Q2 2026 Product Updates: What’s New Across Bright

Nine products. Three months. A lot changed.

The headliners: BrightBooks is now fully ready for Making Tax Digital quarterly filing, no matter what type of client walks through your door. Alongside that, one of our products picked up a new name, AI has properly started showing up inside the tools you use every day, and BrightPay’s made onboarding new starters more secure than ever.

Here’s what changed.

MTD Keeps Building

Quarterly filing for Foreign Property landlords was the only gap in our MTD for Income Tax suite. Not anymore. BrightBooks now supports them for the 2026/27 tax year, with individual property divisions for per-property reporting, your choice of calendar or standard quarterly periods, and full quarterly returns submitted straight to HMRC. Consolidated 3-line returns work too, and if a prior quarter’s figures change, that gets reconciled automatically.

And that completes the picture. BrightBooks is now fully ready for MTD quarterly filing across every client type: self-employed, UK property, overseas property, per-property reporting included. Whatever quarterly period your client needs, whatever return type, the whole workflow’s covered. And if a client isn’t ready for full digital bookkeeping? The Excel bridging tool still gets their data in, with reconciliation handled for you.

Here’s the bit that ties it all together. BrightBooks' document capture tool is still in pilot, but it’s already reading purchase invoices and receipts together, working out what’s what, categorising the expense, and posting it to BrightBooks with the right nominal code attached. Digitising your clients has never been easier, with one less manual step between a shoebox of receipts and a filed return. If you’d like early access, sign up here.

AI Moves Into Everyday Workflows

We’ve been talking about AI for a while. This quarter, it’s arrived and the biggest release sat inside BrightPay.

Oscar is BrightPay’s AI onboarding assistant. When a new employee joins, Oscar reaches out to them directly via WhatsApp, collecting everything needed to get them set up in payroll, no chasing, no manual data entry, no back and forth.

You told us that sharing bank details and National Insurance numbers over WhatsApp didn’t feel quite right, even on a secure platform. We listened. Oscar still opens the conversation the same way, quick and friendly, but for the sensitive information (bank details, NI numbers, P45s) he now sends a 256-bit encrypted secure link within that same WhatsApp conversation. The same complete, validated data lands in BrightPay for your review, just with one less thing for anyone to worry about.

Also available now: BrightAccountsProduction’s all new business performance report our AI-powered trends report. It’s built to save you the groundwork before a client meeting. Working straight from the nominal ledger data already in BrightAP, it takes up to six years of a client’s figures and turns them into a full report, complete with commentary explaining what the numbers mean, alongside the supporting tables and graphs. Revenue and gross profit are covered by default, with cash and bank balances, working capital, and further profitability comparisons available if you want to add them. Instead of piecing that history together and writing it up yourself the night before, you walk in with the analysis already done, so the conversation starts from the insight rather than building up to it. This gives a beautifully presented graphical representation of key data lifting the figures beyond statutory accounts. It’s still working through Early Access, so if you’d like to try it, sign up here.

Outside EAP, Inform Direct’s support widget now has AI built into it. Got an everyday question, how do I use this, how do I process that, why isn’t this working? Ask it, and the AI answers straight away

Smarter Payments & Practice Connections

For businesses looking to improve cash flow, BrightBooks now lets your customers pay by card directly from your invoices, without you logging into another platform or manually matching payments afterwards. It’s built directly into the accounting application, powered by UniPaaS. You can see when money lands in real time, reconciliation happens automatically, and everything stays inside BrightBooks. No chasing, no admin, no gaps in your cash flow. BrightBooks users can sign up for access here.

One of the longer-running threads in Bright’s development is connecting client data across products, so updating a client’s details in one place updates them everywhere. This quarter’s work was focused on BrightManager: business contact records can now be created and updated across BrightManager and BrightClient together, and if a GDPR deletion request comes in, one action handles it across both products.

Payroll: Pay Employees Directly From BrightPay

Finishing payroll is only half the job. Then comes downloading a payment file, logging into your bank, uploading it, and hoping everything lines up. Embedded Payments changes that. Pay employees directly from BrightPay using open banking (powered by Crezco), approve the payment through your own banking app, and you’re done, no separate system, no manual reconciliation afterwards. It’s currently in Early Access, so if you’d like to be one of the first to try it, sign up here.

Two smaller wins worth knowing about. Zeroising payslips no longer means all-or-nothing: you can now choose exactly which pay items to remove, bonus gone, allowances kept, in a couple of clicks. And if you run a bureau with your own way of referencing clients, there’s now a Client Reference field you can add and sort by on your employer dashboard, so you organise things your way.

For the full picture, including Oscar’s security update and a couple of smaller fixes, read the complete BrightPay update.

A New Name: MyWorkpapers is Now BrightWorkpapers

MyWorkpapers is now BrightWorkpapers, part of a wider brand refresh launched at AccountEx London. You’ll have seen the updated colours and visual design bringing it in line with the rest of the Bright range, and the layout itself got a refresh in June 2026 to match. The idea’s simple: move between Bright products during your working day and each one should feel like it belongs to the same family.

Here’s what hasn’t changed, and it’s the bit that actually matters. Same functionality, same workflows, same team behind the product, same support, same subscription and pricing. Nothing to configure, nothing to migrate, no action needed on your end. Just a new name on the door, and a product that now sits properly alongside the rest of your Bright toolkit.

Read the full rebrand announcement.

Compliance & Verification

This is the quarter’s quiet work, the stuff that happens in the background so you don’t have to think about it.

BrightAccountsProduction now applies the latest FRC 2025 taxonomy for Companies and LLPs automatically, across iXBRL-tagged statutory accounts in both the UK and Ireland. Isle of Man and Jersey accounts reflect their own local legislation, with Jersey accounts now preparable under the Companies (Jersey) Law 1991. Capital account movements and the revised FRS 102 changes, including the new revenue recognition and lease accounting models, are in place across every jurisdiction.

BrightTax carries the latest annual legislative updates for Personal, Partnership, and Corporation Tax, so the new tax year is covered from day one. There’s also a new MTD Eligibility Report, flagging which clients fall into scope based on income thresholds starting at £50,000. It’ll keep updating as mandatory cohorts expand, so you’re planning ahead of the deadline instead of scrambling to catch up.

That’s Q2 wrapped. A busy few months, and there’s plenty more on the way!

What’s Next

Q2 was about MTD readiness, AI stepping out of the roadmap and into the workflow, and payroll onboarding getting more secure. Expect more of all of it before the year’s out.

The work connecting your Bright products together is picking up pace. BrightClient, the layer that keeps client data in sync across BrightManager, BrightAccountsProduction, BrightBooks, and BrightTax, is in beta and expanding. Add a second product and your client data comes with you.

Coming soon: BrightChecks is about to get a lot more capable. ID verification was just the start, two new check types are turning it into a proper due diligence toolkit. Company Check gives you a full risk report on any UK or Ireland company in one soft search, plus free ongoing monitoring if anything changes afterwards. AML Checks add PEP and sanctions screening, with an enhanced option for full biometric identity verification where you need it.

Also on the way: BrightWorkpapers is getting its own AI co-worker. The agent reads your supporting document workpapers, works through your checklists and procedures, and fills them in — answers, data fields, narrative comments — so you’re reviewing and signing off rather than starting from a blank form. It’s currently in Early Access; sign up here if you’d like to try it.

Plus, two more additions to the BrightWorkers AI line-up. Charlie handles query management, picking up a query wherever it lands across your Bright products and routing it to the right AI agent or, where it needs a person, straight to your team. Pippa takes care of the client communication side, approval requests, deadline reminders, confirmation messages and follow-ups, so that back-and-forth stops relying on someone remembering to chase it.

Frequently asked questions

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.