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Now that’s what I call payroll software.

BrightPay, at first glance, is deceptively simple. Its clear and easy to use interface is expertly crafted to only reveal the underlying comprehensive set of payroll functionality, where and when you need it. But as the lists below exhibit, you can rest assured that it's all there.

PAYE, USC, PRSI, LPT and ASC

  • BrightPay calculates and displays PAYE, USC, PRSI, LPT, ASC and other applicable addition and deduction amounts as you type, both for the current pay period and year to date.
  • Up to date PAYE, USC, PRSI, LPT and ASC rates and earnings bands.
  • Full control over PAYE and USC credits and cut off points.
  • Supports cumulative, week/month 1 and emergency basis.
  • Supports PAYE exemption, USC exemption and PAYE exclusion (with or without A1 certificate)
  • Supports all PRSI categories and automatically determines number of insurable weeks each pay period (with manual adjustments allowed if required).
  • View tax calculation step-by-step workings.
  • Ability to withhold tax refunds when pay is zero.

Payments

  • Weekly, fortnightly, 4-weekly, and monthly payment schedules.
  • Salary based payments.
  • Target net pay / net to gross.
  • Mid-period pay raise.
  • Company-wide daily and hourly rates, normal or overtime (unlimited rates can be added).
  • Employee-specific daily and hourly rates, normal or overtime (unlimited rates can be added).
  • One-off daily and hourly rates.
  • Daily payments can be automatically linked to the schedule of working and non-working days on employee calendar.
  • Piece payments.
  • Explicitly set payments as PAYE-able, employee-PRSI-able, employer-PRSI-able, USC-able, ASC-able and/or pension-able.
  • Pre-paid holiday pay.
  • Add multiple notes to any payment record (which can optionally be shown on employee payslip).
  • Assign any payment record to one or multiple departments (with weightings).
  • Import payments and/or rates from a CSV file.

Additions and deductions

  • Add unlimited additions and/or deductions to any payslip.
  • Company-wide addition and deduction types (unlimited types can be added).
  • One-off addition and deduction types.
  • Explicitly set additions as PAYE-able, employee-PRSI-able, employer-PRSI-able, USC-able, ASC-able and/or pension-able.
  • Explicitly set deductions as before/after PAYE, before/after USC, before/after employee PRSI, before/after employer PRSI, before/after ASC and/or before/after pension.
  • Construction Workers Pension Scheme (CWPS) deductions.
  • National Electrical Contractors Ireland (NECI) deductions.
  • Add additions/deductions to a single pay period or have them automatically repeat each pay period (up to a certain date, or indefinitely).
  • Assign any addition or deduction to one or multiple weighted departments.
  • Report on specific addition/deduction types in analysis.
  • Batch add additions and deductions to multiple payslips.
  • Import additions and deductions from a CSV file.

Processing payroll

  • As employees are progressed through the pay period schedule, processed amounts become locked to prevent changes.
  • Process employees individually or in batches.
  • Different pay dates can be used for different employees in a single pay period.
  • To correct payroll amounts, any previous pay period can be re-opened for one or multiple employees to allow changes to be made.
  • Process payroll by department, payment method, directorship, alpha grouping, and more.
  • Switch an employee from one payment schedule to another (e.g. from weekly to monthly) as many times throughout the payroll year as required.
  • Data like calculation basis, PAYE/USC cut off points, PRSI category, department, standard hourly/daily rate, payment method etc. are tracked on a period-by-period basis and can be changed throughout the payroll year as and when required.

PAYE Modernisation

  • Add one or multiple Revenue certificates.
  • Retrieve Revenue Payroll Notifications (RPN) each pay period and update employees as required.
  • Download employees from RPN.
  • Request new RPN.
  • RPN update history logs.
  • Tracks and alerts where RPNs need to be downloaded and where employee details need to be updated.
  • Send Payroll Submission Request (PSR) each pay period.
  • PSR preview (print/export/email-able)
  • Clear indication of PSR response from Revenue (including any errors).
  • Correction PSR.
  • PSR submission history logs.
  • Tracks and alerts where PSRs need to be sent (or re-sent).

Payslips

  • Print payslips on blank paper (2 per A4, 1 per A5, 1 per A4).
  • Print payslips on Thesaurus stationery.
  • Email payslips in one click (no server setup is required) with customisable subject and body (and mail merge support). The payslip gets included as PDF attachment (optionally password protected).
  • Export payslips to individual PDF files (optionally password protected) with customisable file name.
  • Tailor your payslips to show/hide employer logo, period number, tax week number, tax month number, employer address, employee address, annual leave remaining, payment method, notes, and more.
  • Optionally give individual payments, additions and deductions a custom description on the payslip (or hide them).
  • Print, email or export payslips by department, payment method, directorship, alpha grouping, and more.

Paying employees

  • Set up employees to be paid by credit transfer, cheque or cash.
  • Set up multiple employer bank accounts.
  • BrightPay will automatically determine the BIC and IBAN where a valid Irish bank sort code and account number are entered.
  • Credit transfer payments summary.
  • Create bank import files. Supports multiple bank import file formats, including Standard-18, HSBC, and Bankline.
  • Create Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) files for all supporting banks.
  • Cheque payments summary.
  • Cash payments summary. Choose the denominations and BrightPay will automatically calculate the cash make-up.

Managing employees

  • Add unlimited employees.
  • Record all relevant personal and employment information for employees.
  • Assign employees to one or multiple departments (with optional weightings).
  • Import employees from a CSV file (with flexible CSV column to data mapping).
  • Export employee data to CSV (with choice of which data to export).
  • Set up employees as salary-paid, daily-paid, or hourly-paid.
  • Starters and leavers.
  • Tax deduction card.
  • View, print or email one or multiple payslips for any employee.
  • Payslip action audit log.
  • Add or update employee details from Revenue Payroll Notifications (RPN).
  • Create Earnings, Hours and Employment Costs Survey (EHECS) for submission to Central Statistics Office (CSO).
  • Past employees are clearly indicated and can be force moved to the bottom of employee lists.

Employee calendar

  • Employee calendar responsively resizes to best fit screen size.
  • Click any day (or click and drag a series of days) to view details or set leave.
  • Set schedule of working and non-working days (by either generally selecting which days of the week should be working days, as well as specifically denoting any given day as working or non-working.
  • Set annual leave (full or part days, by the day or by the hour).
  • Set unpaid leave (full or part days).
  • Set absence (full or part days).
  • Set strike (full or part days).
  • Set sick days. Non-qualifying and qualifying days for illness benefit are automatically determined.
  • Batch set leave for multiple employees at once.
  • Add parenting leave directly on calendar.
  • Shows all Irish bank holidays.
  • Add notes to any day on the calendar.
  • 'Employer Calendar' shows a summary of events from all employees, including birthdays and general reminders.

Maternity Leave and Adoption Leave

  • Record parenting leave directly on employee calendar for up 42 weeks (maternity) or 40 weeks (adoption).
  • Handles situations in which employer is and is not receiving the benefit to pass on to the employee.
  • Ability to automatically top up parenting benefit by a fixed amount or to achieve a specific gross earnings.

Annual leave

  • Align the leave year with the tax year, or choose a custom leave year (for all employees, or on an employee-by-employee basis)
  • Calculate annual leave using a set number of days per year.
    Calculate annual leave using a set number of days per month in which at least 117 hours worked.
  • Calculate annual leave by 8% of hours worked (set hours per day, or irregular hours).
  • Carry over annual leave from previous year.
  • Quickly view, print or export the annual leave entitlement up to any date for one or multiple employees.
  • View annual leave step-by-step calculation.
  • Show annual leave days (or hours) remaining on employee payslips.

Pension schemes

  • Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA).
  • Retirement Benefit Scheme (RBS).
  • Retirement Annuity Contract (RAC).
  • Fixed amount or percentage based employer and employee contributions.
  • Default contributions.
  • Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs)
  • Report on scheme contributions and deductions in analysis.
  • Create Pension Disk File.

Recording Expenses and Benefits

  • Record all types of expenses and benefits for each employee.
  • Vehicles
  • Loans
  • Accommodation
  • Medical insurance (annual or one-off)
  • Share based remuneration
  • Other annual / one-off benefits.
  • Notional pay is automatically calculated and added to the relevant payslips(s).
  • Supports employee contributions.

Analysis

  • Flexible report builder.
  • Reports on pay periods, tax weeks, tax months, or the entire tax year.
  • Report on a single period or span multiple periods.
  • Report on employee totals, department totals, or both together.
  • Include total, average, minimum and/or maximum summary values.
  • Ability to ignore 'zero' payments.
  • Ability to roll up pre-pay.
  • Choose which employees to include in a report.
  • Choose from over 100 data items to include in a report. All payroll data is available.
  • Report on the amounts for specific rates, additions, deductions, pension schemes and savings schemes that you set up.
  • Several built-in one-click reports.
  • Save your own reports to use each pay period.
  • Print and export reports.

Payroll Journal

  • Post journal directly to Sage, Quickbooks, Xero and AccountsIQ via API, or create a CSV payroll journal for import into your accounting software.
  • Create your own nominal ledger mapping.
  • Specify the journal date range.
  • Include individual journal records for each employee, or merge the employee records into rolled up records for each unique payment date.
  • Basic nominal account mappings.
  • Advanced multi-conditional nominal account mappings (e.g. by department, by directorship, by payment/addition/deduction type)
  • Preview journal on screen, export preview to PDF, or print.

Revenue payments

  • Track amounts due to Revenue on a monthly schedule, broken down by tax week.
  • Track amounts due and paid. Any balance shortfalls are carried over to the following payment period.
  • Compare and reconcile amounts with those reported by Revenue.

Employer setup

  • Add employer logo (which can optionally be included on payslips).
  • Record all relevant employer data.
  • Set the options for a typical employee, which is used by default when adding new employees.
  • Add unlimited departments.
  • Add unlimited company-wide hourly dates.
  • Add unlimited company-wide daily dates.
  • Add unlimited company-wide piece dates.
  • Add unlimited company-wide addition types.
  • Add unlimited company-wide deduction types.
  • Add unlimited savings schemes, which can be set up to use percentage based or fixed amount employee and employer contributions.
  • Add unlimited employer bank accounts.
  • Start at beginning of tax year, start in middle of tax year, or continue partway in the tax year from migrated payroll records.

Bureau features

  • BrightPay startup window is a fully customisable list of all your employer clients. Choose the columns to view and order the list by any column. Type on your keyboard to search the list.
  • Use your agent certificate when sending submissions for your clients.
  • Record client information (contact details, notes, coloured label, etc.) for each employer.

File handling

  • All the payroll data for an employer is contained in a single file for simple backup and transfer.
  • Sensitive data is encrypted in the employer file.
  • Employer files can be optionally password protected.
  • Unlimited time-stamped snapshots of an employer file can be taken and restored as required.
  • Multiple employer files can be opened in BrightPay at the same time (they open in separate windows).
  • By using a cloud file sync service like Dropbox, Box, OneDrive or Google Drive, BrightPay essentially becomes a cloud application.
  • Recently opened files are tracked and openable from the start-up window with a single click.

Installation, upgrading and licensing

  • BrightPay installation is quick and simple.
  • Software updates are automatically checked for on launch, and the option is given as to whether to update now or later. Software updates can also be checked manually.
  • The Free licence allows for one employee for a single employer.
  • The Standard licence allows for multiple employees for a single employer.
  • The Bureau licence allows for multiple employers each with unlimited employees.
  • A licence key can be used for up to ten activated installations.

Help and support

  • Free phone and email support.
  • Comprehensive online documentation can be accessed here or by pressing the F1 key in BrightPay.
Bright Software Group

Copyright © 2024 Thesaurus Software Ltd T/A Bright Software Group.

Unit 35 Duleek Business Park, Duleek, County Meath, A92 N15E, Ireland

  01 8352074