Dec 2019
20
Minimum wage to rise to €10.10 per hour
Minister, Regina Doherty, has announced that from 1 February 2020, the minimum wage will increase from €9.80 per hour to €10.10.
The decision to increase minimum wage by 30 cent follows a recommendation in October by the Low Pay Commission. Strong economic growth and greater certainty surrounding Brexit were two key factors in the decision to introduce the increase.
In order to ensure that the increase in the minimum wage does not result in employers attracting a higher level of PRSI, the employer PRSI threshold will increase from €386 to €395 from 1 February 2020.
Minister Doherty is quoted as saying that; “with this most recent increase in the National Minimum Wage, an employee on minimum wage who works a full 39 hour week will now receive an additional €11.70 per week, or an extra €608.40 gross per year.” It is estimated that over 127,000 workers will benefit from the increase.
Employers should also note that the minimum wage for younger workers will also increase:
- Aged 19: €9.09
- Aged 18: €8.08
- Under 18: €7.07
Dec 2019
16
Thesaurus Payroll Manager 2020 is now available for download
Click here to download Thesaurus Payroll Manager 2020
Please note, with our new licensing model there is only one download which covers both Standard and Bureau customers.
Thesaurus Payroll Manager offers a 60 day free trial from the date of installation. This free trial is fully featured with complete functionality. The software can be licensed at any time during the trial period.
We have prepared a help sheet to guide you through the set up.
2020 Thesaurus Payroll Manager caters for all relevant budget changes and includes improved PAYE Modernisation functionality.
Thesaurus Payroll Manager 2020 licenses can be purchased by clicking here.
Year End 2019
Under PAYE Modernisation, employers no longer file a return with Revenue at year end or provide a year end statement to employees.
To access frequently asked questions on year end, click here.
Thesaurus Connect 2020
Thesaurus Connect is an optional add-on that provides automated backup of your payroll data to the cloud and a powerful web-based self-service dashboard for employers and employees.
Connect is billed at the end of each calendar month based on your total number of active employees in that month. Payments for Connect are automatically taken using the payment details you set up in your Thesaurus Account. There is no contract.
Christmas 2019
The management and staff of Thesaurus Software Ltd would like to thank you for your valued custom in 2019 and to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Our office will be closed on the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, it will re-open on the 27th of December; it will also be closed on the 1st of January.
Dec 2019
3
Time to Renew for 2020
So you want to renew your Thesaurus or BrightPay payroll software, but unsure of which licence to choose. Hopefully the information below will guide you:
Standard Licence
If in 2019, you purchased a Standard (one employer) licence, then your software will confirm which licence to order. But just as a reminder, here is the 2020 pricing structure:
- 1 - 10 employees = €159 plus VAT
- 11 - 25 employees = €239 plus VAT
- 26+ employees = €319 plus VAT
To pay by card, please click here. Remember, click on the “Add to Order” box and then choose the correct licence you wish to purchase by clicking on the little arrow.
If in 2019, you purchased Standard and Additional licence(s) (2 employers or more), and you process all employers on one computer or laptop, then you must buy a Bureau licence for 2020. Please ignore the order form in your 2019 payroll, it automatically reverts to a standard licence.
With the Additional licence now gone, please don’t buy 2 or more standard licences, it won’t work!
There is only one exception to the above, if the 2nd or 3rd (or both) employers have 2 or less employees, this is considered a “Micro Employer”. You’ll be happy to know Micro Employers are free once you purchase a Standard licence for your 1st company and the additional companies never go over 2 employees within the same tax year.
Bureau Licence
If in 2019, you purchased a Bureau (multiple employers) licence, then your software will confirm which licence to order. But just as a reminder, here is the 2020 pricing structure:
- 2 - 10 employers = €339 plus VAT
- 11 - 25 employers = €499 plus VAT
- 26+ employers = €659 plus VAT
Connect – Cloud back-up and employee self-service
All Connect licences will be registered through the 2020 software when released in mid-December. For further details on this new process and pricing structure, please click here.
Dec 2019
3
The evolution of the payroll bureau
If you are an accountant working in practice, you may know that I was once one of you, before I escaped to the leafy suburbs of IT.
While in practice, part of my income came from providing a payroll bureau service.
This came with its challenges as I was tied to it, it wasn't very profitable and not all of my payroll clients understood that I actually needed to have the employees' hours before I could do the payroll.
I would send them their payslips with a summary report, reminded them when to pay Revenue and, in return, they would grudgingly pay my fees.
That was twenty years ago. A lot has happened since then, the two main things being technology and PAYE Modernisation.
I wish that PAYE Modernisation had been around in my time. I could really have used it to convince some of my less conscientious clients to change their ways or else. The "or else" being the big stick of Revenue fines.
Technology has enabled a lot of things. The arrival of the smart phone, cloud services and increased internet speeds have been transformative.
In my practice days, I had one client who considered themselves at the forefront of technology. They would have been blown away seeing the way their employees could now receive their payslips on their smart phone and all the other cool things e.g. holiday requests, a document portal and so on. Mind you, if I was still practising and had that same client, I think that these are things they would expect.
That same client would also expect to be able to log on to their own portal and get whatever payroll information they wanted 24/7.
What we are starting to see now is that this type of client is becoming more of a thing. A large part of the driving force for this is their increasingly youthful workforce. Millennials grow up with a smart phone attached to them and they want as much of their life on it as possible.
Another feature that I wish had been around in my time is getting clients to effectively update their own payroll. What I mean by this is that instead of the various ways they would send the hours (word documents, emails, scraps of paper), they would now log in to their portal, update the hours and these would flow seamlessly in to the payroll. Plus everything would be logged and time stamped, so they couldn't blame me if an employee was overpaid or not paid at all.
All of the above would have certainly transformed my basic payroll service of 20 years ago and forged a client base less likely to defect to some new accountant trending on social media.
The clients would still be getting the same attention as always but the "value added" would be enormous. They get to look much more modern with their employees, which can help with attracting and retaining employees. They also gain access to a HR tool with which they can manage holidays, roll out documents and ensure that employee contact information is always current. The vast majority of small/micro employers have nothing like this.
In the UK, this value added payroll service is more common than it is here and I have asked accountants there what they charge. As you can imagine it varies quite a bit and will depend on the type and size of business, but I have heard rates as high as £10 per payslip for higher net worth clients with the average closer to £5.
This type of pricing would certainly have catapulted my small bureau service in to one of my more profitable activities as the cost of all this technology can be as little as 8c per employee per month.
Paul Byrne fca
Recommended reading:
Thesaurus Connect for Payroll Bureaus & Accountants
