BrightPay Changelog

What's new in BrightPay 21.1.0

Apr 7, 2021

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).

New in BrightPay 19.0.0 (Mar 20, 2019)

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 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.
Various enrolment/contributions API submission and CSV formats have been updated to the latest versions.
Real Time Information
As mentioned in the release notes for the most recent upgrade to BrightPay 2018/19, the EYU (Earlier Year Update) submission is no longer supported by HMRC and has now been removed from BrightPay altogether. To make corrections to 2018/19 or 2019/20 payroll data going forward, an Additional FPS is to be used.
Ability to exclude an employee pay record from an FPS if it has zero amounts only.
Ability to force include an employee's starter/leaver declaration on an FPS submission that covers a different period to the employee's starting/leaving period.
Ability to unmark an unsent submission as contributing towards the Number of Unsent RTI Submissions count in BrightPay.
New HMRC Receipt document which presents HMRC's response to an RTI submission in a clear, shareable format.
More Flexible Journals
A popular customer request has been to create a 'departmental' payroll journal in BrightPay. We've went one step further, allowing not only for a simple departmental mapping of nominal account codes, but for an advanced multi-option mapping as well.
For example, if you want to map commission paid to directors on a weekly basis in the sales department to a particular account code, you now can.
For Xero journals, BrightPay now supports including the department as the Xero tracking option, including where employees are split across multiple departments.
To make all this easier to manage, the Create Journal window in BrightPay now remembers it's size and position between usages.
Journal API Support
BrightPay now supports posting journals directly to Sage, Quickbooks and Xero via API (while continuing to offer the creation of a CSV journal as an option if need be).
Importing Pay Records from CSV
We have significantly improved the power and flexibility of how pay records are imported from CSV, effectively allowing an entire pay run to be imported from a single CSV file if need be.
Multiple pay items (of a single payment type, or mixed types) can now be imported from a single CSV line.
Daily/hourly payments can more easily be imported under a named employer-wide daily/hourly rate
Additions/deductions can more easily be imported under an employer-wide addition/deduction type
The Import from CSV window has been redesigned to be more user-friendly and intuitive.
Improved Support for Offset Annual Leave Year
A popular customer request has been for BrightPay to better handle the definition, carry-over and adjustment of annual leave in the situation where the annual leave year is offset from the tax year.
In BrightPay 2019/20, you can now enter the annual leave settings for each overlapping year individually, giving you full control and helping you work out entitlements more accurately.
CIS Updates
You can now customise how subcontractors are displayed and ordered across the BrightPay interface.
When selecting from a list of subcontractors, BrightPay now includes a new 'Select By' button that allows you easily and quickly select only the subcontractors that match specific criteria.
New Payments menu in the subcontractor toolbar which includes various handy functions including the ability to batch print multiple P&D statements for a single subcontractor.
New CIS Year End Statement document.
Ability to unmark an unsent submission as contributing towards the Number of Unsent CIS Submissions count in BrightPay.
New HMRC Receipt document which presents HMRC's response to a CIS submission in a clear, shareable format.
BrightPay Connect
In late 2018 we introduced a powerful new feature for Bureau customers of BrightPay Connect: the ability to request client payroll entry and/or approval for a payroll run, which is then automatically facilitated though a secure, GDPR-compliant process within the BrightPay Connect dashboard.
Sign in to your BrightPay Connect account and click the Requests header link to find out more.

New in BrightPay 18.0.0 (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 17.6.0 (Jan 30, 2018)

New in BrightPay 17.4.0 (Jul 6, 2017)

New in BrightPay 17.3.0 (Jun 13, 2017)

Pensions & Auto Enrollment:
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)
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
Other fixes and improvements:
Update to HSBCnet bank file format
For payroll journal entries with a negative amount, BrightPay now simply moves it from credit to debit (or vice versa) as a positive amount
Improves reliability of Smart Pension submissions
Improves Moneysoft importer
Updates Last Open Date on BrightPay start screen to reflect GMT/BST time rather than UTC time
Fixes car benefit calculation rounding for cars with certain CO2 emission values
Various fixes and updates to the sidebar help content when entering the details of employee expenses and benefits
Fixes UTR on CIS300 submission for partnership subcontractors
Fixes ‘Annual salary’ amount on Employee Details report for fortnightly and 4-weekly paid employees
Fixes week dates on P32
Fixes some file access issues that could occur if BrightPay is first ran with administrative privileges, and later ran with standard privileges
Other minor fixes, corrections and performance improvements

New in BrightPay 17.2.0 (Apr 25, 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.
Expenses & Benefits:
New printable PBIK document which details all the payrolled expenses and benefits for an employee along with the total cash equivalent accounted for in the tax year.
Detection and handling of 50% overriding limit when benefits are payrolled. BrightPay handles this by auto-reducing the benefit's cash equivalent to zero, though you can manually override it with a lowered cash equivalent if need be.
Fixes issue which could prevent a payrolled car amendment flag from being correctly set on an FPS.
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.
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.
Makes the password box wider on the startup window.
Fixes issue with printing multiple reports together.
Fixes issue in which startup window columns are sometimes out of order.
Fixes 1st January 2018 public holiday (was being shown on calendar as 2nd January).

New in BrightPay 17.1.0 (Apr 5, 2017)

New in BrightPay 16.6.0 (Mar 16, 2017)

New in BrightPay 16.5.1 (Nov 17, 2016)

New in BrightPay 16.5.0 (Nov 17, 2016)

Minimum Wage:
Employees can be optionally assigned to one of five minimum wage profiles:
BrightPay will automatically flag and warn when the relevant minimum wage is not being met for hourly-paid employees (using their age, number of hours worked, and minimum wage profile).
A new Minimum Wage Report can be used to check that the minimum wage is being met for all employees. It allows the number of hours worked to be batch entered or confirmed for each employee.
Some minimum wage fields have been added to Analysis.
BrightPay Start Screen:
The list of employers can be now searched or filtered on the BrightPay start screen. With the screen open and in focus, just press a key to start searching.
When exporting the list of employers to CSV, a comprehensive list of employer data items can now be chosen from.
Feature banner can now be hidden for the application session (if BrightPay is quit and re-launched, it will show again).
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.
Auto Enrolment:
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).
Auto enrolment letters can now be made available in Employee Self Service on BrightPay Cloud (web updates to follow shortly).
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.
Mid Year Start:
New Mid Year Start Summary Report shows the starting year-to-date cumulative amounts for all employees in a single report.
Improves Sage and Iris CSV import compatibility.
Other updates and fixes
The carry-over of shortfall amounts between HMRC payments can now be turned off.
Retirement age calculation now works correctly for employees born on or after 6th April 1960.
The default tab to show when opening employer files can now be set in BrightPay preferences.
Fixes rounding in car benefit calculation.
Other bug fixes and performance improvements.

New in BrightPay 16.4.0 (Sep 8, 2016)

New in BrightPay 16.3.0 (Jul 5, 2016)

New in BrightPay 15.4.0 (Dec 17, 2015)

New features and updates:
Support for NEST Web Services for enrolling workers and submitting contributions. To stop using CSV file upload and start using web services, edit the details of your NEST scheme in BrightPay, change the Submission method to NEST web service, and enter your User ID and Password.
New Automatic Enrolment Assessment Report. For employers who have not yet staged, this gives a preview of what enrolment will look like for you including estimated contribution costs. For employers who have already staged, an overview of how your employees were assessed is provided.
New Enrolment Summary displays the details of the employees enrolled into a pension scheme.
New Contributions Summary displays the details of the contributions paid into a pension scheme for each pay period. Contributions CSV files and web service submissions are now done through this feature.
An employer can now be marked as exempt from Automatic Enrolment (e.g. a single director company).
Updates the Automatic Enrolment stage 2 and 3 phasing dates to 6 April 2018 and 6 April 2019 in line with the The Pensions Regulator December 2015 Statement.
Updated Santander bank format
Includes Import from HMRC Basic PAYE Tools
Adds additional employee import/export properties and optimises workflow for importing payroll data from IRIS.
Bug fixes and improvements:
Fixes issue in which employees in a postponement period may not be included in NOW:Pensions contributions CSV file.
Fix to SIMPLY! Auto Enrolment contributions CSV file format.
Fix to Trust Pensions contributions CSV file format.
Fix to Welplan contributions CSV file format.
Makes validation of People's Pension account number less strict (to allow for the extra digit that PP have started to use in the account numbers they provide).
Fixes issue in which postponed enrolments could be incorrectly included in CSV files or web service submissions.
Corrects handling of AE opt-out refunds for employees on Net Pay Arrangement.
Fixes issue in which an employee's opt-out pension refund would be incorrectly considered as a negative cost to employer.
For employers set up to continue payroll mid year, the Employment Allowance dialog now asks if any allowance has already been claimed in the tax year to date.
Allows Payment After Leaving payslips to be added for employees who left prior to mid year start setup.
BrightPay logo removed from P30.
Other minor bug fixes and improvements.