BrightPay Changelog

What's new in BrightPay UK 2022/23 22.1.0.0

Mar 29, 2022

2022/23 Tax Year Updates:
There are no changes to tax bands and rates for 2022/23 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For Scottish tax codes, the bands have been updated for 2022/23. The emergency tax code remains the same as it was in 2021/22.
2022/23 employee and employer National Insurance contribution rates, thresholds and calculations, including: Support for new Veterans NICl, Support for new Freeports NIC, Support for Mariners NIC.
2022/23 Student Loan and Postgraduate Loan thresholds.
2022/23 Statutory Sick Pay rates.
2022/23 rates and average weekly earnings thresholds for Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay.
2022/23 rates and calculations for company cars, vans and fuel.
Ability to process 2022/23 HMRC coding notices.
April 2022 National Minimum/Living Wage rates.
Eligible employers can continue to claim Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30, P32, P11D and PBIK forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all submission types (FPS, EPS, NVR, EXB, CIS300, CISREQ).
1.25% Health and Social Care Levy note appears by default on payslips, as requested by HMRC. It can be turned off if need be.
BrightPay 2022/23 version 22.1 (released on 24/03/2022) also contains the following updates announced in the 2022 Spring Statement:
Increase to the National Insurance Primary Threshold for Class 1 NICs.
Annual Employment Allowance limit increased to £5,000.
Automatic Enrolment Updates:
2022/23 qualifying earnings thresholds.
For 2022/23, the minimum required pension contribution level continues to be 8%, at least 3% of which must be contributed by the employer.
Various enrolment/contributions API submission and CSV formats have been updated to the latest versions to ensure continued compatibility with all pension scheme providers.
Other New Features and Updates in 2022/23:
Support for manual journal entries. This can be used to account for things like Employment Allowance or recovered statutory pay in journals, as well as anything else.
Improves handling of employee payment/bank details – changes to details now automatically apply across the whole tax year, meaning that finalised payslips no longer need to be re-opened first.
The user interface for finalising and re-opening payslips now uses progress bars.
Several additional minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes and security improvements.
Includes all updates made to BrightPay during the 2021/22 tax year:
Here's a quick reminder of some of the main areas of improvement:
Ability to pay employees, subcontractors, or HMRC using Modulr.
Supports the latest UK and London Living Wage rates, announced in November 2021.
Various improvements to validation and on-screen guidance to aid data accuracy and quality.
Support for additional Automatic Enrolment pension scheme providers.
Support for posting payroll journals to additional accounting software providers.

New in BrightPay UK 2021/22 21.0.3.1 (Mar 30, 2021)

2021/22 Tax Year Updates:
2021/22 tax bands. The emergency tax code has changed from 1250L to 1257L. When importing from the previous tax year, L codes are uplifted by 7, M codes are uplifted by 8 and N codes by 6.
2021/22 employee and employer National Insurance contribution rates, thresholds and calculations.
2021/22 Student Loan and Postgraduate Loan thresholds. Support for the new Student Loan Plan 4.
2021/22 rate of Statutory Sick Pay, including continued support for COVID-19 related periods of sick leave (in which SSP is paid from day one).
2021/22 rates and average weekly earnings thresholds for Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay.
2021/22 rates and calculations for company cars, vans and fuel.
Support for off-payroll workers.
Ability to process 2021/22 HMRC coding notices.
April 2021 National Minimum/Living Wage rates. The top minimum wage age threshold has been reduced from 25 to 23.
Eligible employers can continue to claim Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30, P32, P11D and PBIK forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all submission types (FPS, EPS, NVR, EXB, CIS300, CISREQ).
Continued support for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and the Coronavirus Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme (CSSPRS).
Automatic Enrolment Updates:
2021/22 qualifying earnings thresholds.
For 2021/22, the minimum required pension contribution level continues to be 8%, at least 3% of which must be contributed by the employer.
Various enrolment/contributions API submission and CSV formats have been updated to the latest versions to ensure continued compatibility with all pension scheme providers.
Pay Using Modulr (Coming in April 2021):
You can now create and send payment requests to Modulr directly from BrightPay, provided you have an active Modulr account that is set up for making payments. Payee information and amounts are automatically populated using the data from your payroll, making it a simple, fast and efficient way to pay your employees (or subcontractors).
More Journal API Support:
BrightPay 2021/22 now supports posting journals directly via API to FreshBooks, QuickFile and ClearBooks.
Other New Features and Updates in 2021/22
The way of setting up a pay schedule for the tax year has been changed in response to customer feedback, making it easier and more flexible.
Ability to auto-zeroise individual basic payments, additions and deductions for each pay period (i.e. repeat them into the next pay period as usual, but with a zero amount)
Ability to auto-generate works numbers.
BrightPay now shows the total "number of employees" in many more on-screen summaries and report documents.
CIS – New custom P&D Statement template design that is able to contain much more information than the standard HMRC template (e.g. breakdown of hourly payments, addition subcontractor information, etc.)
CIS – BrightPay is now smarter about automatically ticking/unticking and including/excluding subcontractors from various lists or reports by default depending on whether they received any pay in a tax period.
More employee fields are importable from CSV, and a few column options have been added to Analysis.
Several additional minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes and security improvements.
Includes all updates made to BrightPay during the 2020/21 tax year:
Although 2020/21 updates were primarily focused on the CJRS, we did add a few other enhancements, all of which are of course included in BrightPay 2021/22. See our release notes for full details. Here's a quick reminder of some of the main areas of improvement:
Supports the latest UK and London Living Wage rates, announced in November 2020.
New message in HMRC Payments that lets you know when the equivalent annualised NIC-able pay would put you in excess of the Apprenticeship Levy threshold.
New "Amount due to HMRC" column is available to be displayed on the BrightPay startup window.
BrightPay now uses the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime to display web-based content, ensuring technical compatibility with the requirements of modern web services.

New in BrightPay UK 2020/21 20.0.1.0 (Mar 27, 2020)

2020/21 Tax Year Updates:
There are no changes to tax bands, rates or the emergency tax code in 2020/21. BrightPay continues full support for Welsh Rate of Income Tax (WRIT) and Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT).
2020/21 employee and employer National Insurance contribution rates, thresholds and calculations.
2020/21 Student Loan and Postgraduate Loan thresholds.
2020/21 rate of Statutory Sick Pay, including support for COVID-19 related periods of sick leave (in which SSP is paid from day one).
2020/21 rates for Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, and Statutory Shared Parental Pay.
Support for new Parental Bereavement Leave and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay.
2020/21 rates for company cars, vans and fuel. BrightPay now allows input of 'zero emission miles' for cars with a C02 rating of less than or equal to 50g/km (which is now used in the calculation of cash equivalent).
Support for real-time PAYE tax and Employer Class 1A NICs due on year-to-date termination awards over the £30K annual threshold and on year-to-date sporting testimonial payments over the £100K annual threshold.
Ability to process 2020/21 HMRC coding notices.
April 2020 National Living Wage rates.
Eligible employers can continue to claim Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC. For 2020/21, the maximum Employment Allowance claim has been increased to £4,000.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30, P32, P11D and PBIK forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications, including the new De Minimis State Aid declaration on the EPS. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all submission types (FPS, EPS, NVR, EXB, CIS300, CISREQ).
Support for off-payroll workers subject to April 2020 rules. Off-payroll working rules have been postponed until April 2021.
Automatic Enrolment Updates:
2020/21 qualifying earnings thresholds.
For 2020/21, the minimum required pension contribution level continues to be 8%, at least 3% of which must be contributed by the employer.
Various enrolment/contributions API submission and CSV formats have been updated to the latest versions to ensure continued compatibility with all pension scheme providers.
Additional one-off contributions can now be optionally persisted to following pay periods.
Makes it more clear on the Automatic Enrolment journey report when an assessment is part of automatic re-enrolment.
Define and Set Custom Leave Types on Employee Calendar:
You can now define up to nine additional custom types of employee leave. Six of the custom types are set up with default descriptions, which you can edit, add to, or remove as need be.
Custom leave types act like the existing built-in kinds of leave, in that they are mutually exclusive and can only be applied to working days. They can be set on a per-employee basis, or batch set for multiple employees at once.
Custom leave types also appear on the employer calendar. Mouse-hover tooltips have been added to the various views of the employer calendar to help determine what each colour indicates where it's not clear.
A new Calendar Report (which replaces the previous Print Calendar functionality) gives you the power and flexibility to create and/or share a customised report of employee leave that can be filtered by type of leave, and presented individually for each employee, or as a summary containing multiple employees.
More Journal API Support:
Along with the API support added for Sage, Quickbooks and Xero in 2019/20, BrightPay 2020/21 now supports posting journals directly via API to FreeAgent, Kashflow, Twinfield and AccountsIQ. The option to create a CSV journal is also still available where supported.
Update Employees from CSV File:
BrightPay has traditionally only allowed new employees to be added from a CSV file. Now, you can both add new employees and update existing employees from a CSV file. (The same has been done for subcontractors).
BrightPay Connect:
The Connect tab on the start-up window now directly shows your sign-in status.
The list of employers (in the Open/Create Employer tab of start-up window) now shows cloud icons for employers that are linked to the signed-in BrightPay account.
Ability to download and import a 2019/20 Connect backup into BrightPay 2020/21 (only applies for employers which have not yet been linked and synchronised for 2020/21).
When an employer is opened in BrightPay 2020/21 that is not linked to Connect, but it is known that the 2019/20 version of that file was linked to Connect, BrightPay will now automatically prompt you to link the 2020/21 file to Connect.
Other 2020/21 Updates in BrightPay:
Annual leave entitlement calculations now include 'upcoming booked annual leave days', which can optionally be included on reports and payslips.
When zero-ising payslips (or subcontractor payments), new options to set amount to zero, or remove items altogether.
Ability to create an SSP1 document in BrightPay.
When importing payments from CSV, any lines which failed to import (e.g. due to not matching an employee pay record, or due to the matching pay record being already finalised) are now clearly indicated in the response dialog (instead of the previously unhelpful 'X of Y succeeded' message).
Public holidays on employee calendar are now shown with a dotted text underline (rather than appearing as if they were non-working days by default).
In analysis, if the column ordering settings of a report is manually changed from the 'default' settings (which are derived from employee UI display preferences), and then that report is saved, the custom ordering is now maintained, and this report will no longer receive 'default' column ordering settings when it is re-opened.
Ability to import saved reports from another BrightPay data file into the currently open file.
Allows one of the added emergency contacts for an employee to be set as the 'primary' contact. New analysis columns (and a new report) for emergency contact details have been added.
New 'notes' input for parenting leave and attachment orders.
Lots of minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes and security improvements.

New in BrightPay UK 2019/20 19.0.0.0 (Apr 11, 2019)

2019/20 Tax Year Updates
2019/20 rates, thresholds, triggers and calculations for PAYE tax, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan deductions, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay, Automatic Enrolment pensions, company cars, vans and fuel.
The emergency tax code has changed from 1185L to 1250L. When importing from the previous tax year, L codes are uplifted by 65, M codes are uplifted by 71 and N codes by 59.
Full support for the 2019/20 Welsh Rate of Income Tax (WRIT) codes, rates and thresholds, as well as continued support for those of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT).
Support for the new Postgraduate Loan deductions.
Ability to process 2019/20 HMRC coding notices (including new PGL1 and PGL2 notices).
April 2019 National Living Wage rates.
Eligible employers can continue to claim the £3,000 Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30, P32, P11D and PBIK forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all submission types (FPS, EPS, NVR, EXB, CIS300, CISREQ).
Automatic Enrolment Updates
From April 2019 onwards, the minimum required pension contribution level is 8%, at least 3% of which must be contributed by the employer. BrightPay 2019/20 now uses and validates against this increased level by default. Where pre-April 2019 minimum levels were being used in 2018/19, BrightPay 2019/20 will automatically uplift them on import.
With the concept of 'staging' for automatic enrolment now very much in the past, BrightPay is instead focused on asking for and working with the Next Re-enrolment Date.
Various enrolment/contributions API submission and CSV formats have been updated to the latest versions.
Various improvements have been made to make the automatic re-enrolment process more clear:
For opted-out or ceased employees (as well as employees who are flagged for re-enrolment) the previous opt out/cessation date is now clearly visible and can be edited if need be.
If an employee is marked as opted out or ceased, but the opt-out/cessation date is not known, BrightPay now flags for automatic re-enrolment anyway (and allows the missing date to be entered).
Redesigned menu when adding a new pension scheme:
The auto enrolment qualifying schemes are now categorised by API/CSV support, and ordered by popularity.
The traditional pension scheme 'types' have been removed – when adding a traditional scheme you can now simply set the tax relief and AVC options directly instead of having to first choose the right type.

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.4.0.8 (Jan 18, 2019)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.4.0.2 (Nov 23, 2018)

BrightPay Connect:
New feature allows you to request a Connect user (e.g. your client) to complete payroll entry or payroll approval for a given pay period online, after which you can download the data directly into BrightPay. For more information, log into your Connect dashboard and click the new Requests link in the top navigation.
Payroll:
Hide annual leave fields on printed payslip if it is not yet finalised.
Employees:
Improved P11 and support for generating P11 for multiple employees.
Improved support for generating P11D and PBIK for multiple employees.
Printing of employee calendar.
Fixes BPUKM-911 : Mid year start : directorship start / end dates are disabled.
Cloud Connect Features:
Fixed missing last cloud backup synchronisation time.
Pensions:
Ability to validate NEST Groups and payment sources (the approve payments function will be implemented shortly).
Smart pension now uses OAuth2 for authorisation.
The People's Pension – submissions can now be made directly via API (with CSV still available as an option).
Aviva – correction to handling of certain contribution scenarios.
Fixes BPUKM-917 : crash when generating NEST contribution CSV file.
RTI:
Removes MD5 hashing of sender password in RTI submission XML, as per HMRC's latest instructions
Communication with HMRC now always uses the TLS 1.2 protocol, as per HMRC's latest instructions.
Improvements and fixes:
Adds additional telemetry items.
Employer data is now synchronised to BrightPay Connect after performing a batch operation.
FPS importer improvements.
Fixes indication of late submission reason when sending an Additional FPS for a pre-paid period.
Fixes tax code on 'payment after leaving' payslips for Scottish taxpayers.
Fixes BPUK-2270 : not showing the late reporting reason - if Pre paid payslip .
Fixes BPUK-2273 : child Attachment of Earnings Order protected earnings percentage not correct.
Fixes BPUK-2277 : need to be able to apply S0T for the Payment after leaving payslip.
Other minor fixes and improvement.

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.3.2.7 (Oct 23, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.3.2.0 (Jul 25, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.2.3.3 (Jun 6, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.2.3.0 (May 11, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 18.1.0.1 (Apr 18, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2018/19 0.18.9.2 (Mar 22, 2018)

2018/19 TAX YEAR UPDATES:
2018/19 rates, thresholds and calculations for PAYE tax, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan deductions, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay, Automatic Enrolment earnings thresholds and triggers, company cars, vans and fuel.
The emergency tax code has changed from 1150L to 1185L. When importing from BrightPay 2017/18, L codes are uplifted by 35, M codes are uplifted by 39 and N codes by 31.
Full support for the 2018/19 Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT) codes, rates and thresholds.
April 2018 National Living Wage rates.
Ability to process 2018/19 HMRC coding notices.
Eligible employers can continue to claim the £3,000 Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30 and P32 forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all submission types (FPS, EPS, NVR, EYU, EXB, CIS300, CISREQ).
AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT UPDATES:
From April 2018 onwards, the minimum required pension contribution level is 5%, at least 2% of which must be contributed by the employer. BrightPay 2018/19 now uses and validates against this increased level by default. Where pre-April 2018 minimum levels were being used in 2017/18, BrightPay 2018/19 will automatically uplift them on import.
With all employers in the UK now having staged for Auto Enrolment, BrightPay no longer relies on a Staging Date for assessment – all un-actioned employees are automatically assessed and flagged for action as required.
Where submissions are outstanding for a pension scheme, BrightPay now more clearly shows the numeric indicators on the Enrolment Summary and/or Contributions Summary buttons for that scheme, depending on the type of submission(s) outstanding.
The salutation of Auto Enrolment letters can now be customised.
Auto Enrolment letters can now be quickly printed via the new Letters menu in the PENSIONS section of BrightPay.
New letter template to tell staff who are already a member of a scheme about the April 2018 minimum contribution increases.
New Automatic Enrolment Journey Report replaces the previous Assessment Report.
Automatic Re-enrolment date and Declaration of Compliance date can now be shown as columns on the BrightPay startup window.
Improved handling of the situation in which Auto Enrolment duties are ignored for one or more pay periods.
ABILITY TO EDIT THE COLUMNS OF THE PERIOD SUMMARY VIEW:
A popular customer request has been to show columns for number of hours worked and pension contributions on the BrightPay period summary view. In BrightPay 2018/19, you can now easily include these, as well as many more additional column options.
ABILITY TO QUICKLY EMAIL ANY DOCUMENT/REPORT:
There is a new Email button in the print preview of documents and reports in BrightPay which allows you to easily send it as a PDF attachment in an email. Where and when applicable, BrightPay makes it easy and quick to select the relevant employee, client or previously used recipient.
Note: In version 18.0, there are a few document types for which email support is not yet available (e.g. P45, SMP1, etc) – we will be adding support for these very soon.
NEW FEATURE: EMPLOYER CALENDAR:
There is a new employer-wide calendar in the EMPLOYER section of BrightPay which amalgamates all the employee events along with other key payroll dates into a single view:
Switch between Year, Month or Week view.
Shows combined events for all employees (i.e. those entered on the employee calendar, as well as birthdays)
Includes general tax year events and deadlines.
Ability to filter which kinds of events are displayed on calendar and in the day event list.
Ability to add/edit/delete your own notes.
EMPLOYEE CALENDAR IMPROVEMENTS:
Ability to batch set working days, non-working days and leave days for multiple employees at once.
Holding the Ctrl key allows you to select (or unselect) multiple arbitrary days on the calendar.
BUREAU IMPROVEMENTS:
Several new Client Details fields have been added:
In BrightPay Agent Settings, you can now enter your own NEST delegate ID and password to use globally in NEST submissions.
OTHER 2018/19 CHANGES IN BRIGHTPAY:
We've made several key architectural improvements for dealing with large employer files (e.g. those with hundreds or even thousands of employees) with regard to both speed of execution and computer memory usage. This will be something we continue to improve as time goes on.
When a text input field receives focus via keyboard tabbing, its content is all selected automatically.
Adds several more customisability options for payslip production.
When zero-ising payslips, you can now choose to zero-ise only the overtime (or non-overtime)hourly/daily payments.
Enables specific period payments, daily payments, hourly payments, piece payments, additions and deductions to be explicitly hidden on printed payslip.
Enables specific period payments, daily payments, hourly payments, piece payments, additions and deductions to be given a custom description to appear on printed payslip.
Enables specific period payments, daily payments, hourly payments, piece payments and additions to 'contribute to gross for minimum wage' or not.
Ability to set whether or not an hourly rate/payment should accrue hour-based annual leave entitlement.
For 'accrued' annual leave days/hours, ability to manually specify additional accrued days/hours not accounted for in payroll (i.e. an adjustment).
Annual leave accrual is now calculated up to end of the currently open pay period (rather than up to the end of the last finalised pay period).
Printing page setup is now centralised into the File menu of BrightPay.
Ability to control whether or not the PDF export settings are remembered between usages.
Enables traditional pension schemes to use employer AVCs.
Includes Student Loan Plan on FPS
Lots of minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes.

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.6.0.3 (Feb 7, 2018)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.6.0.0 (Feb 1, 2018)

New Feature : Smart Pension:
Adds support for Smart Pension.
New Feature : Additional CSV Importing and Exporting:
Adds CSV importing of employees, subcontractors, payslip pay items and CIS payment pay items.
Adds CSV exporting of employees.
Adds Importing from Moneysoft.
For Sage and Iris importers we provide links to online support detailing step by step instructions on how to undertake the migration.
For users wishing to import from Qtac or 12Pay please contact technical support who can advise you on how to use the Windows based client to do the import.
Adds XML importing of employees from FPS data.
Adds payslip period summary CSV export.
New Feature : Reporting documents:
Adds P11D document.
Adds PBIK document.
Adds payslip period summary document.
Adds CIS payment period summary document.
Changes : Auto Enrolment And Pensions:
Adds Scottish Widows AE submission Assist Me CSV template.
Welplan CSV correction.
Fixes BPUK-1640 : Update to Standard Life CSV file formats.
Update Aviva contributions request to use rolled up monthly amounts for weekly paid employees
Updates Aviva enrolment CSV file to use monthly regular amounts for weekly-paid employees
Changes : Payroll and Payslips:
Ability to show 'Notional pay' on printed payslip.
When exporting period summary to CSV file, totals row is now included.
Changes : Preference Panel:
Removes option to use old Gateway submission URL - the new Transaction Engine Live/Test Environment URLs are used for all submissions now.
Other Changes and Improvements:
Adds tax period number on P30.
Changes employee auto selection logic in some situations to not automatically select employees who have left.
Prevents deletion of in use departments.
Adds support for employee TUPE protection.
Bug fixes:
Bug fix to director NIC calculation when NI category changes after a mid year start.
Fixes BPUK-1654, BPUK-1653 : FPS import issues .
Fixes BPUK-1651 : Year to date report column issue.
Fixes BPUKM-743 : AE fixed amount contribution type incorrect formatter applied (% rather than £).
Fixes BPUK-459 : departmental calculation of year-to-date reporting values.
Several other small changes to fix infrequent crashes recorded in the user submitted crash logs.

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.5.1.0 (Nov 26, 2017)

NEW FEATURE: LOCAL SNAPSHOT CREATION AND RESTORE:
By default an automatic snapshot will be created when a modified employer file is closed. This behaviour can be controlled via the File Options preference panel.
Snapshot archives can be opened by double clicking on the archive or by browsing from the main Employer List window.
When a snapshot is opened BrightPay identifies if the employer already exists in the main Employer List. If so it will prompt to replace the existing employer file or copy the archive contents to a new location. If the employer does not already exist in the Employer List then BrightPay prompts to save the archive contents to a new location.
Snapshot files are archives and cannot be directly edited.
When creating a snapshot the default action is to add the snapshot to a restore list. This option can be overridden if restoring is not required (say if making a copy to transfer to another location).
When restoring a snapshot the restore list displays the list of available snapshots. A browse button enables snapshots in other locations to be accessed. Snapshots may also be restored from the Repository (see below).
The Repository is a centralised store of all employer snapshots.
BrightPay will only restore an archive over an existing employer file if the archive contains matching data for that employer.
When the Auto organise documents feature is enabled (see below) snapshots are created in a subfolder related to the employer file and in the Repository. If this feature is not enabled then snapshots are stored in the Repository.
Snapshot archives have a file extension of .macOS.bpuk-17-snapshot. The archive format is zip. To extract a BrightPay employer file from the archive without using BrightPay just add .zip to the archive filename and use a standard zip utility.
Adds support for local snapshot creation and restore. The new snapshots window can be accessed via:
The application File - Snapshots… menu.
By right clicking in the Employer List window and selecting Restore - From Snapshot….
NEW FEATURE: AUTO ORGANISE DOCUMENTS AND SNAPSHOTS:
Adds facility to auto organise exported payslips, documents, reports and snapshots into a subfolder associated with the employer file.
This behaviour can be controlled via the File Options prefence panel. The default is to enable auto document organising.
CHANGES: AUTO ENROLMENT AND PENSIONS:
‘Staging date’ is now known as ‘Duties start date’ throughout the application. In some places we state “previously known as staging date” for clarity. There is a new workflow for determining your AE status as an employer and entering your duties start date.
From October 2017, every employer should know their status and/or duties start date. So if the duties start date has not been determined (or employer has not been marked as newborn or exempt), every open payslip will show a flag and yellow bar. Trying to finalise payslips with this flag will show an AE warning.
For employers who have marked themselves as newborns (i.e. employers who first employ staff on/after 1 October), then when a staff member is detected on/after 1 October, the payslip will show a flag and yellow bar. Trying to finalise payslips with this flag will show the AE warning.
BrightPay no longer prevents a past duties start date from being entered after having already finalised payslips (to more easily cater for tardy stagers).
Any AE scheme contribution (employee/employer, standard/one-off) can now be entered as a percentage amount or a fixed £ amount.
Any AE scheme contribution can now include additional one-off amounts, which can be shown/hidden in UI (powered by new checkbox in deduction settings popup).
Under-contribution detection now works with Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs).
New option to fix under-contribution by adding AVCs.
AE submissions/CSV files have been updated to roll in the additional one-off amounts into the total amounts where they don’t have specific fields/columns for AVCs.
Aviva updates:
Net Pay Arrangement is now disallowed for Aviva schemes
The additional fields for an Aviva enrolment submission now differ depending on whether it's a CSV submission or an API submission
Updated Aviva "Reason for no/partial payment” descriptions
Weekly-paid employees in an Aviva enrolment submission now have their period contributions transposed to monthly amounts
BrightPay will now detect and warn if any payslips for a contributions submission period have not been finalised for Aviva (and NOW:Pensions) schemes
Updates to NOW:Pensions CSV file
CHANGES: CLOUD CONNECT:
The main Open Employer and Connect Backup & Self Service views now display the linked status of cloud enabled employers. Hover over the cloud icon for each employer item for further status information.
When the cloud document availability date logic is changed, the availability date of all previously finalised payslips is now automatically updated to reflect it (before, it only applied to finalised payslips going forward from the date of the change)
The remote Connect backup/restore functionality has been aligned with the similar locally based Snapshot functionality.
Cloud restore can now be accessed from:
The application File - Restore form Connect Backup… menu item.
By right clicking in the Employer List window and selecting Restore - From Connect Backup….
CHANGES: EMPLOYER LIST:
By default the Employer List window now displays the path to the employer file. This should help identify files located on removable drives or network shares. An initial tilde character, like so ~, is an abbreviation that indicates that the file exists in the user's home folder (this is a standard macOS convention). A new item in the Employer List window popup menu enables this feature to be toggled on and off.
The Employer List will show an alert badge for any item whose employer file cannot be found. Any items that reference files on removable media and external drives will be updated when those drives are connected and disconnected. A Refresh List entry on the popup menu enables the file availability state of all items to be updated.
An alert badge will also be displayed whenever a duplicate PAYE Reference is detected. Hover over the alert badge for more information.
An identifying coloured label can be set for employer items via a new item on the popup menu.
Employer List columns can be re-ordered by dragging the column header.
CHANGES: EMPLOYER DOCUMENT:
When opening an employer file that has a duplicate in the Employer List a yellow warning icon will appear in the top left hand corner of the document window. Hover over this icon for more information.
CHANGES: PREFERENCE PANEL:
Adds HMRC RTI submission environment preference.
New Advanced Preferences panel. To access this select the BrightPay application menu and hold down the Alt key. The Preferences menu item will be replaced with Advanced Preferences.
New options in Advanced Preferences to help customers with lots of file access issues (e.g. flaky network drives).
The General panel includes a warnings reset button. Use this to re-enable all warnings that have a 'Don't show me this again' checkbox option.'
OTHER CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS:
Ability to print employee coding notices.
Net to gross functionality can now do ‘Take-home pay to gross’ and ‘Cost-to-employer to gross’.
Employee’s age now shows next to date of birth selection when editing employee details.
When an employee has a start date prior to mid-year-start in BrightPay, but needs to have their starter declaration sent via BrightPay, there is a new tick box to allow them to do so.
Supports continuing Apprenticeship Levy in mid-year-start setups
When closing an employer window, if the file has unsaved changes but it cannot be accessed (e.g. file opened from a network share that was disconnected), BrightPay warns the user and asks what to do. If they choose to try again, the check is performed again. If they choose to cancel, no further queries are made on the data file and the employer window is just closed (without crashing)
New tick box in Edit Payslip Settings - Employment tab which allows user to denote that the employee had a previous additional employment in the tax year. If ticked, they can then enter previous employment amounts:
This new tick box does not show if the employee is already a starter with declaration B or C (in which case they can already enter previous employment amounts).
If a coding notice with previous employment amounts comes in and is processed for a non-starter employee, this tick box is automatically ticked so that the previous employment totals shows up in the UI.
BUG FIXES:
Fixes BPUKM-732 : Cloud employer list duplication when Connect authentication fails unexpectedly.
Fixes crash when sending an AE submission for a period in which the start/end dates are not in the current tax year (e.g. pay in arrears scenarios)
Fixes issue in which applicable employees are not being picked up in a Smart Pension non-enrolled employees submission
Fixes crash which would occur when the details of a payrolled car with a blank employee capital contribution or blank employee private contribution are being included on an FPS
Fixes crash which would occur when switching AE scheme, where the state switching to (or from) is ‘Already enrolled in a qualifying scheme'.
Fixes BPUKM-739 : Attachment order protected earnings £ and % field states reversed.
Fixes BPUKM-738 : 'Typical annual leave entitlement' number of days input should only be enabled when setting the number of annual leave days explicitly. At other times this value should be calculated from the desired number of leave weeks.
Fixes BPUKM-742 : Employer typical employee tab - annual leave entitlement weeks control not displaying as required.

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.4.0.3 (Aug 8, 2017)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.4.0.2 (Jul 31, 2017)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.4.0.1 (Jul 26, 2017)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.3.0.2 (Jun 20, 2017)

Pensions & Auto Enrolment:
Adds ability to easily switch one or multiple employees from one AE scheme to another.
When a pension contribution is auto-zeroised due to a partial pay reference period, this can now be overridden via a new checkbox in the contribution pop-up settings.
NEST – if possible, Payment Source is now auto populated when sending an enrolment submission.
NEST – improves discernment of the default period start/end dates to be used when sending a contributions submission (e.g. when your payment schedule as set up with NEST differs from your pay period schedule in BrightPay)
Employees:
Adds Mid Year Start Summary Report.
On-screen documentation has been added for each employee expense and benefit.
Placeholder P11D, PBIK and RTI EXB toolbar items have been added. Their full functionality will be provided prior to the end of the current financial year.
Other New Features:
Adds ability to make additions 'notional' i.e. only contributing towards taxable, NIC-able and/or pension-able pay, without actually giving the payment to the employee (also works for CIS-able pay and subcontractors). This has various uses, one of which is to handle expenses/benefits for which there is a Class 1 NIC liability that must be put through payroll.
Adds ability to include declaration on FPS (or EYU) that an employee's payment is being made to a non-individual.
Enables an Additional Apprenticeship Levy amount to be entered for each HMRC pay period, to enable inclusion of amounts that are not accounted for in BrightPay (e.g. due to a split PAYE scheme) on an EPS.
Adds employee editor button to payslip.
The application will now quit when closing the employer browser and no employer documents or import windows are open.
Other Fixes and Improvements:
Update to HSBCnet bank file format.
Fixes car benefit calculation rounding for cars with certain CO2 emission values.
Fixes UTR on CIS300 submission for partnership subcontractors.
Fixes ‘Annual salary’ amount on Employee Details report for fortnightly and 4-weekly paid employees.
When importing from previous year BrightPay, subcontractor payment date “range” is now ignored - they are imported as being full-year.
Improve speed and reliability of bulk actions such as payslip finalisation and re-opening - especially when dealing with larger numbers of employees.
Fixes issue in which undoing AE enrolment could cause a crash in certain re-open payslip scenarios.
Fixes invalid NIC table when adding employee mid year totals.
Crash log fixes.
Other small fixes and improvements.

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.2.7.3 (May 27, 2017)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.2.7.2 (May 26, 2017)

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.2.0.1 (Apr 27, 2017)

Import from BrightPay 16/17: Important Fix:
It has been discovered that if an employee was repaying Student Loan in BrightPay 16/17 with a Student Loan stop date on or before 5th April 2017, they were being imported into BrightPay 17/18 still set as repaying Student Loan but without the stop date. This had the effect of causing Student Loan deductions to resume. This update fixes this import bug.
To help resolve this for affected customers who have already imported from BrightPay 16/17, this update will automatically attempt to fix the issue (which will be possible only if your BrightPay 16/17 file is discoverable). If the automatic fix does not work, or if you have already finalised payslips with this issue, you will need to correct it manually – we apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause.
Payroll:
Payslip additions and deductions can be optionally defined as a percentage of basic, gross or net pay.
Hourly and daily rates can be set to an effective value which auto calculates an equivalent standard rate multiplier.
Pensions & Auto Enrolment:
Adds Amber Pension Trust as an Auto Enrolment scheme provider.
BrightPay now automatically selects the relevant NEST incorrect/partial payment reason for leavers.
BrightPay no longer includes opted-out employees in NEST submissions if no opt-out reference is provided.
Other Fixes and Improvements:
The Payroll ID change indicator can now be manually included on an FPS.
Employer name is now shown on the preview of all RTI (and CIS) submission types.
Increase font size for user visible syntax coloured XML.
Clarifies Student Loan selection options to give information about how to handle the situation in which employee is repaying both a Plan 1 and a Plan 2 Student Loan.
If an employee has multiple attachment order deductions of the same attachment order type in a single pay period, they are now shown as separate items on the employee payslip instead of a single rolled up value.
Fixes BPUKM-595 - Crash when deleting last employee in a period.
Fixes BPUKM-582 - Missing starter declaration option if start date for employee is in previous tax year and no starter declaration was previously sent.
Fixes BPUKM-592 - misaligned payment values on P60.
Fixes BPUKM-593 - Gateway submission icons not differentiated on RTI tab.
Other minor corrections and improvements.

New in BrightPay UK 2017/18 17.0.1.2 (Mar 28, 2017)

2017/18 rates, thresholds and calculations for PAYE tax, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan deductions, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay, Automatic Enrolment earnings thresholds and triggers.
The emergency tax code has changed from 1100L to 1150L. When importing from BrightPay 2016/17, L codes are uplifted by 50, while M codes are uplifted by 55 and N codes by 45.
Full support for Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT) codes, including the new 2017/18 Scottish higher tax rate threshold.
Support for an expanded range of National Insurance Number formats.
Ability to process 2017/18 coding notices.
Eligible employers can continue to claim the £3,000 Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P30, P45 and P60 forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all RTI, EXB and CIS submission types.
BrightPay Connect:
In case you missed it, we launched "BrightPay Cloud" in summer 2016. We have now rebranded this as BrightPay Connect. It works exactly as it has to date, including some further refinements and new features for 2017/18.
We have a detailed web page about BrightPay Connect here. Here's a quick overview of what it's all about:
BrightPay Connect provides a secure, automated and user-friendly way to backup and restore your payroll data on your PC or Mac to and from the cloud.
BrightPay Connect provides a web/mobile based self service dashboard for your employees, enabling them to:
View/download their payslips and other payroll documents
View their calendar, and make requests for annual leave.
View and edit their personal details.
BrightPay Connect provides a web/mobile based self service dashboard for employers and clients of payroll bureaux, enabling them to:
Access the payroll documents and data for each of their employees.
View an employer-wide payroll calendar.
View payroll reports exactly as you have set them up in BrightPay.
View the schedule of HMRC payments, outstanding amounts, and access the P30 for each tax period.
BrightPay Connect is built for security, reliability and stability, and costs just £49 per employer. Bulk pricing is available for bureaus.
Other 2017/18 Changes in BrightPay:
The foundational technology of BrightPay has been updated to the latest version, which immediately brings many performance, reliability and security improvements (and opens up new possibilities to our development team!).
New feature: Piece of Work rates – if you pay (or part pay) your employees by a unit other than salary, the hour or the day, BrightPay now caters for you.
BrightPay 2017/18 now allows you to adjust the 5.6 weeks statutory holiday weeks entitlement figure for annual leave calculation types.
Real Time Information – more flexible workflow allows you to come back and check for a response from HMRC for an already sent submission, rather than having to start the submission process over from scratch.
Support for new 'Serious Ill Health Lump Sum' indictor on FPS submission.
Support for custom hourly/daily rate multipliers.
Support for starters with no starter declaration.
Improves how pay dates are entered when finalising payslips – you can now set a different pay date for individual employees if need be. When re-opening and re-finalising payslips, the previously used pay date is remembered.
Royal London contributions now use a tax monthly based contribution schedule.
Optimisations to data file size.
Lots of minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes.
Includes all updates to BrightPay 2016/17 since March 2016:
While we have traditionally focused our announcements of new features and updates in each new tax year version of BrightPay, it doesn't mean we're not busy during the rest of the year. In 2016/17, we released many updates and enhancements throughout the tax year, all of which are of course included in BrightPay 2017/18. See our 2016/17 release notes below for full details. Here's a quick reminder of the main areas of improvement:
Retroactive Statutory Sick Pay.
Centralised agent sender credentials and details.
Employee payment schedule switching.
Coding notices.
CIS
Support for Mac OS Sierra.

New in BrightPay UK 2016-17 16.5.1.2 (Dec 7, 2016)

New Features:
Adds batching of employee auto enrolment tasks.
Adds support for payment after leaving payslips.
Adds employee no longer employed notification to employee details.
Adds payslip notes.
Adds support for switching existing employee payment schedule.
Adds Auto Enrolment CSV submission data preview. CSV submissions can now be previewed in a grid (as well as raw text, as before). A note has been added to warn against opening/saving CSV files in Excel (which can change formatting and cause submissions to fail).
Adds ability to change employee leave and sick days in calendar for finalised periods (see below for details)
Statutory Sick Pay:
BrightPay now much more elegantly handles situations in which an employee's sickness for a given pay period is only known (or can only be recorded) after the pay date has already elapsed.
Sick days can now be recorded or changed in finalised pay periods. Doing so will recalculate the relevant SSP payments, but will not alter the SSP actually paid on finalised payslips.
Where the total SSP that should have been paid in past periods differs from the SSP amount actually paid in past periods, an SSP carry-over or refund is brought forward to the current pay period.
Payroll:
Period payment settings now shows equivalent annual salary.
Fixes stat sick payments in scheduled periods to display TBC.
HMRC:
The carry-over of shortfall amounts between HMRC payments can now be turned off.
Pensions:
Includes updated letter template for employees marked as "already enrolled in a qualifying scheme".
Updates Royal London CSV file format to the latest version.
Updates Standard Life CSV file format to the latest version.
Updates True Potential CSV file format to the latest version.
Fixes missing pension contribution payment item title line.
Other:
Improves compatibility with MacOS 12 Sierra. There may still be some minor unavoidable onscreen PDF rendering issues but these will hopefully be resolved in an upcoming release of MacOS (10.12.2).
Fixes toolbar layout issue.
Fixes potential overlapping AE polling status sheets.
Fixes general sorting of employee selection lists (BPUKM-453).
Fixes excessive memory usage (BPUKM-305 et al).
Fixes frequent crash on Sierra after submitting RTI submissions (BPUKM-448).
Improves lock file handling. Lock files now marked as hidden by default.
Improves reporting of crashes occurring in background operations.
Retirement age calculation now works correctly for employees born on or after 6th April 1960.
Other small fixes and improvements.

New in BrightPay UK 2016-17 16.4.0.0 (Sep 26, 2016)

New in BrightPay UK 2016-17 16.3.0.1 (Jul 20, 2016)

New in BrightPay UK 2016-17 16.2.0.1 (Jul 15, 2016)

2016/17 rates, thresholds and calculations for PAYE, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan deductions, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, and Statutory Shared Parental Pay.
The emergency tax code has changed from 1060L to 1100L. When importing from BrightPay 2015/16, L codes are uplifted by 40, while M codes are uplifted by 44 and N codes by 36.
Full support for Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT) codes.
The new NI category H is available for apprentices under 25 in qualifying circumstances. Payments to class H employees are not liable to Class 1 secondary NICs.
With the abolishment of Contracted Out Pension, HMRC have discontinued NI categories D, E, K, I and L. When importing from BrightPay 2015/16, employees in any of these categories are moved into the equivalent non-contracting-out category.
Support for Plan 1 and Plan 2 Student Loan deductions.
Ability to process 2016/17 coding notices.
Eligible employers can continue to claim the £3,000 Employment Allowance which can be used to reduce Employer Class 1 Secondary NICs payments to HMRC.
Updated P11, P45, P60, P30 and P32 forms.
Updated RTI submissions in line with the latest HMRC specifications. BrightPay continues to be officially HMRC Recognised for all RTI submission types.
Expenses and Benefits:
BrightPay 2016/17 allows you to record all types of reportable expenses and benefits that you provide to your employees:
Assets transferred (cars, property, goods or other assets)
Payments made on behalf of employee
Tax on notional payments
Vouchers and credit cards
Living accommodation
Mileage allowance and passenger payments
Car and fuel
Vans and fuel
Private medical treatment or insurance
Qualifying relocation expenses payments and benefits
Services supplied
Assets placed at the employee’s disposal
Other items (Class 1A)
Other items (Non-Class 1A)
Income Tax paid but not deducted from director’s remuneration
Interest-free or low interest loans
Travelling and subsistence payments
Entertainment
General expenses allowance for business travel
Payments for use of home telephone
Non-qualifying relocation expenses
Other expenses
BrightPay can produce a P11D for sending to HMRC after year end which includes your Class 1A NICs declaration and details of the expenses and benefits provided including cash equivalents.
If you register for payrolling of benefits by 5 April 2016, BrightPay 2016/17 also supports calculating the PAYE on expenses and benefits in each pay period.
We will be back-porting some of the expenses and benefits features to BrightPay 2015/16 to allow you to send your P11D for the 2015/16 tax year. Look out for an upgrade in April/May.
Note: Expenses/benefits and P11D are not available for Free Licence customers.
Construction Industry Scheme (CIS):
BrightPay 2016/17 has full support for paying subcontractors under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS):
Add/edit subcontractors, or import from CSV.
Pay subcontractors tax weekly or tax monthly (all year or part year).
Customisable basic pay, daily rates, hourly rates, additions, deductions, etc.
Record cost of materials and VAT.
Calculate CIS deduction amounts according to subcontractor's tax payment status.
Print, export to PDF, or email Subcontractor Payment and Deduction Statements.
Send CISREQ subcontractor verification submissions and apply response data.
Send CIS300 monthly returns.
BrightPay tracks the number of unsent CIS submissions, similar to RTI.
Report on CIS data in BrightPay Analysis (some built-in CIS reports are available)
Note: CIS is not available for Free Licence customers.
Pensions and Automatic Enrolment:
If you have not yet entered your Automatic Enrolment Staging Date in BrightPay, you can now connect directly to the Pensions Regulator and retrieve it automatically from within BrightPay.
BrightPay 2016/17 now tracks the number of enrolment/contributions submissions that you have not yet submitted to your pension scheme provider. The number is shown on the main PENSIONS tab, and contributes to the total number shown on the Open Employer screen (which also includes RTI and CIS).
We'll be continuing to update Automatic Enrolment during the 2016/17 tax year and provide dedicated support for more pension scheme providers.
Other 2016/17 Changes in BrightPay:
Ability to import employees from an FPS XML file.
When importing from HMRC Basic PAYE Tools, you can choose to do so from the previous tax year or the current tax year.
Pension-able gross can be split into separate employee and employer pension-able gross amounts.
Basic pay, daily pay and hourly pay can now be explicitly flagged as liable/not-liable to PAYE, NICs, employee pension, and employer pension.
Additional Statutory Paternity Pay is no longer relevant and is removed in BrightPay 2016/17.
The NIC Upper Accrual Point is no longer relevant and is removed from BrightPay 2016/17.
New wider range of built-in reports.
Pension provider enrolment/contributions submissions and file formats have been updated to the latest versions.
Ability to view submission logs for NEST web service submissions.
An HMRC payment date is no longer required to be able to progress to the next HMRC pay period. Any pay period can be clicked into at any time.
Ability to report on HMRC payment amounts in Analysis.
Employee passwords can be randomly generated.
Lots of minor improvements throughout the entire BrightPay user interface, as well as the latest bug fixes.