when an employer file connection is unreliable.
Several additional minor bug fixes and corrections.

22.2

06/04/2022

Updates and fixes:

Updates Scottish Earnings Arrestment rates for 2022/23 tax year.
New Council Tax AEO for Wales (with new rates for attachment orders made on/after 1 April 2022). The previously existing Council Tax AEO has been renamed to include "England" for clarity.
Re-enables COVID-19 Related Sick Leave (i.e. with day one SSP), but with a note that it is only allowed in Northern Ireland up until 24/09/2022.
Other fixes to minor issues discovered since the launch of BrightPay 2022/23.

22.1

24/03/2022

Spring Statement 2022 updates:

Increase to the National Insurance Primary Threshold for Class 1 NICs.
Annual Employment Allowance limit increased to £5,000.

22.0

22/03/2022

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2022/03/brightpay-2022-23-is-now-available-what-s-new/.

21.8

29/06/2022

EXB fixes:

Fixes a crash that can occur when creating an EXB in some scenarios.
Corrects company car rates for cars without an approved CO2 figure.

21.7

10/03/2022

Updates and fixes:

Updates CSSPRS with recently announced scheme end date (17 March 2022).
Adds National Minimum/Living Wage rates that come into effect from 1 April 2022.
Other minor updates and fixes.

21.6

14/02/2022

Updates and fixes:

Supports CSSPRS claims for sick days from 21 December 2021 onwards.
Adds Comma bank template.
Adds support for new Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider – Cushon.
Updates EXB submission format for compatibility with HMRC’s 2021/22 specifications.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

21.5

14/12/2021

Updates and fixes:

November 2021 UK and London Living Wage rates
Updates journals API integrations for compatibility with latest changes and security recommendations.
Updates Smart Pension API integration for compatibility with latest changes.
Adds bank holiday to calendars for The Queen's Platinum Jubilee (3 June 2022)
Other minor fixes.

21.4

29/09/2021

Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme (CSSPRS)

CSSPRS claim report dates are now limited to on or before 30 September 2021 (which is when the scheme has been confirmed by HMRC to end).

21.3

18/08/2021

Improvements to aid data accuracy and quality

BrightPay now asks a series of eligibility questions (and gives answer-specific guidance) when enabling an Employment Allowance claim or when enabling Apprenticeship Levy.
Additional guidance is now provided when adding a non-taxable expense reimbursement or a termination award to a payslip.
New reminder to send an EXB to HMRC after all payslips for the tax year have been finalised, when one or more payslips has a payrolled expense/benefit liable to employer's Class 1A NIC.
When choosing a National Insurance table, there is additional validation to ensure an employee's date of birth lines up with the age category selection.

Bug fixes

Fixes issue in which 'Number of sick days' on calendar report would always display as zero.
Flagging a change of National Insurance table due to an employee's age changing in a pay period is now correctly based on the pay date rather than pay reference period dates.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

21.2

04/06/2021

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)

When first enterting a July or August 2021 pay period with open payslips, BrightPay will remind you about the CJRS rate changes.

Journals

Journals can now be sent to Zoho Books.
Renames Sage One to Sage Business Cloud Accounting.
Updates the integrations with various journal providers to support the latest formats and requirements, as well as to fix some minor issues.

Other updates

Ability to pay HMRC using Modulr.
Benefits/expenses can now be set to apply to the current tax year only, or auto-repeat into the following tax year (with amounts, or zeroised).
Updates the Aegon SmartEnrol file format to latest version.

Bug fixes

Annual leave is now treated as a regular working day in SSP calculations.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

21.1

06/04/2021

Pay using Modulr

BrightPay's Modulr integration is now available, enabling a modern and simple way to pay your employees and subcontractors.

Updates and fixes

Improvements to how a payment schedule is set up.
Fixes recognition of Student Loan Plan 2 and Plan 4 on SL1 coding notices.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

21.0

22/03/2021

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2021/03/brightpay-2021-22-is-now-available-what-s-new/

20.10

01/04/2021

Updates and fixes:

Journals – updates Xero integration to ensure compatibility with their most recent system changes.
Fixes coordinate mappings for printing on HMRC 20/21 P60 stationery.

20.9

24/03/2021

Updates and fixes:

2020/21 P60 updates.
2020/21 EXB submission format.
2020/21 beneficial loan rate (2.25%).
Statutory pay weekly rate change from 4 April 2021.
Other minor bug fixes.

20.8

19/01/2021

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)

Extends furlough pay and CJRS features to support pay periods up to the end of the 2020/21 tax year (support for April 2021 will be available in BrightPay 2021/22).

Embedded Browser Update

BrightPay now uses the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime to display web-based content, ensuring technical compatibility with the requirements of modern web services. When you next access web-based content in BrightPay (e.g. a pension or journal provider login window) you may be prompted to update the Runtime on your PC if you don't already have the latest version.

Other updates and fixes:

Minor fixes and improvements.

20.7

17/11/2020

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)

Extends furlough pay and CJRS features to support December 2020 and January 2021 pay periods. (Support beyond January 2021 will be added in a future upgrade when the government have announced the details.)

Other updates and fixes:

November 2020 UK and London Living Wage rates
Minor fixes and improvements.

20.6

02/11/2020

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)

In line with recent Government announcements, furlough pay and CJRS features have been extended to support November 2020 pay periods.

Job Support Scheme (JSS) - Withdrawn

Much effort in the last few weeks was spent on developing support for the JSS in BrightPay. But with the Government withdrawing it hours before it was set to kick in, we've disabled it until further notice. If you had early access to JSS functionality, you'll need to ensure you remove any usage before processing November payroll.

Other improvements and fixes:

Workers Pension Trust October 2020 CSV format.
New "Amount due to HMRC" column is available to be displayed on the BrightPay startup window.
Allows Employment Allowance annual claim to be adjusted (e.g. where employer NIC has been claimed via CJRS, and HMRC have agreed to reduce it).
Updates the embedded web browser component used by BrightPay to Microsoft Edge (legacy), to help solve issues in authentication flows where an API provider has ended support for Internet Explorer. See our blog for more details.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.5

01/07/2020

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) Updates:

Supports flexible furlough (i.e. when employees return to work part-time with reduced pay), and claim periods from 1 July onwards.
Supports phased rule changes in August, September and October.
Updates CJRS report document and CSV file to include number of usual, actual and furlough hours (in the case of flexible furlough).
Note that to support HMRC's requirement of claim periods being strictly within a single calendar month from July onwards, we've had to make some changes to how amounts are calculated in the CJRS report. Please see our blog for details as well as how this could affect you.

Other improvements and fixes:

New message in HMRC Payments that lets you know when the equivalent annualised NIC-able pay would put you in excess of the Apprenticeship Levy threshold.
Support for 2% abatement on rate of all company cars registered on/after 6 April 2020, which have a CO2 figure based on the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP).
Updates FreeAgent journal integration for compatibility with their most recent changes.
Disables rollup for QuickBooks IIF journals (as it's not supported by QuickBooks desktop).
Corrects journal variation amounts in some edge-case negative-pay scenarios.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.4

26/05/2020

COVID-19 Updates:

Claim report for the Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme (CSSPRS). This feature will provide all the fields for input into the HMRC claim website.
CJRS – as per HMRC's latest guidance, the NIC claim is now capped at 13.8% of the gross pay claim, and the CSV export format has been simplified.

Other:

Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.3

06/05/2020

Various updates and fixes:

CJRS claim – eligible employees with a re-hire start date after 19 March 2020 can now more easily be included in a claim.
Statutory Sick Pay – BrightPay now correctly reduces the number of 'waiting' days in a normal Period of Incapacity to Work that can be linked back to a COVID-19 Period of Incapacity to Work.
Updates date format in exported Quickbooks IIF file.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.2

22/04/2020

New feature:

Claim report for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). This feature will provide all the fields for input into the HMRC claim website, or export a CSV file for upload (where supported).

Other fixes and updates:

Reverts Workers Pension Trust CSV format back to previous format (due to new format being delayed).
Fixes issue in which employer class 1A NICs were incorrectly contributing to Employment Allowance claim.
Fixes issue in which BrightPay thinks an EPS with employment allowance indicator has already been sent to HMRC in 20/21 when it hasn’t.
Journals targeted at "Other" (and so with no available provider branding) now display a text title where other journals display the logo image.
Fixes issue in which the nominal account mappings for saved journals could be initialised without a selected value.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.1

03/04/2020

New feature:

Utility to help calculate and record amounts paid to furloughed employees that are to be reclaimed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

Other fixes and updates:

Updates Scottish tax bands for pay dates after 10 May 2020.
Fixes company car percentage calculation for cars with zero CO2 emissions.
Corrects employer NIC amount due to HMRC when there have been real-time class 1A contributions.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

20.0

19/03/2020

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2020/03/brightpay-2020-21-is-now-available-what-s-new/

19.7

01/07/2020

Updates and fixes:

Fixes company car rates for pre-1998 vehicles or vehicles without a CO2 figure.
Corrects issue in which PBIK summary document is not made available on the BrightPay Connect employee dashboard.
Other minor fixes and tweaks.

19.6

03/03/2020

Support for posting payroll journals to some new accounting software providers:

FreeAgent
KashFlow
AccountsIQ
Twinfield

Other new features:

New flexibility and control over when an employee's P60 and P11D are to be made available in Self Service in Connect.
New column options for the period summary UI: tax code, NI number, department, payment method and directorship.

Updates and fixes:

Updates Salvus pension contributions CSV format to use their "Secure Upload Data" template.
When using the Scottish Widows AssistMe contributions submission CSV file format, all employees (enrolled and non-enrolled) are now included as required.
Fixes issue in which the opt-out date of a past enrolment is incorrectly included on some pension contribution submission CSV file formats after a re-enrolment.
Corrects the calculation of payroll journal amounts in some edge-case scenarios.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

19.5

10/12/2019

Updates and fixes:

Supports the latest UK and London Living Wage rates, announced in November 2019.
Updates Scottish Widows 'Standard' pension contributions file format to latest version.
When using the ’Select By’ button in lists of employees, the ’Name Initial’ and ’Surname Initial’ options now show grouped selection choices (e.g. A–F, G–L, etc., depending on total number of selectable employees).
Bug fix: report column headings now correctly appear on page 2 onwards when printing, emailing and exporting.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

19.4

23/09/2019

New features:

Improved interface and workflow for viewing/entering the 'average weekly earnings' for statutory parenting pay, including new warnings where BrightPay detects that there are more or fewer historic payment records than expected.
Several new payroll period summary column options for amounts "in previous period" (allowing you to compare this and previous period amounts on the period summary view).
'Contracted hours per week' and 'Is payment to a non-individual' fields are now available as column options in Analysis.
For Standard/Bureau licences with a limited number of employees/employers, there is a new Upgrade Licence button in the licence details window, which when clicked opens a web page with the new order form to purchase a licence upgrade.

Improvements and fixes:

Allows a negative Apprenticeship Levy value to be calculated, which can then reduce the year-to-date Apprenticeship Levy amount that is submitted on an EPS (although the year-to-date amount itself still cannot be negative as per HMRC's own requirements).
Corrects the tax week/month number reporting on FPS (and on P45) for fortnightly and 4-weekly pay schedules.
Updates the Aviva contributions submission format to fix various scenarios.
Updates the Standard Life contributions CSV file format to fix various scenarios.
Journals - the ‘Reset Authentication’ functionality now works more reliably.
Improves handling of SSP carry-over in certain situations.
Fixes an issue in which SSP can be incorrectly paid during a period of maternity leave.
Fixes various scenarios in which the payroll period summary on-screen totals were not being automatically refreshed.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

19.3

05/06/2019

New features:

Ability to batch print, email and export P45.
Ability to print, export or email currently open payslips (i.e. those which have not yet been finalised). Such payslips are decorated with a 'DRAFT' watermark.
Bureau feature – new 'Bureau Statistics Report' which shows various totals for each employer for informational or billing purposes. Accessed via the BrightPay startup window employer menu, it can be viewed/printed or exported to CSV.
Bureau feature – ability to batch check for coding notices for multiple employers.
Bureau feature – ability to sort employers by label colour on the BrightPay startup window.
Adds button menu to BrightPay startup window which mimics the employer list right-click context menu.

Improvements and fixes:

Coding notices – where an employee is unable to be matched, the NINO or works number that HMRC have on file is now clearly shown to help determine why.
When determining whether AE pension contributions are too low, BrightPay now compares against custom contribution rates, if entered. This will prevent the low contributions warning appearing where, for example, alternate certification tier rates are being used.
Fixes issue in which the opt-out date of a previous People's Pension membership could interfere with contributions submissions in the new/current People's Pension membership (e.g. after re-enrolment)
When posting contributions to Smart pension for a leaver, the leave date is now also submitted as part of the operation.
Fixes calculation of payrolled benefits where the 50% overriding limit was used in a previous pay period.
Corrects calculation of journal 'gross wages' figure where a departmental statutory pay variation rule is used.
Corrects Scottish Earnings Arrestment attachment order calculation in line with 2019/20 changes.
Fixes Student Loan calculation rounding (bug introduced in 19.0 which could cause amount to be off by a pound in some circumstances).
Minor fixes to 12Pay, Iris and Star importers.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

19.2

29/04/2019

This update fixes issues found since the 19.0 and 19.1 releases:

Improves support for posting journals to Quickbooks Online where there are over 100 nominal accounts defined.
Fixes issue when posting journal entries with tracking categories directly to Xero.
Improves rounding of calculated weighted departmental amounts (which prevents penny differences both in analysis and when posting a departmental journal).
Ability to ignore BrightPay's "Auto enrolment scheme contributions are below minimum level" warning for any given membership (e.g. where employee has opted down).
Fixes issue in which traditional pension scheme deduction one-off amounts would be taken into account even when one-off amounts are not specifically enabled.
Update to Standard Life contributions CSV file format.
Several other minor bug fixes and improvements.

19.1

05/04/2019

This update fixes issues found since the 19.0 release:

Corrects amounts on Xero journal API submission.
Fixes (and prevents further) data integrity issues that can occur when importing from third party software.
When importing from BrightPay 2018/19, the option of whether or not to carry-over HMRC payment shortfall is now imported correctly.
Fixes issue with batch adding a deduction to multiple payslips.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

19.0

20/03/2019

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2019/03/brightpay-2019-20-is-now-available-what-s-new/

18.5

04/03/2019

New features:

Ability to quickly create an new/additional employment for a previous/existing employee.
CIS – new 'Payments' menu in subcontractor toolbar with ability to batch print multiple P&D statements for a single subcontractor.
CIS – new ‘Year End Statement’ document.

Updates:

2018/19 P60 updates.
2018/19 EXB submission format.
Additional FPS can now be sent beyond previous 19 April deadline – it now supersedes the EYU as the way to make post-tax-year corrections.
Support for 'Disguised Remuneration' declaration on FPS.
P11Ds can now be batch printed/emailed/exported separately or together.
April 1st 2019 minimum wage rates.

Improvements and fixes:

Fixes tax calculation for tax code 'NT' for mid-year starts.
Fixes issue in which an after-leaving payslip cannot be created for an employee who left prior to mid year start.
Fixes employee NIC figure on P11.
Fixes journal rollup count calculation in certain scenarios.
Fixes issue in which a pension opt out refund is not cleared out if the opt out is retrospectively re-processed in an earlier pay period.

18.4

01/11/2018

BrightPay Connect

New feature allows you to request a Connect user (e.g. your client) to complete payroll entry or payroll approval for a given pay period online, after which you can download the data directly into BrightPay. For more information, log into your Connect dashboard and click the new Requests link in the top navigation.

Pensions

The People's Pension – submissions can now be made directly via API (with CSV still available as an option).
Smart Pension – support for new authentication process (required from November 2018)
Aviva – correction to handling of certain contribution scenarios.

RTI

Communication with HMRC now always uses the TLS 1.2 protocol, as per HMRC's latest instructions.
The sender password is now included in submission XML as plain text, as per HMRC's latest instructions.

Other new features and updates:

UK/London Living Wage November 2018 updates
Import from Star Payroll.
P11 and employee calendar documents can now be directly emailed.
Ability to edit the list of saved third-party email recipients (in BrightPay Preferences).

Improvements and fixes:

Employer data is now synchronised to BrightPay Connect after performing a batch operation.
FPS importer improvements.
Fixes handling of NIC refund in payroll journal.
Fixes indication of late submission reason when sending an Additional FPS for a pre-paid period.
Fixes tax code on 'payment after leaving' payslips for Scottish taxpayers.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

18.3

19/07/2018

Emailing documents

More documents are now email-able directly from BrightPay:

P45
Print preview of multiple payslips
Print preview of multiple CIS P&D statements
SAP1
SMP1
SPP1
Print previews of credit transfers, cheque payments, and cash requirement.

Ability to specify the default starting body content to use when emailing a document (in Preferences > Email).
Ability to quickly turn on/off the email signature (in Preferences > Email).
When emailing a document, there is a new menu to quickly select and re-use recently used body content.
Email body content now accepts 'Markdown' formatting.
Fixes and improvements to document password handling.

BrightPay start screen

New start screen column for Next Estimated Pay Date. (After upgrading to 18.3, values for this column will be blank and will only be populated for an employer the next time payslips are finalised or re-opened).
Two new tick boxes in BrightPay Preferences to indicate where Next Estimated Pay Date is in the past (which shows a red background colour for applicable employers on the start screen) or indicate where Next Estimated Pay Date is within X days (where X is customisable – shows a yellow background colour for applicable employers on the start screen).

Bureau users – new features:

Ability to batch finalise the payroll for multiple employers.
Ability to select employers by label colour when preparing a batch operation.

Other new features:

Ability to persist a “Net to Gross” setting going forward (i.e. rolling net pay).
Ability to create a bank file for paying HMRC.
Allows a deduction to be calculated as a percentage of Auto Enrolment qualifying earnings.
Enables subcontractors with zero amounts in a pay period to be excluded from CIS300 submission.
When in Payroll, the name of the active employee (i.e. the part of large text title) can now be clicked to navigate directly into the Employee > Edit Details screen for that employee.
When importing employees from CSV (i.e. generic, Sage, Iris), there is a new item in the Options menu to 'ignore employees with a leave date in a previous tax year' (ticked by default).
Adds HMRC Sender ID and Password as importable fields when importing employers from CSV file.
Ability to include employee YTD NIC values when exporting employees to CSV.
New Employment Allowance report

Improvements and fixes:

Various API integrations updated to explicitly use the TLS 1.2 protocol.
Employment Allowance can no longer be split across multiple PAYE schemes
When printing, emailing or exporting reports in Analysis, the table headers are repeated on each page.
For documents with fixed size text boxes (e.g. P60, P30, P45), if a value is too long to fit, it is now automatically downscaled in font size so that it does.
Update to Aviva pension submission formats.
Updates importers (e.g. FPS import, Sage CSV import, Basic PAYE tools import, Qtac import) to fix issues and work with latest versions.
Fixes issue in which only a subset of employees are available when creating a report in Analysis.
Fixes an issue which could result in higher than expected general background CPU usage.
Other fixes and stability improvements.

18.2

02/05/2018

Bug fixes

Fixes an issue that could cause year-to-date gross amounts to be calculated incorrectly (which would then affect other calculations e.g. tax, etc.). The issue is automatically detected and fixed in affected files opened in 18.2, and is prevented from happening again.
Fixes an issue that could cause an employee's previous employment totals to be handled incorrectly in pay periods after their starting pay period.
Improves and fixes various issues and bugs to do with exporting PDF documents.
Other minor bug/crash fixes.

18.1

12/04/2018

This update fixes some important bugs found since the 18.0 release.

Important note for customers who originally imported from Moneysoft 2017/18 into BrightPay 2017/18

If you imported your data from Moneysoft 2017/18 into BrightPay 2017/18 (and then from BrightPay 2017/18 into BrightPay 2018/19), it's likely that the tax codes in your 2018/19 file are incorrect. For an explanation of the issue, alongside steps on how to quickly fix, visit www.brightpay.co.uk/pages/moneysoft-fix

Bug fixes

Updates the Auto Enrolment letters to use phase 2 contribution rates.
Fixes issue in which the totals may not be correct when printing or exporting the period summary.
Fixes validation of NEST groups and payment sources.
Fixes tax calculation for employees earning over £150,000 per year.
Fixes issue with importing very large employer files from BrightPay 2017/18.
Fixes annual leave entitlement calculation in certain scenarios.
Fixes issue in which P30 or P60 may be printed in landscape orientation instead of portrait.
Fixes issue in which switching an employee to a different payment frequency in the first pay period can cause BrightPay to crash in certain scenarios.
Other minor fixes and corrections.

New feature

Coding notice checks can now use agent credentials if available and applicable.

18.0

20/03/2018

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2018/03/brightpay-2018-19-is-now-available-what-s-new/

17.7

21/08/2019

Updates RTI submission format for compatibility with changes made by HMRC to their systems in mid 2019. This upgrade is required to be able to send an EYU submission for the 2017/18 tax year going forward.

17.6

30/01/2018

This update includes the following:

Real Time Information

Updates the address of the HMRC server to which RTI submissions are sent. *IMPORTANT: This is required to be able to send RTI submissions from February 2018 onwards*
2017/18 EXB submission format

Automatic Enrolment

Support for sending enrolment and contributions submissions directly to Aviva via API.
Ability to include employer name and address on auto enrolment letters.
Allows earnings period start/end dates to be overridden on Smart Pension contribution submissions.
Update to Scottish Widows CSV format.
Update to Standard Life CSV format.
Update to Welplan CSV format.

Improvements to employee selection lists

‘No longer employed’ employees are now shown in grey text in most employee selection lists.
When opening up an employee selection list, ‘no longer employed’ employees are unticked by default.
In employee selection lists, the ‘Select By’ button has a new filter option for ‘Employment Date’ to allow easy selection of only current, past or future employees.
There is a new employee ordering option in BrightPay Preferences to always show ‘no longer employed’ employees at bottom of employee lists under all the other employees.

Other updates and fixes

November 2017 UK and London Living Wage rates.
The last used PDF password and ‘auto-open’ settings are remembered between PDF exports.
The period summary can now be exported to CSV file.
Ability to customise the 'Tax Rate' that is output into a Xero journal CSV file.
TUPE support.
Fixes director NIC calculation when NI category changes after a mid year start.
Fixes an issue that could cause BrightPay to use excessive computer memory.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

17.5

19/10/2017

This update includes the following:

Automatic Enrolment

BrightPay 17.5 has several changes to reflect the updates to Automatic Enrolment legislation now that the ‘staging’ of existing employers is coming to an end:

‘Staging date’ is now known as ‘Duties start date’, and there is a new workflow for determining your Automatic Enrolment status as an employer and entering your duties start date.
From October 2017, every employer should know their status and/or duties start date. For this reason, where the status or duties start date is not entered, BrightPay will show a blanket warning.
Supports Automatic Enrolment workflow for employees who first employ staff on/after 1 October 2017 (whose duties begin on the day the first member of staff starts).

Any automatic enrolment pension scheme contribution can now include additional one-off amounts (which can be shown/hidden via new check box in contribution settings popup).
Any automatic enrolment pension scheme contribution (whether employee or employer, standard or one-off) can now be entered as a percentage amount or a fixed amount.
New option to fix under-contribution by adding additional one-off amounts.
Update to Smart Pension submissions.

Other updates and fixes

Ability to send a support request directly from BrightPay (via Help menu).
Previous employment figures can now be entered for any employee (i.e. not just those with a B/C starter declaration – via Edit Payslip Settings > Employment tab).
Improved support for continuing Apprenticeship Levy in mid-year-start setups.
Net to gross functionality can now do ‘Take-home pay to gross’ and ‘Cost-to-employer to gross’.
Ability to print employee coding notices (both current notices and historical notices).
Employee’s age now shows next to date of birth selection when editing employee details.
Other minor fixes, corrections and data resiliency improvements.

17.4

06/07/2017

This update includes the following:

New/Updated Documents and Reports

Statutory Pay Calculation and Schedule
Attachment Orders Summary
SMP1
SPP1
SAP1
Employee Count
Employee Address Labels
Updated P32
Updated Annual Leave Entitlement Summary

Other updates and fixes

Fixes issue in which auto enrolling an employee into a pension scheme with an enrolment date midway through the pay reference period can inadvertently set the enrolment date to the start of the period.
Fixes issue which can prevent a savings scheme withdrawal from employee balance from being included in net pay.
Updates beneficial loan rate to 2017/18 figure (2.5%).
For partnership subcontractors, the partnership UTR is now displayed on Payment & Deductions Statement.
Fixes Quickbooks journal file format.
Updates Smart Pension submission formats to the latest versions.
Updates IRIS CSV import.
Other minor fixes and corrections.

17.3

13/06/2017

This update includes the following:

Pensions & Auto Enrolment

Adds ability to easily switch one or multiple employees from one AE scheme to another.
When a pension contribution is auto-zeroised due to a partial pay reference period, this can now be overridden via a new checkbox in the contribution pop-up settings.
NEST – if possible, Payment Source is now auto populated when sending an enrolment submission.
NEST – improves discernment of the default period start/end dates to be used when sending a contributions submission (e.g. when your payment schedule as set up with NEST differs from your pay period schedule in BrightPay)

Other new features

Adds ability to make additions 'notional' i.e. only contributing towards taxable, NIC-able and/or pension-able pay, without actually giving the payment to the employee (also works for CIS-able pay and subcontractors). This has various uses, one of which is to handle expenses/benefits for which there is a Class 1 NIC liability that must be put through payroll.
Adds ability to include declaration on FPS (or EYU) that an employee's payment is being made to a non-individual.
Enables an Additional Apprenticeship Levy amount to be entered for each HMRC pay period, to enable inclusion of amounts that are not accounted for in BrightPay (e.g. due to a split PAYE scheme) on an EPS.

Other fixes and improvements

Update to HSBCnet bank file format.
For payroll journal entries with a negative amount, BrightPay now simply moves it from credit to debit (or vice versa) as a positive amount.
Improves reliability of Smart Pension submissions.
Improves Moneysoft importer.
Updates Last Open Date on BrightPay start screen to reflect GMT/BST time rather than UTC time.
Fixes car benefit calculation rounding for cars with certain CO2 emission values.
Various fixes and updates to the sidebar help content when entering the details of employee expenses and benefits.
Fixes UTR on CIS300 submission for partnership subcontractors.
Fixes ‘Annual salary’ amount on Employee Details report for fortnightly and 4-weekly paid employees.
Fixes week dates on P32.
Fixes some file access issues that could occur if BrightPay is first ran with administrative privileges, and later ran with standard privileges.
Other minor fixes, corrections and performance improvements.

17.2

25/04/2017

This update includes the following:

Import from BrightPay 16/17: Important Fix

It has been discovered that if an employee was repaying Student Loan in BrightPay 16/17 with a Student Loan stop date on or before 5th April 2017, they were being imported into BrightPay 17/18 still set as repaying Student Loan but without the stop date. This had the effect of causing Student Loan deductions to resume. This update fixes this import bug.
To help resolve this for affected customers who have already imported from BrightPay 16/17, this update will automatically attempt to fix the issue (which will be possible only if your BrightPay 16/17 file is discoverable). If the automatic fix does not work, or if you have already finalised payslips with this issue, you will need to correct it manually – we apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause.

Expenses & Benefits

New printable PBIK document which details all the payrolled expenses and benefits for an employee along with the total cash equivalent accounted for in the tax year.
Detection and handling of 50% overriding limit when benefits are payrolled. BrightPay handles this by auto-reducing the benefit's cash equivalent to zero, though you can manually override it with a lowered cash equivalent if need be.
Fixes issue which could prevent a payrolled car amendment flag from being correctly set on an FPS.

Pensions & Auto Enrolment

Adds Amber Pension Trust as an Auto Enrolment scheme provider.
BrightPay now automatically selects the relevant NEST incorrect/partial payment reason for leavers.
BrightPay no longer includes opted-out employees in NEST submissions if no opt-out reference is provided.

Other fixes and improvements

The Payroll ID change indicator can now be manually included on an FPS.
Employer name is now shown on the preview of all RTI (and CIS) submission types.
Clarifies Student Loan selection options to give information about how to handle the situation in which employee is repaying both a Plan 1 and a Plan 2 Student Loan.
If an employee has multiple attachment order deductions of the same attachment order type in a single pay period, they are now shown as separate items on the employee payslip instead of a single rolled up value.
Makes the password box wider on the startup window.
Fixes issue with printing multiple reports together.
Fixes issue in which startup window columns are sometimes out of order.
Fixes 1st January 2018 public holiday (was being shown on calendar as 2nd January).

17.1

05/04/2017

This update fixes some important bugs found since the 17.0 release, and adds new features.

New Feature: Automatic Re-Enrolment

Re-enolment date defaults to three years after the staging date, but can be changed in accordance with TPR regulations.
When setting up a new employer in BrightPay that had already staged for Auto Enrolment in the past, employees can now be simply marked as having already opted out or ceased (with the date recorded), so that they can be assessed for re-enrolment if and when applicable.
Automatic re-enrolment flagging and processing.

New Feature: Additions/deductions as a % of basic/gross/net pay

Additions or deductions can now be set up to calculate as a percentage of the payslip’s basic, gross or net pay.
Works for both employee and subcontractors.

Improved reporting of named hourly and daily rates

Hourly and daily rates with the same 'description' value, whether set up at employer level or employee level, are now all reported under a single column in analysis. This allows you to set up a rate with a different rate value for each employee (e.g. "Holiday pay"), and compare them all in analysis.
When the value of a named rate is changed mid way through the tax year, the past payments based on the old rate now still continue to appear in Analysis.
(This also works for subcontractor-level rates in CIS).

Bug fixes:

Fixes issue in which an eligible jobholder imported from BrightPay 2016/17 has their enrolment date inadvertently changed in the first pay period – if this has happened to you, you can fix either by re-importing your employer file, or by manually adjusting the enrolment date (which is now clickable and changeable on the employee AE status screen).
Fixes issue in which applying an employee coding notice was not automatically re-calculating the tax on the affected payslip.
Fixes issue in which the BrightPay startup window keeps growing vertically with every launch.
Improves reliability of BrightPay Connect synchronisation.
Other minor corrections and improvements.

17.0

20/03/2017

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2017/03/brightpay-2017-18-is-now-available-what-s-new/

16.9

21/08/2019

Updates RTI submission format for compatibility with changes made by HMRC to their systems in mid 2019. This upgrade is required to be able to send an EYU submission for the 2016/17 tax year going forward.

16.8

15/03/2018

Real Time Information

This upgrade updates the HMRC server address to which RTI submissions are sent, and is required to be able to send an EYU for the 2016/17 tax year.

16.7

13/06/2017

BrightPay 16.7 contains year-end fixes and updates:

New 'PBIK' document which details the benefits that have been payrolled for an employee (including cash equivalents and total PAYE tax deducted in year, as per HMRC requirements).
Fixes and updates to sidebar help content when adding or editing employee expenses and benefits.
Improves pre-validation of EXB data to help prevent submission errors.
Fixes typo on P60 template.
Fixes issue in which week/month 1 indicator is not visible on P60 for certain tax codes.

16.6

16/03/2017

BrightPay 16.6 contains several minor enhances and improvements, and fixes several issues.

P60

Improved P60 preview.
Multiple P60s can now be batch exported to separate PDF documents.
New option allows BrightPay logo to be hidden from P60.
New option allows employees who were not paid in tax year to be ignored when batch creating P60s.

Auto Enrolment letters – when printing or exporting letters, there is a new Options menu, which allows you to:

Choose to include employer logo (at top left, top centre, or top right).
Choose to put date at top left or top right.
Adjust amount of spacing around employee address (so as to help fit in the window of windowed envelopes).

BrightPay Connect (previously BrightPay Cloud)

BrightPay Cloud will be known as BrightPay Connect going forward. This upgrade updates all references in BrightPay to use the new terminology. (You will notice the terminology also being updated across our websites in the coming week).
New feature allows an employee to be marked as “confidential”, which prevents them being visible to users without the requisite permission on the BrightPay Connect employer dashboard.
Employees now manage their own password for the employee self service dashboard, and so the password field in BrightPay has been demoted to “PDF password” only.
Corrects employee self service payslip availability when “As soon as payslips are finalised” is selected as the chosen option.

Other updates

Employees who have left are now displayed in grey (but still selectable) in the main list under the EMPLOYEES tab.
Updates 16/17 EXB (Expenses and Benefits) submission in accordance with the latest HMRC specification.
Updates True Potential CSV file format to the latest version.
Fixes and improvements to FPS importer.
Fixes year to date tax and taxable pay figures in analysis for employees who have had a previous employment in the tax year.
Fixes departmental calculation of pension figures in analysis.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

16.5

15/11/2016

BrightPay 16.5 contains many new features and several fixes:

Minimum Wage

Employees can be optionally assigned to one of five minimum wage profiles:

National Minimum/Living Wage
National Minimum/Living Wage (Apprentice)
UK Living Wage
London Living Wage
Not Eligible

BrightPay will automatically flag and warn when the relevant minimum wage is not being met for hourly-paid employees (using their age, number of hours worked, and minimum wage profile).
A new Minimum Wage Report can be used to check that the minimum wage is being met for all employees. It allows the number of hours worked to be batch entered or confirmed for each employee.
Some minimum wage fields have been added to Analysis.

BrightPay Start Screen

The list of employers can be now searched or filtered on the BrightPay start screen. With the screen open and in focus, just press a key to start searching.
When exporting the list of employers to CSV, a comprehensive list of employer data items can now be chosen from.
Feature banner can now be hidden for the application session (if BrightPay is quit and re-launched, it will show again).

Statutory Sick Pay

BrightPay now much more elegantly handles situations in which an employee's sickness for a given pay period is only known (or can only be recorded) after the pay date has already elapsed.
Sick days can now be recorded or changed in finalised pay periods. Doing so will recalculate the relevant SSP payments, but will not alter the SSP actually paid on finalised payslips.
Where the total SSP that should have been paid in past periods differs from the SSP amount actually paid in past periods, an SSP carry-over or refund is brought forward to the current pay period.

Auto Enrolment

CSV submissions can now be previewed in a grid (as well as raw text, as before). A note has been added to warn against opening/saving CSV files in Excel (which can change formatting and cause submissions to fail).
Auto enrolment letters can now be made available in Employee Self Service on BrightPay Cloud (web updates to follow shortly).
Includes updated letter template for employees marked as "already enrolled in a qualifying scheme".
Updates Royal London CSV file format to the latest version.
Updates Standard Life CSV file format to the latest version.
Updates True Potential CSV file format to the latest version.

Mid Year Start

New Mid Year Start Summary Report shows the starting year-to-date cumulative amounts for all employees in a single report.
Improves Sage and Iris CSV import compatibility.

Other updates and fixes

The carry-over of shortfall amounts between HMRC payments can now be turned off.
Retirement age calculation now works correctly for employees born on or after 6th April 1960.
The default tab to show when opening employer files can now be set in BrightPay preferences.
Fixes rounding in car benefit calculation.
Other bug fixes and performance improvements.

16.4

08/09/2016

BrightPay 16.4 contains new features and fixes:

Pensions & Auto Enrolment

NEST - When sending a contributions submission, the schedule period start and end dates can now be manually overridden prior to sending - this is mainly to aid situations in which the schedule setup in NEST is different to how it is set up in BrightPay. Also, where possible, the payment due date is pre-populated with the expected value.
NEST - ability to validate groups and payment sources. This compares the setup in BrightPay with the setup in NEST online and, if there are differences, suggests actions to resolve.
NEST - ability to send a payment approval request for a NEST contributions schedule.
Smart Pension - updates submissions API to latest version.
Aegon - updates CSV submission file format to latest version.
True Potential - updates CSV submission file format to latest version.

BrightPay Cloud

Allows a purchase code to be sent directly from BrightPay when connecting an employer to the cloud and, if required, automatically prompts for a purchase code during the connection process.
Adds ability to select which reports are shown in the employer dashboard on BrightPay Cloud.
Fixes issue in which a cloud backup age could be displayed incorrectly when browsing cloud backups.
Improvements to cloud connection and synchronisation.

CIS

Ability to import payment records from a CSV file.
Ability to batch zero-ise subcontractor payments.
Ability to print the pay period summary.

Other updates and fixes

Allows KC prefix NINOs to be entered for employees.
Update to HSBCnet bank file format.
Fixes calculation of an alternate-basis director's NIC in a payment-after-leaving payslip.
Fixes minor issues with Sage CSV import process.
Fixes minor issues with FPS importer.
Other bug fixes and performance improvements.

16.3

05/07/2016

BrightPay 16.3 is a maintenance release with some important fixes:

Fixes crash that could occur when viewing the HMRC Payments tab or attempting to create an EPS on the 5th of a month.
Fixes crash that could occur when attempting to add a benefit for an employee directly from Payroll.
Fixes issue in which department association weightings may not be correctly maintained from period to period for employees in three or more departments.
Fixes issue in which re-opening a payslip with a repeatable note would cause a duplicate note to be created.
Fixes crash that could occur when enrolling an employee into an “Other Automatic Enrolment scheme”
Fixes issue in which zero values would be incorrectly assumed for P6 coding notices without the Total Pay/Tax in Previous Employment instructions.
Smart Pension - submissions API has been updated to the latest version.

16.2

21/06/2016

BrightPay 16.2 adds many important new features and fixes several issues. It is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features

Allows Agent sender credentials to be used globally to send submissions to HMRC.
Allows Agent contact details to be included in submissions in HMRC.
Allows P11 to be batch viewed/printed for multiple employees.
Allows 16/17 flexible drawdown declaration to be included on FPS.
Allows 16/17 trivial commutation payment declaration to be included on FPS.
The ability to view/print employee P11D forms and submit a year-end Expenses and Benefits submission has been added to BrightPay 15/16. Although HMRC are not yet accepting EXB submissions for the 16/17 tax year, the preparatory functionality to do so has also been added to BrightPay 16/17 in this update.

Auto enrolment

Improves compatibility and reliability of NEST web service submissions.
Allows NEST submissions to be sent with an overriding "Tax Monthly" or "Tax Weekly" pay frequency indicator.
Adds Smart Pension as an Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider (including direct submissions to Smart Pension via their API).
Adds Salvus as an Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider.
Aviva CSV submissions have been updated to work with the latest specifications.
NOW: Pensions CSV submissions have been updated to work with the latest specifications.
Improves and fixes minor issues in the Auto Enrolment staging preview report.
Several pension scheme providers have been updated to only enable the Relief at Source and/or Net Pay Arrangement tax relief option as required.

CIS

Various fixes to CIS300 submission that could cause it to be rejected by HMRC.
Adds CIS liability total to HMRC payments interface as well as P30 and P32 reports.
Allows a separate set of HMRC sender credentials to be stored and used for CIS submissions.
Fixes issue in which departmental CIS reporting figures would all be zero.
Improves reliability of updating subcontractor VAT registration details mid year.
Improves reliability of updating subcontractor departments mid year.
Ability to print/export the response summary of a CISREQ submission.
Fixes issue in which a subcontractor’s verification number would incorrectly show on a Payment & Deduction Statement where CIS deductions are not being made at the higher rate.

Other updates

Updates HMRC Basic PAYE Tools importer to work with the most up to date file format.
Updates Sage CSV importing to work with the most up to date file format.
Adds NatWest PayAway bank file format.
Adds Yorkshire bank file format.
Updates RBS Bankline bank file format to latest version.
2016 Scottish Earnings Arrestment rates.
Adds new Total salary-based earnings column to analysis.

Other fixes

Fixes an issue in which very large files were being prevented from being imported from BrightPay 15/16.
Fixes issue in which BrightPay would crash when creating an EPS before the schedule of HMRC payments has been set up.
Fixes issue in which switching an employee to a new pay schedule would not work correctly in some circumstances.
Fixes issue in which departmental figures in analysis could be incorrect in certain situations.
Fixes issue in which pre-paid amounts would display incorrectly on IRIS FY95 payslip stationery.
Other minor bug fixes, optimisations and improvements.

16.1

06/04/2016

BrightPay 16.1 is a maintenance update that fixes various issues discovered since the first 16/17 release (16.0).

New features:

Adds True Potential as an Auto Enrolment pension scheme provider.

Improvements and bug fixes:

Updates the NOW:Pensions CSV contributions file specification to the latest version.
Ensures the 'S' prefix is displayed for SRIT tax codes in the FPS content preview.
Allows a starter declaration to be made (and sent in first FPS) for employees paid in arrears whose start date was in the 15/16 tax year, but are having their first pay processed in the 16/17 tax year.
The CIS verification number and verification date are no longer mandatory fields when manually entering a subcontractor's tax payment status and verification details.
Fixes import issue in which an employee's assessed AE category could be inadvertently downgraded in the first pay period of 16/17.
Fixes issue in which values over the maximum accepted length could be included on bank payment files.
Fixes issue in which Auto Enrolment communication content could be blank when attempting to send it as an email.
Fixes issue in which the values for certain data items could be blank in departmental reports.
Fixes issue in which BrightPay could crash when trying to edit pension scheme details for an employer with no Auto Enrolment staging date set.
Fixes issue in which BrightPay could crash when attempting to change the display order of certain payslip items.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

15.8

21/08/2019

Updates RTI submission format for compatibility with changes made by HMRC to their systems in mid 2019. This upgrade is required to be able to send an EYU submission for the 2015/16 tax year going forward.

15.7

15/03/2018

Real Time Information

This upgrade updates the HMRC server address to which RTI submissions are sent, and is required to be able to send an EYU for the 2015/16 tax year.

15.6

21/06/2016

BrightPay 15.6 adds support for recording and reporting expenses and benefits for the 2015/16 tax year:

Enables you to record all types of P11D expenses and benefits for one or more employees.
Automatically calculates the cash equivalent for car and loan benefits.
Enables you to view P11D document for each applicable employee, and print or export to PDF as required.
Enables you to create year-end Expenses and Benefits submission (EXB) for sending to HMRC (i.e. P11D(b) with one or more P11Ds). Class 1A NICs totals are automatically calculated, and adjustment amounts can be included if required. Submission contents can be previewed before sending.

15.5

04/04/2016

BrightPay 15.5 contains a roll up of improvements and minor bug fixes, including:

Printing a P60 on HMRC stationery has been tweaked to ensure the best fit of amounts in the stationery boxes.
When printing or emailing P60s, employees who left employment during the year (and so are not due a P60) are hidden from the selection lists.
When editing employee details after all payslips have been finalised, some of the data items (tax code, student loan indicator, etc.) now correctly display those from the final payslip and are read-only to prevent changes.
Allows pension contribution percentage amounts to be entered to up to 4 decimal places.
Allows updated year-to-date pension contribution amounts to be submitted in an Additional FPS or EYU when an employee is due a contribution refund in the 15/16 tax year from an opt-out which actually occurs in the 16/17 tax year.
Corrects the 2015 DEA calculation for qualifying earnings in the 5% band.
Other minor fixes and improvements.

15.4

11/12/2015

BrightPay 15.4 contains new features and bug fixes and it is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features and updates

Support for NEST Web Services for enrolling workers and submitting contributions. To stop using CSV file upload and start using web services, edit the details of your NEST scheme in BrightPay, change the Submission method to NEST web service, and enter your User ID and Password.
New Automatic Enrolment Assessment Report. For employers who have not yet staged, this gives a preview of what enrolment will look like for you including estimated contribution costs. For employers who have already staged, an overview of how your employees were assessed is provided.
New Enrolment Summary displays the details of the employees enrolled into a pension scheme.
New Contributions Summary displays the details of the contributions paid into a pension scheme for each pay period. Contributions CSV files and web service submissions are now done through this feature.
An employer can now be marked as exempt from Automatic Enrolment (e.g. a single director company).
Updates the Automatic Enrolment stage 2 and 3 phasing dates to 6 April 2018 and 6 April 2019 in line with the The Pensions Regulator December 2015 Statement.
Updated Santander bank format
Includes Import from HMRC Basic PAYE Tools
Adds additional employee import/export properties and optimises workflow for importing payroll data from IRIS.

Bug fixes and improvements

Fixes issue in which employees in a postponement period may not be included in NOW:Pensions contributions CSV file.
Fix to SIMPLY! Auto Enrolment contributions CSV file format.
Fix to Trust Pensions contributions CSV file format.
Fix to Welplan contributions CSV file format.
Makes validation of People's Pension account number less strict (to allow for the extra digit that PP have started to use in the account numbers they provide).
Fixes issue in which postponed enrolments could be incorrectly included in CSV files or web service submissions.
Corrects handling of AE opt-out refunds for employees on Net Pay Arrangement.
Fixes issue in which an employee's opt-out pension refund would be incorrectly considered as a negative cost to employer.
For employers set up to continue payroll mid year, the Employment Allowance dialog now asks if any allowance has already been claimed in the tax year to date.
Allows Payment After Leaving payslips to be added for employees who left prior to mid year start setup.
BrightPay logo removed from P30.
Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

15.3

04/08/2015

BrightPay 15.3 contains new features and bug fixes and it is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features

Adds support for the following automatic enrolment pension scheme providers, including the production of enrolment and contributions CSV files:

Aegon
Creative Auto Enrolment
SIMPLY! Auto Enrolment Solutions
Trust Pensions
Welplan

Bug fixes and improvements

When using non-standard contribution rates in an auto enrolment qualifying scheme, the enrolment letter now correctly states those customised rates instead of the default standard rates.
The date of an auto enrolment letter can now be determined automatically.
Improved workflow compatibility for NOW: Pensions auto enrolment schemes.
When an employee has multiple attachment orders in a single pay period, any of them can be forced to calculate deductions based on entire qualifying earnings (i.e. ignoring other AOs)
Fixes an issue in which the Overriding Regulatory Limit could be incorrectly applied in situations where there is negative taxable pay.
Corrects savings scheme balance amounts in Analysis in situations where there is a start-of-year balance.
Includes minor correction to the IRIS FY95 payslip template.
Improves performance when dealing with large data files.
Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

15.2

01/06/2015

BrightPay 15.2 contains new features and bug fixes and it is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features:

Supports quarterly and annual payment schedules.
Supports Legal & General as an automatic enrolment pension scheme provider, including the production of joiners and contributions CSV files.
The NOW:Pensions contributions CSV file now includes all employees, whether enrolled or not (i.e. EWs, NEJs, under 16s and over 74s).
When creating a NEST contributions file and entering a payment source, BrightPay will now suggest/autofill previously used payment sources (both those used in the enrolment file and those used for previous contributions files)
Adds the following reportable columns to analysis: RTI BACS sub-reference, email address, phone number, retirement date, retirement age, AE worker category, AE enrolment date, AE opt-in date, AE join date, AE opt-out date, AE cessation date
Allows the Flexibly accessing pension rights indicator to be reported on the FPS where applicable.
Support for printing on IRIS FY95 payslip stationery.
BrightPay no longer locks the calendar UI for finalised pay periods. Instead, it validates to see whether a particular operation should be allowed or not (i.e. whether it would affect payment amount).
Supports DEO attachments with 2015 rates.
Employee's middle name can now be shown on payslip.

Bug fixes and improvements:

Fixes an issue in which an Eligible Jobholder could be reported as a Non-eligible Jobholder or Entitled Worker on NOW:Pensions and Peoples Pension CSV files after his/her earnings go down.
Improves descriptions of the tax relief options.
Includes new design of pension scheme selection dropdown.
Corrects an issue in which marking the delivery of an Auto Enrolment 'right to join' letter as done would not work.
Fixes an issue in which an employee's partner's block of Shared Parenting Leave could be incorrectly treated as the employee' block of leave in certain scenarios
Fixes an issue in which a 7-day period of sickness after an employee returns from Maternity Leave (but still in the Maternity Pay Period) is incorrectly treated as a 6 day period.
Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

15.1

21/04/2015

BrightPay 15.1 contains new features and bug fixes and it is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features:

Auto enrolment communications:

BrightPay now uses the simplified April 2015 Pensions Regulator letter templates.
When printing AE letters, BrightPay now gives improved control over page size, orientation and margins.
Support for emailing AE letters (single or in batches).
Support for creating PDF AE letters (single or in batches).

Support for four additional automatic enrolment pension scheme providers:

Aviva
Standard Life
Royal London
Workers Pension Trust

To enable support for the new AE pension scheme providers listed above, the following enhancements were made to automatic enrolment in BrightPay:

Support for fixed amount contributions.
Support for additional voluntary / one-off contributions.
Support for a tax monthly contribution schedule for weekly paid employees.

Supports DEO attachments with percentage based protected earnings.
CreDec PDC bank file format.

Bug fixes and improvements:

Improved handling and display of DPS error messages when processing employee coding notices.
Improvements to employee matching when processing employee coding notices.
Corrects structure of FPS data when both a UTR and ECON are included.
Corrects calculation of NI values on the FPS for cumulative calculation based directors with certain mid-year NI table changes.
Corrects rounding of calculated annual leave days for employees with entitlement based on working days per week.
Improvements to printing on Sage SE96 payslip stationery.
Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

15.0

19/03/2015

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2015/03/brightpay-2015-16-is-now-available-what-s-new/

14.6

21/08/2019

Updates RTI submission format for compatibility with changes made by HMRC to their systems in mid 2019. This upgrade is required to be able to send an EYU submission for the 2014/15 tax year going forward.

14.5

15/03/2018

Real Time Information

This upgrade updates the HMRC server address to which RTI submissions are sent, and is required to be able to send an EYU for the 2014/15 tax year.

14.4

30/03/2015

Changes and fixes:

Removes the now deprecated end of year checklist from EPS submissions.
Uses TLS (instead of SSL) by default when sending RTI submissions.
Adds ability to import a second set of employee NI table earnings / contributions when importing employees from CSV file.
Fixes an issue in which the final FPS could contain incorrect values for directors on the alternate NIC calculation basis in certain scenarios.

14.3

13/11/2014

BrightPay 14.3 contains new features and bug fixes. It is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

Employer Payment Summary (EPS)

BrightPay now supports the EPS version 1.2, which allows you to:

Explicitly choose which HMRC period to send year-to-date recoverable amounts for.
Submit a period of inactivity up to 12 months in length.

Auto Enrolment

CSV contributions files for The People's Pension and NOW:Pensions have been updated to fix various scenarios that were previously being handled incorrectly.
Opt-out refunds are now correctly handled for contributors under Net Pay Arrangement.

Employer Allowance

Employer Allowance is now re-assessed after a refund of director's NICs.

Other Fixes

Fixes an issue in which changing the employer logo is not reflected on printed payslips.
Fixes a visual issue in which the incorrect hourly/daily rate is displayed on past payslips (though the hourly/daily earnings are displayed correctly).
Fixes the calculation of weighted departmental net pay and take-home pay in certain situations.
Other ongoing improvements and trivial fixes.

14.2

27/08/2014

BrightPay 14.2 contains new features and bug fixes. It is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

Automatic Enrolment

In addition to NEST, BrightPay 14.2 offers dedicated support for three new auto enrolment qualifying pension scheme providers:

NOW: Pensions
The People's Pension
Scottish Widows

This includes setting up schemes and worker groups, making deductions (including 'Net Pay Arrangement' deductions), and producing contributions CSV files.

We've generally improved the auto enrolment functionality throughout BrightPay, adding several minor features and fixing various bugs.

RTI

Additional FPS – submissions can now be manually created and sent at any time in the payroll year, and up to and including the 19th April 2015.

EYU – updated for compliance with HMRC's latest specification.

Other New Features

Ability to email P60 certificates.
When printing payslips, only those employees who do not have an email address can be quickly and easily selected via the Select By button menu.
Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) bank file format.
Several minor bug fixes and improvements.

14.1

01/07/2014

BrightPay 14.1 contains many bug fixes and minor enhancements, and it is highly recommended that all customers upgrade.

New features:

Lloyds bank file format.
Danske bank file format.
Added several columns to reporting (e.g. employee details, date of birth, etc.)
Enables setting a pay date after the relevant tax period.
Warns on close if there are unsent RTI submissions (alert can be turned on/off in BrightPay preferences).
Employment Allowance claim is redesigned to be more clear.
Added ability to set a NEST scheme group contribution payment due date based on a fixed day of month.

Bug fixes:

Fixes a bug in which the manual proxy settings inputs are still disabled even after selecting Use manual settings in BrightPay preferences.
Fixes bug in which changing the name of an employer-wide addition or deduction does not update the report column header for reports which include it.
Fixes a crash that occurred when opening a report that was saved using a particular period type after re-opening all payslips of that period type.
Fixes a bug in which when an employee leave date is set in a pre-paid period, the leaver flag is not correctly set (disabling the P45, and preventing the leave date from being included on the FPS).
Other minor corrections and improvements.

14.0

21/03/2014

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2014/03/brightpay-14-15-is-now-available-what-s-new/

13.8

21/08/2019

Updates RTI submission format for compatibility with changes made by HMRC to their systems in mid 2019. This upgrade is required to be able to send an EYU submission for the 2013/14 tax year going forward.

13.7

15/03/2018

Real Time Information

This upgrade updates the HMRC server address to which RTI submissions are sent, and is required to be able to send an EYU for the 2013/14 tax year.

13.6

11/04/2014

Additional FPS / EYU

After the final FPS has been sent, HMRC allows the use of further submissions to “correct” the values sent in the final FPS as follows:

Up to 19th April, HMRC request that an additional FPS be sent with the corrected final period amounts.
On 20th April and beyond, HMRC request that an EYU (Earlier Year Update) be sent. The EYU has slightly less info than the FPS, and rather than contain corrected amounts, it contains the differences between what was originally submitted in a final FPS and what the figure should be.

BrightPay 13.6 allows the creation of Additional FPS and EYU submissions (via New drop-down menu in RTI section). As with other RTI submission types, BrightPay will calculate and populate the submission values for you, and update unsent submissions automatically as you make changes to employee or payment details.

Email P60 Certificates

BrightPay 13.6 has a new feature which allows you to email P60 certificates to your employees.

Other Improvements

Improved communication regarding RTI final submission declarations.
Improved sorting employees by works number.
Several other minor bug fixes.

13.5

23/09/2013

This is a recommended update with several new features and bug fixes. Please visit our blog at www.brightpay.co.uk for a detailed overview of what's included.

New Features

Ability to Report on Specific Employer Items in Analysis.
Improved Departmental Reporting.
Ability to Switch Employees to a New Payment Schedule Mid Tax Year.
Other minor new features.

Bug Fixes

Fixes a bug in which an EPS (or NVR) cannot be created for mid-year-start employers.
Fixes a bug in which BrightPay will not accept an employee start date for mid-year-start employers.
Other minor fixes and performance improvments.

13.4

19/06/2013

This is a recommended update with an important bug fix along with several other features, improvements and additional fixes.

Important Fixes

Fixes an issue in which FPS year-to-date taxable pay and tax figures are incorrect for employees who have had a previous employment in the 2013/14 tax year. If you were affected by this issue, your next FPS will correct the values.

Other Features and Fixes

New Bank of Ireland (ROI) bank file format.
Tweaked Co-operative Bank bank file format.
Fixes an issue in which the Cost to Employer could be incorrectly calculated when there are certain types of deductions.
Fixes an issue in which employee pension additional voluntary contributions (AVC) could be over-deducted.

13.3

09/05/2013

This is a highly recommended update with several bug fixes, improvements and additional features, including:

Analysis

Ability to roll-up pre-paid amounts into their pre-paying periods on reports.
Ability to report by the payment date tax week, tax month and tax year (before, you could only report by your own schedule of periods).

Printing, Emailing, Exporting Payslips

Ability to display either the employer period end date, employer period number, tax week number (of payment date), or tax month number (of payment date) on the payslip (before, you could only display the employer period end date).

Annual Leave Entitlement Hourly Calculation

Ability to calculate annual leave entitlement strictly by hours worked, including ability to denote hours carried over from previous years. To facilitate this, you can use the employee calendar to denote how many hours of annual leave is represented by any day marked as annual leave.

Payment After Leaving

Ability to manually create a payment after leaving payslip in any period for an employee who left in a previous period.

BACS Sub-Reference Auto Generation

There is a new tick box in EMPLOYER > Typical Employee Settings which allows you to automatically assign a random BACS sub-reference for each payslip.

Bank Payments Files

HSBC payments file format has been added.

Other

Fixed a rare issue in which relevant employees may not be included on an FPS.
More user-friendly handling of RTI error 1046 (invalid Sender ID / Password)
Various other minor bug fixes and improvements.

13.2

15/04/2013

This is a highly recommended update with several bug fixes, improvements and additional features, including:

Bank Payments Files

Clarifications for using the BACS sub-reference field have been added to the BrightPay user interface.
The APACS bank payments file format has been renamed to BACS (APACS / BACSTEL-IP / Standard 18). It has been expanded to support more recipients and now includes the BACS sub-reference in field 7 if applicable.
Co-operative Bank payments file format has been added (also with support for the BACS sub-reference).

Real Time Information

Unsent FPS submissions with a BACS hash value are now automatically updated when employer bank account details are modified.
Fixed an issue in which the FPS could include incorrect year to date NIC values (if you were affected, do not worry, they will be corrected by your next FPS).
Fixed an issue in which the FPS could include an incorrect employee net-pay pension value when there is an additional voluntary contribution on a COSR pension scheme.

Licensing

Fixed an issue in which users on a Standard licence were unable to create new employer files with an alternate PAYE reference.
Added the ability to deactivate a licence (specifically added to address the issue of a licence being activated with incorrect details).

Other

Fixed an issue in which ordering employees by works number was not correctly handling numerical works numbers of varying digit counts.
An improvement has been made to the payslip print templates to avoid unnecessarily wrapping some lines of text.
Various other minor bug fixes and improvements.

13.1

03/04/2013

This is a highly recommended update with several bug fixes, improvements and additional features, including:

Ability to enter the employee's BACS sub-reference for the purposes of generating the BACS hash code for inclusion on FPS submissions.
Fixes an issue in which the the content view of an RTI submission is not automatically refreshed to reflect the latest changes.
Bank of Scotland bank payments file format.
Ability to print annual leave entitlment calculation.
Fixes and improvements for several minor issues which were discovered since the 13.0 release.

13.0

19/03/2013

See https://www.brightpay.co.uk/blog/2013/04/what-s-new-in-brightpay-2013-14/

12.4

27/08/2012

New Features:

New and improved analysis and reporting engine.
- Simplified, clearer and more elegant user interface.
- Ability to run separate or combined employee and department reports.
- Drag and drop re-ordering of report columns.
- Performance - significantly faster report execution and more responsive scrolling of large reports.
- Column headings stay in place as the report data is scrolled.
- Clearer separation of report data sets (and improved report summary)
- Improved printing, including ability to customise the print title.
Employee payslip quick links
Track usage of Departments, Pension Schemes and Holiday Funds
Bank of Ireland BACS file format

Bug fixes and improvements:

Improved data validation messages throughout
More flexible handling of P30 adjustments
Fixes a display issue in which a black bar can appear behind the main tabs at the top of the BrightPay window when Windows 7 Aero Glass is disabled
Other minor bug and user interface quirk fixes

12.3

18/05/2012

New Features:

Ability to filter the list of employees in payroll (e.g. to process payroll by department)
Ability to print a payroll period summary
New HMRC approved P45 print template
Manual entry of Statutory payments recovered
Additional BACS file formats (Lloyds TSB, APACS)

Bug fixes and improvements:

Fixes several Windows XP compatibility issues
Ensures rounding is handled correctly when totalling payslip figures (in payroll summary and analysis)
Corrects handling of particular NI rebates when re-opening payslips
Better support for reactivating licences for which an incorrect PAYE reference was entered
Adjusts NIC calculation for fortnightly and 4-weekly pay in line with HMRC recommendations for 12/13
Other minor corrections and improvements

12.2

05/04/2012

New Features:

Period summary totals display
Employee name display and ordering preferences
Default file path preferences
Proxy server preferences
Print payslips on A5 paper
Print payslips on SGE011 stationery (Sage SE96 compatible)
Additional BACS file formats (Barclays, RBS Bankline, First Trust Bank / Allied Irish Bank)

Bug fixes and improvements:

Fixes an issue in which not all companies are available in a Thesaurus Payroll Manager 11/12 installation import
Windows XP file handling and printing compatibility fixes
Improvements to the import of hourly payments
Fixes an issue in which Statutory pay settings are locked in period 1
Fixes an issue in which holiday entitlement is not calculated correctly for employers imported from BrightPay 11/12
Other minor corrections and improvements

12.1

19/03/2012

Initial release.

11.4

16/04/2012

New features and fixes:

Ability to manually enter additional Statutory payments recovered for each month or quarter.
Corrects National Insurance contributions summary amounts on Amended P14.
Corrects wording on P60.

11.3

14/03/2012

This release contains important updates. It is strongly advised that all users upgrade.

New features:

Support for printing on Thesaurus Payroll Manager payslip stationery.
Support for a quarterly HMRC payment schedule.
Emailing and exporting digital payslips.
Several minor enhancements.

Other improvements and bug fixes:

Fixes issues with year-end online submissions of P35 and P14s.
Fixes an issue in which NIC for a director in a mid-year setup was not being calculated correctly.
FIxes an issue in which P14 NIC summary values were not being calculated correctly for employees with certain circumstances.
Fixes an issue in which SSP was not being paid.

11.2

30/11/2011

This release contains important updates, particularly for employers with a mid year setup. It is advisable that all upgrade.

Mid year start:

Improved handling of employees who had already been issued a P45 prior to mid year setup
Improved P11 for mid year setup employees
Calculation fix of P35 and P14 figures for mid year setup employees

P30 now available

Ability to change password now available

Minor visual enhancements

11.1

08/11/2011

Bug fixes.