7 reasons why accountants are switching to BrightPay

Payroll software has come a long way in the past decade. Thanks to advancements in technology – like the cloud – a whole new breed of payroll software has emerged. These offer more streamlined and automated solutions, like integration with accounting software, and links to third-party apps to streamline areas beyond payroll.

It’s important to choose a software that can not only meet your clients’ expectations but exceed them as part of your service offering. Whether you’re a payroll bureau wanting to update your systems or an accounting firm looking to cut down on admin involved in your payroll offering, how do you choose a software that best suits your needs? Well, lucky for you, we’ve got the answers. Here are 7 reasons why accountants, just like you, are switching to Bright’s payroll solution, BrightPay.

Why Accountants Switch to BrightPay

1. Free support, including migration

Switching over to new software can be complicated and time-consuming enough, never mind an added bill from your provider’s support service. Many software providers that offer migration support to their customers require a service fee. That’s where BrightPay’s got you covered – to help take the hassle out of migrating from one payroll software to another, BrightPay offers migration support, free of charge. We understand how important it is to be prepared for the unexpected, even outside of migration, which is why all of our phone and email support is completely free.

This ensures that you’re on your feet once the switchover’s been made. When you decide to make the switch to BrightPay, you’ll be assigned an account manager from the get-go, who will guide you throughout the entire setup process, at no extra cost. This doesn’t just apply for the start of a new tax year either. You can move over at any time of the year – just think of the hours upon hours you could save your team. The time saved could likely outweigh the cost of staying with your existing provider.

Not only that, but we also host regular free webinars that cover a broad scope of topics, from HMRC legislation changes to the latest payroll trends, so your firm’s always one step ahead. We’ve got a bunch of other free resources on our website too, including useful guides, video tutorial, and support documentation.

2. Make static payrolls clients worth it

Processing single directors and static payroll clients can be often more trouble than they’re worth. You still have to go through all the usual payroll tasks, except their figures don’t change between pay periods. However, with BrightPay, you can batch process payroll tasks to save you heaps of time each pay period. This includes batch finalising payslips, batch sending any outstanding RTI and CIS submissions, along with batch checking for coding notices.

This can help you cut down on a truck load of admin, and saves you on average 18 minutes per payroll. This is an especially handy feature if you’ve a large number of single-director companies or static payrolls on your current payroll software. We regularly hear from BrightPay users that save one full day each week, just from this feature alone.

3. Give your client communication a glow up

There can be so much information to process and approve when processing clients’ payroll, that it’s easy for communication to go awry. The cloud is revolutionising how accountants communicate with their clients. With it, you can enjoy a more streamlined workflow and communication line, minus all the admin.

By using BrightPay’s payroll cloud extension, BrightPay Connect, you can send requests to your clients for them to enter the payroll data for a particular pay period. This puts the responsibility on the client to upload timesheets, or enter payments, additions and deductions, which can then sync back to the payroll software. No more emails back and forth, and no more manually entering payroll information.

There are other ways you can cut back on client communications too – for example, clients can preview the payroll run and approve it through their online portal or leave comments for you to see if there’s something that’s not right.

Other benefits of the online client portal include instant access to reports and amounts due to HMRC, and some value-added tools for clients such as an annual leave management tool, employee app, HR document library and much more. Check it out here.

4. Pay employees, subcontractors and HMRC directly through the software

If you’re panicking over payslip errors or clients’ employees not receiving their wages on time, it’s time to scrap the hassle around Bacs payments. BrightPay’s integration with direct payment platform, Modulr, lets you pay clients’ employees in as little as 90 seconds, directly from the payroll software. Through the integration, you can also schedule payments in advance and make any last-minute changes, allowing much greater payment flexibility. This also eliminates the need to create bank files and the manual workload associated with payments. Plus, it’s not just useful for employee payments – you can use this tool to make payments to HMRC and subcontractors too.

5. Easily keep clients’ payroll and bookkeeping aligned

Inputting data into both your payroll and accounting software can increase the likelihood of errors due to the repetitive and tedious nature of the process. But thankfully, we’ve resolved that issue here at BrightPay by integrating our payroll software with some of the UK’s most renowned accounting software providers, including QuickBooks, Sage and Xero to name a few. This means you no longer need to export the journal via a CSV file and upload it manually through your accounting software. Just send payroll journals to the general ledger straight through BrightPay. It’s more secure, seamless, and reduces the risk of errors.

6. Integration with pension providers

Sick of checking for employees’ auto enrolment eligibility? Or exporting employee pension files and uploading them on pension providers’ websites? Well, don’t worry – setting up automatic enrolment pension schemes is a breeze with BrightPay. Our software is integrated with a number of the UK’s leading pension providers, such as NEST, The People’s Pension and Aviva, so you can transfer the files directly to the pension provider from within BrightPay. The software also automatically assesses your clients’ employees for you in the background, notifies you when you have auto enrolment duties to perform, and automatically generates the required letters for you (customised for each employee!).

7. Offers more work-life balance

In today’s digital age, it’s time to break free from the shackles of your office. Work-life balance is one of the biggest factors candidates look at when choosing a job – and remote working is one of the best places to start. It cuts down on commute times, food costs, office noise, and can even increase productivity by 35%.

The new cloud version of BrightPay offers this work-life balance by letting your team process payroll from any location. No matter where they are in the world, once you have a decent internet connection, they can login from any smart device and work away. It also has multi-user functionality, so your team can work within the same employer file, with changes made live, while they work.

But regardless of if you are using the desktop version, we’ve still got you covered for working remotely. While using the BrightPay Connect extension to BrightPay (Windows), users you can still access payroll online, just not process payroll online. Connect comes with a range of features to help support your remote office. For example, automatic backups every 15 minutes means you can always restore the most recent version on up to 10 PCs, so you can easily work remotely while still being desktop based. You can also give clients access to a portal, where you can send them requests to enter updated payroll information, and payroll summaries to approve. This cuts down on the influx of emails and creates a much smoother flow of online communication.

Make the switch to BrightPay today

With over 30 years’ experience creating payroll software, we pride ourselves on the quality and value BrightPay consistently provides to our customers, with a 99% customer satisfaction rating to prove it. If you’re interested in seeing our payroll software in action, book a quick 15-minute demo below.

Here at Bright, we create software for tax, compliance, practice management and payroll. We’re on a mission to make a happy and efficient working life a reality for accountants through reliable software and amazing support. Interested in booking a demo of our multi-award-winning software? If so, feel free to book a quick demo of any of our products in the link below.

Book a demo

This content may have been developed with the assistance of AI tools. Content is reviewed by a member of the Bright team before publication. Guidance on legislation can be obtained from your industry body.