Over the last 6 months we have seen many changes, the coronavirus pandemic has turned our lives upside down both personally and professionally. Professionally, there has been much disparity to jobs with some industries not functioning at all but other industries inundated with work. For those lucky enough to continue to work, how and where they work has vastly changed. Thanks to the existence of the internet many of our computerised tasks can be carried out remotely just as easily as in the office.
We are one of the lucky ones, we have continued to work throughout, supporting our clients with advice, a few hours here and there not charged for to ensure we all continue to work through such a difficult period.
As it is National Payroll Week we wanted to give an insight in to how our payroll software, BrightPay has helped us to continue working from anywhere throughout the pandemic. BrightPay’s online portal, called Connect, is perfect for remote working.
BrightPay Connect is an online self-service portal enabling automated backups and online accessibility bringing additional features and benefits to payroll bureaus, employers and employees.
Employee Benefits
- access and retrieve payslips and other documentation such as P60
- view and update various personal information, such as phone number and postal address
- includes an employee calendar, allowing employees to view past and scheduled leave, such as annual leave, sick leave, and statutory leave. Employees can request annual leave through the portal
- Portal accessible via an app or online
Employer Benefits
- Access payslips, calendars and information of all employees in the employer data file
- Employer will get a notification when an employee requests annual leave through their portal to approve or reject the request. In doing so, the employee will instantly get confirmation of the leave, which will be added to the employee's calendar in both the employee and employer portals as well
- Track sick leave using the calendar
- P30 details included, with a record of HMRC payments made and amounts still due to HMRC.
- Secure online backup, historical set of backups are maintained so that a backup can be restored from the cloud at any time
- Document storage and sharing – documents can be uploaded to individual employees (for contracts) or to the whole organisation (company handbook) or to groups (budget for managers.)
- Access can be changed at any time and permissions can be changed so the employee, manager and HR manager can access a document
- There are a wide range of reports, the reporting page can be customised however needed
Employers can transfer sensitive payroll data to us, they can even review and approve before close down. The accountant and bookkeepers can run reports to ensure the numbers are dealt with correctly and easily in the accounting software, and in many cases the journals can be transmitted direct to the accounting software, it also sends data to the pension companies to inform them of the contributions.
So, it is clear that BrightPay is a great piece of software that not only covers the payroll function but HR management as well as work allowing employers and employees to access from anywhere.