About Bright

Trusted by thousands of accountants, bookkeepers, and employers across the UK and Ireland

About Bright

Bright is a leading provider of accounting, payroll and HR solutions to businesses across the UK and Ireland. We help thousands of accountants, bookkeepers and small to mid-sized businesses become more productive and efficient with our best-in-class software solutions. By combining the strengths of each of our brands, we are fast becoming one of the most reputable software providers and the go-to solution for the accounting industry.

400,000

Businesses using
Bright products

2021

Bright was
Established

30+

Years' Industry
Experience

99%

Bright Customer
Satisfaction Rate

"BrightPay was a niche discovery. After previously using various payroll software, which were either too complicated, not fit for purpose or too expensive, BrightPay gave us hope that a decent software did indeed exist. I now praise BrightPay to others, knowing that when they try they will not be disappointed."

Kate, Geosphere Environmental

“Surf Accounts has been a game changer for our business. We have been able to expedite the invoicing and payments process to help close sales faster and in a more efficient way. Surf Accounts offers peace of mind and I can visualise income on the go.”

Owen Morton, Webbiz.ie

“AccountancyManager, in my view, is a One-Stop-Shop and with practice administration becoming a more cumbersome job and very time consuming this is an excellent solution to saving your practice time and money. I would highly recommend AccountancyManager.”

Sarah Douglas, Housetree Business

"I've used BrightPay for my payroll services for a number of years now. I can absolutely recommend this product. It's easy to use, easy to learn, the support is brilliant. Thank you BrightPay, my stress levels are much better since working with you."

Lesley Ann Warne, Laws Accountants

“Surf Accounts and its integrations help us manage client accounting, processing information seamlessly in a secure manner. Our quality, efficiency, and effectiveness are well achieved so in turn our clients are satisfied with the service we bring to the table.”

Jay Patel, FinTech Pro

“Without AccountancyManager, there’s no way we would’ve taken on the amount of people we have and probably would’ve ended up saying no to new prospects.”

Will Sterling, Sterling Accounting Solutions

Our Story

Bright was created in 2021 when Thesaurus Software Ltd. and Relate Software Ltd. decided to join forces.

Thesaurus Software was founded in 1992, providing affordable payroll software to Irish businesses with Thesaurus Payroll Manager. In 2012, Thesaurus Software’s payroll offering was expanded even further with the introduction of BrightPay.

Thesaurus Software has since grown to become the number one payroll software provider in Ireland. Meanwhile in the UK, BrightPay continues to disrupt the payroll market, adding to its ever-growing customer base and being recognised with numerous payroll awards.

In another part of the world (a whole 35km away), Relate Software had a similar goal of providing best-in-class software to accountants and businesses. Established in 2001, Relate Software’s compliance suite had a growing base of accounting firms that relied solely on Relate products to run their practice.

Relate Software has since expanded its reach, opening an office in Kolkata, India in 2006. More recently, cloud-based solutions Surf Accounts and Surf Accounts Production have also been introduced. Relate Software is now the largest supplier of software to the accountancy profession in Ireland.

Established in 2001, Relate Software had a similar goal of providing best-in-class software to accountants and businesses. Relate Software has since introduced cloud-based solutions – Surf Accounts and Surf Accounts Production.

In 2021, Thesaurus Software and Relate Software merged to become Bright – a payroll and accounting software powerhouse. By operating as Bright, we have access to additional resources to improve the services and support we provide to our customers.

The newest addition to the Bright family is AccountancyManager, the UK’s leading onboarding and practice management software. AccountancyManager was founded in 2017 and has since taken the accountancy industry by storm with thousands of accountants and bookkeepers using AccountancyManager to run and grow their practices.

Our Core Products