Mar 2022
28
Thesaurus Software and AccountancyManager join forces
It has been an exciting six months since Thesaurus Software merged with Relate Software to become Bright Software Group or “Bright”, as we are now known. Things haven’t slowed down since and we are delighted to announce that Bright has now acquired AccountancyManager, the UK’s leading onboarding and practice management software. The cloud-based software slots in nicely with Bright’s payroll, HR, bookkeeping and post-accounting software products. This is an exciting opportunity for the individual brands to exploit our operational synergies and develop the best products to serve payroll bureaus, accountancy firms and SMEs across the UK and Ireland.
Click here to find out more about Bright.
Who are AccountancyManager?
AccountancyManager (AM) is an award-winning practice management software that shares the same ultimate goal as Bright; to improve accountants’ day-to-day activities by automating time-consuming tasks, helping them to achieve a better work/life balance and grow their businesses. Founded in 2017 by James Byrne and Alex Hawke, AccountancyManager quickly grew and today is used by thousands of accountants and bookkeepers across the UK and Ireland.
A Bright future for AccountancyManager
James Byrne, co-founder of AM will continue as a shareholder in the combined group and will remain involved with the business as an advisor to the combined board. Kevin McCallum, CEO of AM, will become Chief Operating Officer of the new, combined group as well as continuing to manage AM, working closely with Bright CEO, Paul Byrne.
Here’s what Kevin McCallum, incoming COO of Bright, has to say about the merger: “AccountancyManager joining Bright makes so much sense for many reasons, but for me, the shared values and customer-centric approach are the most compelling. I’m excited to be joining Paul and the wider Bright team in building out the scope and scale of our business and supporting more and more accountants and their clients.”
By partnering with AccountancyManager and combining products and strengths from both businesses, Bright can provide a greater offering to our customers, with scope and backing for further innovation and development. This is an exciting moment in Bright’s journey to delivering a one-stop solution for businesses and accountancy firms. Together we will aim to provide a best-in-class software suite with a clear value proposition to drive efficiency and reduce errors, all with increased flexibility from working with a cloud offering.
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Mar 2022
9
Is your business GDPR compliant? (3 simple tips)
Since GDPR swept across Europe in 2018, there have been a ton of questions surrounding the legislation. Such as:
- What is GDPR?
- How does it affect me as an employer?
- How do I improve my GDPR compliance?
Being one of Ireland’s leading payroll software providers, Thesaurus Software has spent the past four years finding innovative ways to enhance our software to ensure it is fully GDPR compliant.
Let us look at some of these commonly asked questions in more detail.
What is GDPR?
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a law that ensures that any place or person who has access to your data either has your consent to do so, or for legal purposes.
This can be anything from your personal data such as your name and address, or more sensitive data such as your financial or medical records.
How does this affect me as an employer?
Any data you obtain, store or use from an employee (i.e. PPS number, payroll information, internet usage) must be done so with the employee's consent and in a way that is fair and secure.
Your employees have the right to:
- Access their data
- Rectify their data
- Be informed as to how their data is both obtained and processed
- Erase their data
- Restrict people from processing their data
- Object to their data being used for marketing, scientific or historic research
- Data portability
Not complying with GDPR can result in a data breach. A data breach can be anything from sending a payslip to the wrong employee’s email, to a full-blown cyber-attack resulting in a leak of personal information.
How do I improve my GDPR compliance?
When you sign up to Thesaurus Connect you no longer have to worry about sending the wrong email to an employee, or for personal information getting leaked.
Here are 3 simple tips on how you can use Thesaurus Connect to improve your GDPR compliance.
1. Employee 24/7 Self-Service Portal
Do you often get caught in never-ending email threads about changes to employees’ records? Are your employees hounding you for payslips for their mortgage applications?
With Thesaurus Connect this can all be done by a simple tap on your phone through our innovative smartphone and tablet app. The app allows your employees to have instant access to their payslips from their device that is ready to view, print and even download.
They also have access to HR documents, uploaded by the employer, such as contracts of employment, staff handbook and company updates.
You as the employer can also even restrict specific users from accessing certain data, which only improves your GDPR compliance even further.
Watch this quick 3-minute video on how our Thesaurus Connect mobile app saves you time and money, while improving employee engagement.
2. Integration with payroll software
Employees can also update their personal details whenever they like through the Thesaurus Connect app. This automatically syncs with Thesaurus payroll software, so you no longer have to update details manually – eliminating unnecessary email trails in the blink of an eye!
This aligns with GDPR best practice recommendations, as it provides employees direct access and control to their data from a secure and remote location.
3. Automated Backup
Worrying about cyberattacks are a thing of the past with Thesaurus Connect’s fully secure automated backups.
These backups take place every time you close out of the employer file in Thesaurus software – uploading your employees’ data directly to the cloud.
This means that if your computer becomes damaged or stolen, there will be a backup available to restore all of your data, giving you complete peace of mind.
Data backups improve not only your security, but also the efficiency of running your business.
“My favourite feature of Thesaurus Connect is the free app available to our employees. The app has?great features which include the option for employees to access their own payslips, time off requests and much more. We no longer have to print payslips and hand them out to our employees every pay period.”
- Emma, Megs Fabrication Ltd
Thesaurus Connect also comes with a host of other features for employers, such as annual leave calendars and requests, Revenue payments, and much more.?
With over 330,000 businesses using our software and a 98.8% customer satisfaction rate (from our recent 2021 customer survey), you know you are in safe hands.
It’s time to take your employees’ payroll data to the next level – book a demo with us today.
Looking for further information on GDPR? Check out our webpage on GDPR that provides a more detailed analysis on the topic.
Related articles
- GDPR and Payroll Processing: Do I need consent from my client’s employees
- What happens if I don’t comply with GDPR
- Data Protection complaints increase since introduction of GDPR
Mar 2022
8
Celebrate International Women’s Day 2022 With Us
This year’s theme of International Women’s Day is “Break the Bias.” The day is marked globally to celebrate the cultural, social, and economic achievements of women. Break the Bias calls for an end to all kinds of discrimination women face in society. We are all responsible for our own thoughts and actions every day. At Bright, we want to help break the bias in the workplace.
Promoting Gender Equality at Bright
We are proud to say that we have always had a strong representation of women across our company.
- Our Senior Management team is 50% female.
- Our Marketing Team is 60% female
- Our Support Team is 67% female
We always look for ways to assist our employees. We offer paid maternity and paternity leave to ensure that we help new parents to be successful both at work and at home.
IWD at Bright 2022
To raise awareness of International Women’s Day within our company, we are holding a self-defence course on Wednesday the 16th of March. As an employer, we are fully committed to promoting an environment where everyone feels safe to be themselves at work and outside work.
Women of all ages and backgrounds are constantly dealing with unsafe situations, whether they are walking home, riding in taxis or simply being in public places.
The safety of all our staff is extremely important to us as a company, and we want to help in any way possible to promote employee safety.
Together we can Break the Bias on International Women’s Day and beyond.
Mar 2022
2
PAYE Modernisation: Why manual payroll is an outdated process
PAYE Modernisation was first brought into effect on the 1st of January 2019. It was created to simplify the payroll process by abolishing the paperwork involved with P45s, P60s, and other related documents.
It was also established to improve the transparency of the PAYE system, ensuring that employees are paid properly with the correct tax deductions and cut-off points applied.
This is great for employees as the PAYE Modernisation real-time reporting process means that the correct tax is deducted when an employee is paid, reducing tax inaccuracies across the board for employees.
What does it mean for me as an employer?
Unfortunately, as an employer processing payroll, it is now your duty to ensure that employees are being paid properly – that also includes applying the correct tax deductions and cut-off points.
If you’re calculating PAYE Modernisation manually, this can leave space for mistakes and errors to occur. All employers must calculate and report their employees pay and deductions in real time, every pay period.
Not only that, but payroll legislation also changed (as we saw in January 2019) and not staying up-to-date with the latest rules and regulations can lead to quite costly penalties.
What are the penalties?
Did you know that if employers fail to engage with Revenue or who persistently breach the PAYE regulations are liable to a €4,000 penalty per offence?
Yes, you read that correctly. Not only that, but there’s also a hefty €3,000 penalty on the company secretary per offence! *gulp*
What’s the solution?
Revenue has recommended for businesses to invest in a payroll software that is integrated with PAYE modernisation to make the process as smooth as possible.
Here at Thesaurus, we’ve worked with Revenue to ensure our payroll software is fully compliant with all PAYE Modernisation requirements.
Here are five fantastic ways Thesaurus can help your business with PAYE Modernisation!
5 ways Thesaurus can help with PAYE Modernisation:
1. Revenue Integration
Manually processing your payroll can take a hefty toll on admin work, as you need to create payroll files as well as upload all relevant information to ROS for every single pay period in real time.
Thankfully, Thesaurus payroll software is fully integrated with Revenue, making your payroll process smooth and seamless for you.
You can retrieve RPNs (Revenue Payroll Notifications) straight from Revenue within our software, and can also send PSRs (Payroll Submission Request) directly to Revenue in just a matter of seconds!
2. Suitable for all business sizes
Whether you have one employee or 10,000 employees – we accommodate businesses of all sizes here at Thesaurus. So, no matter the scale of your business, we have what it takes to fully streamline your PAYE Modernisation process.
We also provide a wide range of resources to help you, such as webinars, guides and video tutorials along with an incredible support team to guide you throughout the entire process.
3. Saves you Time
PAYE Modernisation can really be such a monotonous and lengthy task, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
Thesaurus payroll software can:
- Retrieve RPNs by the click of a button
- Automatically apply tax credits and cut off points in real time
- Send PSRs straight to Revenue in just one click
Not only does this save you time – it also increases the efficiency and running of your business – allowing you to attend to more important business tasks at hand. It also increases your Revenue compliance, ensuring the correct payment details are being sent to Revenue.
4. Update Employee Details
Have your employees’ details changed? Not a problem – Thesaurus retrieves the latest RPNs for you and identifies any changes needed to employee details, all updated by the click of a button!
This is also the case for new employees, where you can request and create RPNs for new employees within the software.
5. Corrections made easy
Made an error in your payroll submission?
Mistakes happen and are bound to crop up now and again – but these can be resolved quickly by simply sending a correction submission. This gets sent directly to Revenue within Thesaurus Payroll Manager and allows you to make adjustments accordingly.
*Bonus Tip*
Did you know that if you also sign up to Thesaurus Connect, the optional cloud add-on to Thesaurus payroll software, you can have the added benefits of:
- Complying with other laws such as GDPR, by storing your payroll data in a secure and remote location.
- Automatically backing-up your payroll data every time you exit the software, so there’s no more fear of losing your employee’s payroll data. Thesaurus Connect also maintains a chronological history of your backups, so you can restore them onto your PC from anywhere at anytime.
- Managing your employee’s annual leave in a simple user-friendly format.
Thesaurus is an award-winning software, being awarded ‘Payroll Software of the Year’ along with winning the COVID Hero Supplier Award in 2020. With over 330,000 businesses across Ireland and the UK using our software and a 98.8% customer satisfaction rate, you know you’re in safe hands. you know you’re in safe hands.
Take the nuisance out of PAYE modernisation and book a demo with us today!
Looking for further information on PAYE Modernisation? Download our free guide that covers how PAYE Modernisation affects your business.
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Mar 2022
1
Thesaurus Customer Update: March 2022
Welcome to Thesaurus Software's March update. Our most important news this month include:
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Remote working legislation set to be introduced
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Revolutionize your payroll this year with digital banking
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How Thesaurus Payroll Manager customers can benefit from using Surf Accounts
Additional public holiday in Ireland
The extra once-off public holiday on 18th March 2022 was brought in to recognise the efforts of the public and in remembrance of those who lost their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that employees are entitled to an additional day’s paid leave.
Connecting payroll and payments with Modulr
Register for our upcoming joint webinar with Modulr on 10th March to discover how you can make payments to employees from within Thesaurus Payroll Manager.
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Streamline employee communications
Thesaurus Connect is an essential tool for keeping your payroll data safe and streamlining employee communications. All communication between Thesaurus Payroll Manager on your PC and the Thesaurus Connect servers is carried out on a safe channel with maximum security.
Thesaurus Software & Relate Software Merger - 6 Months On
In September we announced that we have joined forces with Relate Software. Over the past six months, we have been working hard to merge both companies into one, and we are now jointly operating as Bright Software Group. By operating as Bright, we have access to additional resources to improve the services and support we provide to our customers.
There are no changes to the functionality of the software or the support you may receive from our team.
New bill for remote working
The government wants to introduce legislation that will underpin employees’ right to request remote work. Thesaurus Payroll Manager, in tandem with Thesaurus Connect, will allow for completely seamless “working from home” functionality, where there are multiple individuals who work on or require access to the same employer files.
