AM Takes Xerocon 2022

Last week the AM team exhibited at Xerocon for the first time. Xerocon is described as the Glastonbury for accountants, and if you haven't been or seen the photos - it's a big deal. Unlike other conferences, accountants attend Xerocon for the talks (rather than to see the exhibitors) and comedian Sue Perkins opened the show at 9am. Sue (best known for the Great British Bake Off) was brilliant throughout the event. 

AM had great conversations with attendees and were consistently surprised at the size of the firms they talked to. Typically, when attending events like AccountEx, AM would talk to smaller firms (sole practitioners, 2 or 3 employees), but on average, everyone had around 30 employees.

AM ended the event with 115 scanned badges, all of which have been passed over to the Teleprospecting team. It was a tremendous amount, and we and AM were delighted they got the opportunity to have gotten the opportunity to speak with so many firms that were interested in the product. They also got the chance to meet many existing users and got to know them a bit more on a personal level. 

Key Takeaways;
• Most likely because attendees have to pay, only the larger firms attend the event.
• Many disgruntled Senta users' concerns regarding the Iris acquisition are now becoming a reality.
• People liked the idea of AM joining Bright - BrightPay and AM both have a great reputation and users are excited to see what we can achieve together.

Posted byJennifer PattoninCompany NewsEvents

Thesaurus Customer Update: August 2022

Welcome to Thesaurus Software's August update. Our most important news this month include:

• The Sick Leave Bill 2022 becomes law

• Modernise your annual leave in 2022 with an online company calendar

• Surf Accounts integration with Thesaurus Payroll Manager - Here's how it works

Posted byEleanor Mc GuinnessinCustomer Update

The Sick Leave Bill 2022 becomes law

This week, on 20th July, the Sick Leave Bill 2022 became law. Once the law is commenced, employees in Ireland will be entitled to sick pay. The Irish Government first produced a draft to introduce a new Sick Leave Bill back in November last year. An Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, announced in March 2022, that the Sick Leave Bill was approved by cabinet and will legislate for a statutory sick pay scheme for all employees, which will be phased in over a four-year period. Before the law was passed, Ireland was one of the few countries in Europe who were without mandatory sick leave entitlement. Before the Sick Leave Act, only about half of all employers had their own sick pay scheme. The Covid-19 pandemic helped to highlight the need for such a scheme to be introduced into Ireland.

When the law is commenced, which is expected to happen shortly, employees will be entitled to three statutory sick days. This will rise to five days in 2024, seven days in 2025 and to ten days in 2026. Employers will pay employees at a rate of 70% of an employees’ wage, subject to a daily maximum threshold of €110. These earnings are based on 2019 mean weekly earnings of €786.33 and an annual salary of €40,889.16.

The rate of 70% and the daily cap are there to ensure excessive costs are not placed solely on the employer. The introduction of the new Sick Leave Bill is to provide a minimum level of protection to low paid employees, who may not be entitled to a company sick pay scheme.

How will it affect employers

If your business does not have a sick leave scheme set in place already, the new legislation being introduced will act as your sick pay scheme. Employers must keep a record of all employees who have availed of the scheme for up to four years, those who fail to keep a record may be fined up to €2,500.

What employees need to know

To ensure that your employees are entitled to receive sick leave pay under the scheme, they must obtain a medical certificate as proof, and must have worked for their employer for a minimum of 13 weeks. If your employees’ sick pay entitlement is finished, and they need extra time off, they may be able to qualify for illness benefit from the Department of Social Protection, depending on their PRSI contribution.

The new Sick Leave Bill will help ensure employees are not penalised for missing days due to illness. Once the law is commenced, your payroll software should be updated to cater for this new employee entitlement.

Related articles

• How the cloud can improve your business’ security
• 5 reasons to choose Surf Accounts Production
• Living wage to replace minimum wage in Ireland by 2026

Posted byRoss GrahaminSick Leave/Absence Management

Modernise your annual leave in 2022 with an online company calendar

Do you often feel that your annual leave process is scattered and unorganised? Maybe you’ve missed an employee’s email, only to discover weeks later that certain dates have been double-booked, leaving you short-staffed. This can frustrate employees and employers alike, especially during busy periods. That’s why we recommend having a system in place that can deal with employee annual leave requests in a straightforward and fair way, while reducing the likelihood of errors such as double-booking from occurring.

What annual leave system should I use?

We recommend using a cloud-based annual leave system, ideally one that syncs with your payroll software. This can automate the process even further for you, which we will explain in greater detail further down. An online, companywide leave calendar can revolutionise how you manage annual leave and streamline your business’ processes. Here are 3 ways an online company calendar can transform your business.

1. View all of your company’s leave in one central location

A company leave calendar allows you to view all of your employees’ past and scheduled leave from one central location. No longer do you need to spend hours editing excel spreadsheets and scrambling through emails – you can now process everything from one central hub.

A company calendar allows you to have a complete overview of your employees’ leave, letting you see, at a glance, who is on leave and when. This allows you to make better decisions when dealing with leave requests. It also allows you to spot patterns of absence more easily, meaning you can deal with unauthorised absenteeism before it becomes an issue. It can also save your business time by reducing the likelihood of errors that can crop up due to mismanaged annual leave.

2. Improves employee satisfaction

With a company leave calendar, employees can view their total leave for the year, including their leave taken and leave remaining. This reduces the likelihood of employees constantly contacting you about how much leave they have left, as they can now view it themselves, whether on an employee app or via an internet browser. This in turn, gives your employees more control over their leave and personal data, streamlining communication and reducing stress levels across the board.

3. Modernises your business

Implementing an online company calendar can also modernise your business by improving your carbon-footprint. Digitalising paper-based systems can cut down on supply costs for paper, printer ink and envelopes. This also keeps your company up to date with modern business practices, making sure that you stay in line with competition.

How Thesaurus Connect’s company calendar can help

Thesaurus Payroll Manager’s online company calendar is an intuitive and user-friendly calendar that’s available through their cloud extension, Thesaurus Connect.

As an employer, you can view your company calendar via a secure employer dashboard. From here, you can also be notified of annual leave requests from employees, which you can then easily approve or reject. Employees on the other hand, can access their calendar through a self-service employee app. Employees can simply login to view how many annual leave days they have taken and how many days they have left. They can simply choose the dates within the calendar that they wish to book, and the notification will be sent to the person responsible for taking care of that particular employee’s request. The leave will then be automatically added to the online employee calendar.

Thesaurus Payroll Manager’s cloud extension, Thesaurus Connect, allows you to streamline many other payroll and HR tasks, including:

• Payslip distribution
• HR document uploads
• Storing employees’ payslips
• Revenue payment deadlines
• Automatic payroll data backups

Discover how our cloud-extension can benefit your business today by booking a free online 15-minute demo. We are a fully Revenue compliant and are one of Ireland’s leading payroll software providers.

Posted byEleanor Mc GuinnessinAnnual Leave

Bright Walking Challenge 2022

For the month of July, our Charity Committee are organizing a walking challenge. Our staff will be walking a total of 100km each for the month of July.

It’s a team event where we will be split into teams and each day we can enter our daily distance into a spreadsheet and see which team takes the lead.

The walking challenge is to raise money for LauraLynn and Myton Hospice.

It’s a competitive and fun way of getting to know our colleagues.

Let’s get moving!

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents

Celebrating Pride Month with Outcomers

To celebrate Pride month 2022, we were joined by Bernie from Outcomers, who gave us a talk about LGBT+ in the workplace.

Outcomers is a social and befriending support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Their drop-in centre provides a safe, social, and relaxed environment for the LGBT community and is in the centre of Dundalk town. It has been open since 1997.

They offer services such as:

• Drop-in Service
• National LGBT Helpline
• Health Education Workshops
• Outreach Work
• Befriending
• Social Events
• Information on Physical, Mental and Sexual Health

Bernie talked us through the history of Pride in Ireland, the importance of Pride, and how to make the workplace inclusive. She told us about the legislations that have come into place to protect LGBT+ employees.

The legislations include:

• Decriminalisation of homosexuality (1993)
• Employment Equality Acts (1998-2015)
• Equal Status Acts (2000-2018)
• Marriage Equality Act (2015)
• Gender Recognition Act (2015)

She also answered a few of our employee’s questions at the end which was informative.

If anyone has anything they would like to chat to them about they can call them on 0429329816 or 0876200021 or they can go into their centre in Dundalk.

For more information visit: http://outcomers.org/

Thanks, Bernie for educating our employees about Pride and why it is celebrated.

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents

Bright Open Day in the Duleek Office

On Tuesday the 29th of June, Bright opened its office to the members of the local community of Duleek to show the available positions across our various departments within the company.

Our employees from HR, Sales, and Support attended to give office tours and speak about the available positions in Bright.

It was great to be able to open our doors to the community of Duleek and make people aware of the jobs available to them on their doorstep.

We look forward to hosting more of these in the future.

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents

Thesaurus Customer Update: July 2022

Welcome to Thesaurus Software's June update. Our most important news this month include:

• Living wage to replace minimum wage in Ireland

• Safeguard your Business with Thesaurus Connect

• The Bright Way: Our New Company Values

Posted byEleanor Mc GuinnessinCustomer Update

Learning at Work Week 2022 at Bright

At Bright we encourage continuous learning and development amongst our employees, however, it’s not always in a payroll or accounting way!

This week was Learning at Work Week at Bright, where we wanted to put focus on the personal development of our employees.

So we asked our employees what special talents or skills they had and would volunteer to show them to all of our employees.

Over the course of the last few days, our volunteers ran virtual workshops to educate our staff.

On Monday we joined a scouting expert Mike who showed us how to tie knots. We learned that they are many different types of knots and what each type is used for. The staff was able to follow Mike’s instructions with their own ropes or string at home.

On Tuesday, mixologist Andy showed us how to make cocktails, perfect for after work on a Friday evening. He gave us tutorials on how to make a Berry Bramble, Mojito, and a Strawberry daiquiri, which looked delicious. Andy gave the ingredients prior to the workshop so staff had time to buy them to follow along with him.

On Wednesday, Tibor gave us an insight into what to expect if you were going on holiday to Hungary. Whether you’re going on a city break to Budapest or partying in Balaton, Tibor gave us a great insight into the food, places to visit, and some basics of the language.

On Thursday, musician Ben rolled back the years to when he used to host percussion workshops before his time here at Bright. Those that were lucky enough to be in the Duleek office got to test the instruments for themselves. There was a great atmosphere in the office and the participants had so much fun playing the drums.

Many thanks to all our volunteers for hosting these workshops, our staff really enjoyed them and we look forward to seeing what next year’s learning at work week has to offer.

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents

Rory’s Stories talks to Bright employees for Men’s Health Week

On Friday 17th June we were joined by Rory O’Connor also known as Rory’s Stories, who openly spoke about his struggles with addiction and mental health to mark Men’s Health Week.

The conversation was light-hearted as many would know Rory for his comedy content on social media which made his story more engaging. He spoke about his battles with addiction and mental health.

Coming from a background with the love of the GAA, Rory was asked to write a book about the GAA, something that he was passionate about. The book titled “The Rory's Stories Guide to the GAA” was his first published book and reached the top of the charts upon its release. With the success of his first book, he published a second and a third with the fourth on the way.

Those who were in the Duleek office on the day watched it together with their fry in the kitchen. There was a great atmosphere and a few giggles along the way. His talk finished with a Q&A session in which he told us what to say if someone approached us saying they struggled with their mental health and his greatest achievement in his career so far.

One of our employees said “it was just amazing, so glad I attended. It was funny, sad in a relatable way, and very inspirational. thanks so much for organizing, I feel renewed”

Rory’s story is a great example of if you put yourself into a positive mindset a positive outcome comes along with it.

Thanks so much to Rory for his session, our staff really benefitted from it.

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents