We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Becky Dillon, Head of Payroll at Accounts and Legal. This innovative firm stands out in the UK market as one of the few offering businesses both accountancy and legal services all under one roof. By bringing essential business services together in a single location, Accounts and Legal simplifies operations for business owners, allowing them to focus more on growth and less on juggling multiple service providers.  

 Becky's role at Accounts and Legal is pivotal in ensuring that payroll services run smoothly, a critical component in the bouquet of services that make this company a one-stop solution for entrepreneurs looking for streamlined efficiency.  

Streamlining success: The evolution of the payroll team 

Becky gives us a peek into how things work at Accounts and Legal. She explains, "There is a lot of crossover between the various teams, and ultimately, we function as a unified company." Even though Accounts and Legal have offices in Manchester, London, Brighton, and Liverpool, the teams work closely together across locations. Becky points out, "Our payroll team is in Manchester, but we handle payroll for all our locations."  

The payroll team has evolved a lot in recent years, Becky tells us, “When I started with the business in April 2021, they did have payroll clients but there wasn’t a team who focused just on the payroll and there were no real procedures in place. The team were already using BrightPay, they’d been using it for around 7 years I think, but they weren’t utilising it brilliantly or using all the features available. So, when I was able to change things, it was easy for me to use BrightPay to streamline any of the processes for payroll.” 

“And how much experience did you have with BrightPay before joining Accounts and Legal?” I asked Becky. “I didn’t actually have any experience using BrightPay before I started with Accounts and Legal. I didn’t feel like I really needed any training on it though. It’s very user-friendly and I was able to navigate my way around it almost right away.”  

Reflecting on how much the payroll team has grown, Becky tells us, “Our payroll team has now grown to five. And as well as our own team growing, we have grown our client base. We see an average of 10-15 new payroll customers a month.” 

How Becky and the team streamlined payroll at Accounts and Legal 

“A big part of streamlining processes for ourselves and our clients involved getting more of them using BrightPay Connect,” Becky tells us. With BrightPay Connect, clients have access to their own employer dashboard where they can do things like view employee documents, run reports, check if there are payments due to HMRC, submit payroll information to the payroll processor and much more. “So, we now have 100% of our payroll clients using BrightPay Connect. It’s a huge selling point for clients that they can run a payroll summary report whenever they need to. BrightPay Connect just takes all the admin away. For things like sending payslips, P60s or pension letters; the employer can access them or look back at them whenever they need to.” 

Making life easier for the business, clients, and employees 

Getting clients using BrightPay Connect has helped cut down on the number of enquiries for the payroll team. “We still do get some clients who contact you looking for things like P60s, but now we can just tell them ‘it’s in the portal’,” Becky explains. “It just takes some getting used to for the clients, but we don’t see nearly as many enquiries coming in from clients as we did before getting them on BrightPay Connect”. Becky tells us that another way the BrightPay Connect portal comes in handy is when fees are being reviewed. “I can just go in and run a report of how many payslips have been finalised and how many starters and leavers there’ve been, and this can be used to determine our fees. I also use it for downloading the tax codes, or I can pull the bureau stats and filter them to make sure all the RTIs have gone. Having that data available so easily is amazing.” 

“What about the app,” I ask Becky, “have you gotten much feedback on it from clients?” “Clients get excited about the app!” Becky tells us. “Because employees can assess payslips and other documents themselves through the app, it means less admin for clients too. And of course, there’s the GDPR side to it too, it’s more secure.” 

Getting payroll information from clients made easy 

“We also use the payroll entry request feature with clients to get the most up-to-date payroll information from them. It’s made things so much easier for us and makes sure their payroll is always accurate too,” Becky tells us.  
"Through the portal, we can see which client has sent over their payroll data for that period or which clients we’re waiting on. So, it makes it very easy to keep on top of things and means less back and forth emails with clients.” 

Director only payrolls are now quick and easy 

Becky tells us how her and the team have saved a lot of time on director-only payrolls since using BrightPay’s batch processing feature. “We run quite a lot of director-only payrolls,” Becky explains, “but because we use the batch processing function for them, it’s made it really easy and means that taking on these new clients doesn’t add to our workload. When I first started, and BrightPay’s batch processing feature wasn’t being used at the firm, we were spending so much time processing payroll for single director clients. We were finalising their payslips one by one and sending around one hundred separate emails with their payslips each month. But now that we have them all on BrightPay Connect, it means that we don’t have to email the payslips, and once we batch finalise all the single director’s payrolls, the payslips are shared with them automatically.”  

“It’s gone from something that used to take a few days to something that can be done in literally half an hour. It’s insane. It’s a massive selling point to us because while we're still quoting the same price for our payroll services, we’re saving so much time and it’s taking us a fraction of the time it used to take.” 

So, how does it work? "On our dashboard, we’ve categorised all our single-director clients by a particular colour. Then we’re able to batch download all the tax codes for them, and we can finalise all the single director payslips as a batch in just a few clicks,” Becky explains. 

Getting the most out of the software 

“At Accounts and Legal, I wouldn’t say we’re your typical accountancy firm,” Becky tells us. “We pride ourselves on being very approachable, friendly, and less corporate and stuffy. One of the big things for us is definitely trying to get the best tech for us and for our clients. With BrightPay, we want to get the most out of the software. It allows us to offer services to our clients that they might not have been available to them before. BrightPay has things like the employee portal, and the ability to pay employees through Modulr. For us, it’s about offering the best service possible while at the same time being approachable and listening to what the client wants. As well as meeting with a lot of our clients face-to-face over Teams, we’re able to use the technology we have to make it so that we can work alongside the client.” 

I asked Becky, how do Accounts and Legal identify which tools are the best for the business? "We listen to recommendations from our staff, and we attend events like Accountex. We’re always looking for the next new thing. It involves testing new solutions and making use of free trials. We look at what’s the pain point for us, what’s the pain point for the client, and is there a solution out there that can help.” 

Payments made easy 

The Accounts and Legal payroll team also use BrightPay’s integration with Modulr to pay employees quickly and easily. “Yeah, it's really good,” Becky proclaims. “It's like, why wasn't this done years ago? It makes paying employees really easy. And it’s always been accurate with the data it pulls from the payroll software. It’s secure too with the app you use to authorise payments. It's created a great process for us, so the team will do the first part of processing the payments and I just go in and approve them.” 

Becky also finds the integration handy when it comes to fixing any payroll mistakes.

“If a client realises that they forgot to tell us about adding overtime or maybe increasing an employee’s wage, and employees have already been paid, they might ring us in a panic. Thanks to the integration with Modulr we can just be like ‘oh well it’s just £60 they’re owed, we can add that now.’ And before they have time to even think, it’s in the employee’s bank account, so it avoids any drama, and we can just move on quickly.” 

Software that helps you along the way 

Another thing Becky likes about BrightPay is the fact the software guides you and helps you stay compliant “It helps you along the way. If someone’s using the wrong NI number, a flag comes up. If someone's being paid below the minimum wage, it notifies you. If someone needs to be enrolled into a pension scheme, there’s a flag. So, I just feel it really helps you stay compliant and makes sure you’re not forgetting anything.” 

A strong support team 

As we neared the end of our interview, I asked Becky what had her experiences been like with Bright’s support team, “The support team have always been really helpful,” says Becky. “I get through to them very quickly if I need them. If they don't know how to help me straight away, they'll take my e-mail address or call me back. Sometimes when they come back to me with the solution I think ‘Oh my God, why didn't I see that?’ but yeah, they never make you feel like it’s too much trouble.” 

Cutting through the complexity of payroll 

It’s clear that Becky and her colleagues have payroll down to a fine art at Accounts and Legal, making things smoother for her and her team, and a whole lot nicer for their clients too. With BrightPay in their corner, they’ve managed to cut through the complexity and admin that can come with payroll. Becky’s story is a perfect example of how the right tech can make a world of difference, turning what used to be a headache into something seamless.  

Closing off our interview, I asked Becky where she saw Bright going in the future, Becky shared, “It’s going to be quite interesting to see how it plays out. In my opinion, it's better to get all your software from one company, as it means they can work together.”