Recap: 5 Bright Launches That Stood Out

What a year it’s been! As we look back on the tail end of 2025, we shipped dozens of updates, enhancements, and new features across our product suite. But some releases stood out more than others – the ones that genuinely excited you, solved real problems, and felt like game-changers for accountancy practices and payroll bureaus.

So rather than walk you through every single update, we’ve picked our top 5 highlights from the last few months. These are the releases we’re most proud of, the ones that got the best feedback from customers, and the launches that set you up brilliantly for 2026.

Here’s what made the cut:

Okay, we’re slightly cheating here by bundling two products together, but reaching this MTD milestone deserved the spotlight. After many months of planning and development, we launched the first phase of our MTD for Income Tax functionality across our MTD Solution.

What makes this particularly exciting is the breadth of clients we can now serve. When we launched our MTD pilot in the summer, we started with self-employed clients. But by December, we’d achieved a major expansion with BrightBooks now supporting UK and foreign property businesses too.

If you’ve got landlord clients, BrightBooks now handles their quarterly property income returns too. Whether they own a single UK buy-to-let or manage a portfolio that includes overseas property income, you can generate, review, and submit their MTD returns through the same streamlined workflow. It’s all integrated directly with HMRC, with real-time status tracking so you know exactly where each submission stands.

We’ve also added a new Excel import template – a bridging tool that lets you import MTD ITSA data for self-employed clients who aren’t ready for full digital bookkeeping yet. It’s about meeting clients where they are, whilst still delivering the compliance they need.

BrightManager’s role in all this has been transformative. We’ve built it into the MTD command centre that practices have been crying out for. The bulk client update tools let you prepare hundreds of clients for MTD in minutes. Automated quarterly task generation means you’ll never miss a filing deadline. And the smart client segmentation by income thresholds (£50k, £30k, £20k) helps you prioritise who needs attention first.

For practices juggling diverse client portfolios across multiple software platforms, BrightManager brings everything into one unified dashboard. You can see at a glance which clients are MTD-ready, who’s filed their quarterly returns, and where action is needed.

The MTD journey continues into 2026, with more releases planned across BrightBooks, BrightManager and BrightTax (our year-end filing solution).

With the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act bringing stricter identity verification requirements, we knew practices needed a seamless solution fast.

Inform Direct got there first. In August, we launched ID verification directly within Inform Direct, powered by our partnership with Credas. Inform Direct customers could immediately start sending ID check requests to their clients, getting prepared well ahead of the new ECCTA requirements kicking off in November.

But we wanted to go further. We built BrightChecks, a dedicated platform that uses the same Credas technology but adds something customers had been asking for: a dashboard to track and manage all your ID checks in one place. We’ve designed two verification levels: ID Basic (first name, last name, email) for straightforward work, and ID Enhanced (adds mobile, date of birth, address) for when you need deeper assurance. Plus, we built it in a way that could integrate with other products across our suite.

That’s exactly what happened in November when BrightChecks integrated with BrightManager. Now you can initiate ID verification directly from your client pages without jumping between systems. Once you’ve kicked off a check, you’ll get real-time notifications in BrightManager showing whether your client passed or failed. If they pass, you’ll need to contact them to obtain their personal verification code, which you’ll then use to complete their CS01 filing.

And here’s what’s coming in January: BrightChecks will integrate with Inform Direct, bringing credit-based billing that lets you buy verification credits in bulk and benefit from volume discounts—making large-scale identity verification even more cost-effective.

It’s been a busy six months for MyWorkpapers, with both workpaper automation and our Essential edition launch.

The workpaper automation feature rolled out in September, and it’s transformed how practices handle year-end work. If you’re using Xero for your bookkeeping clients, the system now auto-populates your Excel schedules based on trial balance data pulled directly from Xero. Instead of manually rebuilding the same spreadsheets from scratch we now automate trial balance adjustments, bank reconciliations, fixed asset registers, accruals and prepayments – saving you hours on every job.

If you’re a 1-5 person practice handling FRS 105 and FRS 102 1A clients, this is built for you. You land directly on your trial balance, and everything is one click away: workpapers, sign-offs, documents. No hunting through folders, no unnecessary complexity. Just a straightforward workflow that makes sense.

Think of it as “Excel transformed.” You’re still working in actual Excel (because why change what works?), but now with automation that pre-populates your schedules, cloud-based collaboration without version chaos, and built-in FRS 105 and FRS 102 1A compliance tracking. Plus, direct Xero integration means you’re done with manual re-keying at year-end.

Our payroll team had a massive H2, launching two game-changers for practices managing construction clients and payroll on the go.

BrightCIS launched in September as our dedicated cloud-based solution for Construction Industry Scheme compliance. For BrightPay desktop users who’d been managing CIS through the desktop module, this represented a powerful leap forward into the cloud.

Here’s what BrightCIS can handle: verifying subcontractor details with HMRC, processing payments through the Modulr integration (payments land in as little as 90 seconds), and automatically generating HMRC statements. When it’s time to file your monthly returns, you’re submitting directly to HMRC in a few clicks. And your Gross CIS Deductions flow straight into BrightPay cloud’s P30, so there’s one less thing to manually track during month-end. Because your whole team can access it from anywhere, there’s no more “waiting until I’m back at my desk to sort that CIS payment.

Then in November came the BrightPay Manager & Employee App, delivering a sleek mobile experience for payroll and HR on the go. Managers could approve leave requests, review upcoming leave at a glance, and manage staff time and attendance from their phones. Employees got instant access to payslips, P60s, and other payroll documents, plus the ability to request annual leave and update personal details.

This release combined the power of the existing Manager and Employee Portals into one intuitive app, making it easier than ever to stay connected and in control.

Honourable mention: We can’t wrap up the payroll section without shouting about the TimeKeeper integration! This one’s a game-changer for businesses tired of chasing timesheets and dealing with dodgy time entries. Employees clock in using GPS-verified mobile check-ins with facial recognition (no more buddy-punching!), and those verified hours flow straight into BrightPay for automatic calculations. What used to take days of chasing and correcting now happens in hours. It’s brilliant.

We’ve significantly expanded BrightManager’s reporting capabilities, giving you the tools to truly understand what’s happening in your practice. Instead of flying blind on profitability or relying on month-end spreadsheets, you now have real answers to the questions that actually matter.

Practices told us they knew they had issues with unbilled work but couldn’t easily see where the problem was. The Aged WIP reports solved that, showing exactly which staff members or clients have work that’s been sitting there for weeks or months, broken down into 30-60-90+ day buckets so you know what needs invoicing urgently.

But for other practices, it’s the Profitability report that’s been genuinely eye-opening. Suddenly they could see true profitability – time spent versus fees charged – and understand that some of their “big” clients were not as profitable as they initially thought.

The Productivity reports tell a similar story. Practices suspected certain team members were drowning in admin, but now they can actually see the split between chargeable and non-chargeable time. You’re finally having data-driven conversations about workload instead of relying on gut feel. And the workflow reports help you spot where tasks get stuck before bottlenecks turn into crises.

We also added visual charts and graphs that update automatically based on your filters and export as PNGs for presentations. The whole system lets you drill down from any summary figure to see the underlying detail, so you’re always one click away from understanding the full story.

Whether you’re recovering unbilled revenue, identifying your most profitable clients, or understanding where time gets lost, you’re running your practice on data instead of guesswork.

2026, Here we Come

From MTD compliance to practice intelligence, 2025 was a year of genuinely transformative releases. But we’re just getting started.

Expect more MTD functionality, deeper integrations, and features that continue to make your life easier. In fact, if you want to hear where we’re heading next, join us for our upcoming webinar on Tuesday 22nd December at 10am. Our VP of Product, Paul Onions, will share our vision for 2026 and beyond, including upcoming integrations, BrightClient, and how we’re preparing for major changes like MTD, ECCTA, and AI.

Thanks for being part of the journey – here’s to an even bigger 2026.

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.