Auto Enrolment Update: Everything you need to know

Automatic Enrolment in Ireland is a subject which has been in discussion for over 25 years now. In 2017, the matter was brought to the forefront again with our Taoiseach at the time, Leo Varadkar, announcing that the scheme would begin in 2021. However, as we all know, delays caused by COVID-19 meant that this didn’t happen as planned. One year later, we are in a much better place and thankfully, details on the planned state pensions Auto Enrolment scheme were announced on the 29th of March 2022.

What is Auto Enrolment?

Auto Enrolment is being brought in to ensure that those working in the private sector have an income for their retirement, beyond the state pension. The scheme will be phased in over the next ten years. The system is to be set up by 2023 and employee enrolments into the scheme will begin in 2024. All employees aged between 23 and 60, earning over €20,000 a year and who are not already in an occupational pension scheme, will be automatically enrolled. While participation in the scheme will be voluntary, workers will have to opt-out of the scheme rather than opt-in. It is hoped that this model will encourage workers to remain in the scheme.

How much will go towards employees’ pension?

The employee, the employer, and the state will all make contributions towards the employee’s pension pot. Employees’ pension savings will be matched on a one-for-one basis by the employer, up to a maximum of €80,000 of earnings. The state will provide a top up of €1 for every €3 saved by the worker. This means that for every €3 saved by the employee, a further contribution of €4 will be made by the employer and the state combined.

Pension contribution example

Employer and employee pension contributions will be calculated as a percentage of the employee’s income. Rates will start at 1.5% and will increase every three years by 1.5%, until they eventually reach 6% by year 10 (2034).

Pension contribution rates

What does the new Automatic Enrolment scheme mean for payroll processers?

When the scheme is first rolled out in 2024, it will mean a few additional steps in the payroll process. Those processing payroll must ensure that all eligible employees have been enrolled into one of the four retirement saving funds that employees will have to choose from. For employees who do not express a preference for any fund, they should be enrolled into the default fund. After 6 months of participation, employees will have the choice to opt-out or suspend participation. When a person chooses to opt out, they can receive a refund of their contributions. Once opted out, the employee will need to be re-enrolled after two years.

Will there be changes in my payroll software?

Your payroll software provider will have ample time to implement these changes into the software and should be ready to go by 2024. At Thesaurus Payroll Manager, Auto Enrolment is something that we have had programmed into our UK payroll software, BrightPay UK, since the scheme was introduced in the UK in 2012. Thanks to this experience, we already have the knowledge of how Auto Enrolment in the software should work. Our aim, as is with our UK payroll product, will be to make the Auto Enrolment process as simple for the user as possible by automating the process.

Related articles:

• Statutory Sick Pay – Preparing for 2022
• Auto enrolment for accountants: Lessons learned from the UK
• Automatic enrolment delayed until at least 2023

Posted byElaine CarrollinAuto Enrolment

Thesaurus Customer Update: April 2022

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

• PAYE Modernisation: Why manual payroll is an outdated process

• What is the best method to pay employees?

• Yikes, is your business GDPR compliant? (+ 3 simple GDPR tips)

Posted byEleanor Mc GuinnessinCustomer Update

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.

Related articles:

• BrightPay Wins AccountingWEB’s Top Payroll Product of the Year 2021
• BrightPay celebrates 10-year anniversary
• BrightPay & Relate Software join forces to create an accounting & payroll software champion

Posted byElaine CarrollinNews

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

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.

Posted bySaoirse MoloneyinCompany NewsEvents

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.

Related articles

• How do you submit payroll information with PAYE Modernisation?
• How to Master PAYE Modernisation
• 4 mistakes to avoid when running payroll

Thesaurus Customer Update: March 2022

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

• Remote working legislation set to be introduced

• Revolutionize your payroll this year with digital banking

• 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. 

Holiday entitlements Read more

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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.

Bureau webinar Employer webinar

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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.

Book a demo Find out more

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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. 

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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. 

Find out more Book a demo

 

Posted byHolly McHughinCustomer Update

How Thesaurus Payroll Manager customers can benefit from using Surf Accounts

Up until now, when you needed to transfer payroll data from Thesaurus Payroll Manager to your bookkeeping software it meant having to export your payroll journal and upload it to your accounting package. Thanks to our new integration with accounting software, Surf Accounts, this is no longer the case.

Thesaurus Payroll Manager users can now benefit from an improved workflow and increased efficiency when they use cloud-based accounting software, Surf Accounts alongside their payroll software.

Who are Surf Accounts?

In September 2021 Thesaurus Software joined forces with Relate Software, combining our strengths to form a payroll and accounting software powerhouse. Since then, we’ve been working hard to ensure existing customers from both sides can benefit from this merger without compromising the software they are accustomed to.

Surf Accounts allows you to access and update your accounts anytime, anywhere with an internet connection.

Other key features of the software include:

• Invoice management
• Online payments
• Bank reconciliation
• A Surf Accounts mobile app
• Customer Relationship Management system
• Customised reporting

Read more about Surf Accounts features.

How does the integration between Thesaurus Payroll Manager and Surf Accounts work?

Thesaurus Payroll Manager will create a payroll journal file that is unique to Surf Accounts, meaning that all your payroll figures will appear in the correct location in your general ledger in Surf Accounts. This means no more exporting and importing files or double entering figures.

Learn more about the Thesaurus Payroll Manager and Surf Accounts integration.

How it works:

1. Sign into your Surf Accounts profile in the 'Utilities' section of the Thesaurus Payroll Manager dashboard.
2. Once signed in, you can now proceed with your nominal ledger mapping, where you map your payroll data items to your relevant Surf Account's nominal account codes. This only needs to be set up once.
3. Once that's finished, simply post the journal to submit your payroll journal to Surf Accounts.

This new integration can help eliminate the need to enter data separately into both systems. This can also help to reduce the chance of errors being made. All in all, the new integration will save you time and allow you to be more confident about the accuracy of your data. To learn more about how Surf Accounts works, book a free demo of the bookkeeping software today.

Increase profits and improve client satisfaction with Thesaurus Connect

A recent customer survey revealed that only 15% of Thesaurus bureau customers actually charge their clients for the extra features of using Thesaurus Connect. This is a very surprising figure, as we expected it to be much, much higher. Thesaurus bureau customers are losing out on potential profits and revenue by not at least passing on the cost of Thesaurus Connect to their clients – even though they are providing an additional service to their clients.

Additional services

You may not use every single Thesaurus Connect feature, but below is a list of additional services alongside processing the payroll, that can be offered to your clients. Remember, once signed up for Thesaurus Connect – all of these features are included in the price - so why not make use of them!

• Client dashboard
• Annual leave management tool
• Multiple users
• Extra support for remote working
• Employee self-service

Client dashboard

Invite your clients to their very own client dashboard where the client can view and run payroll reports, upload important documents for employees, and manage annual leave. We recommend that you book a 15-minute online demo to view an overview of Thesaurus Connect.

Annual leave management tool

Employees can be invited to a self-service portal where they can request and cancel annual leave. Once the client approves the leave request, it flows automatically into the payroll software on the bureau’s PC and is added to the employee’s calendar. 

Multiple users

Both the bureau and client can add as many users to Thesaurus Connect as they wish. We recommend that you only set users up as standard users. You will be able to edit permissions on what each user will have access to. Follow step-by-step instructions to assign a new user on Thesaurus Connect.

Extra support for remote working

Post-pandemic, there has been a growing trend of businesses implementing long-term and permanent remote working and hybrid working work environments. Thesaurus Connect has been updated to include improved remote working functionality. This includes a ‘version checking’ feature when opening the employer file and an ‘other users check’ to prevent the risk of conflicting copies. This is extremely useful when there are two of more processors, processing payroll from multiple PCs.

Employee self-service

Thesaurus Connect’s employee self-service portal allows employees to access their payslips, documents or their holiday calendar 24/7, anywhere, anytime. The portal can be accessed through an internet browser or through the Thesaurus Connect smartphone and tablet app which is available on both iOS and Android devices. This employee app reduces admin work for a manager or HR department having to accept and track annual leave and sending payslips.

Increase profits and client satisfaction

The many features and benefits mentioned above will ensure that your business is future proof in keeping up with all payroll trends. Thesaurus Connect will benefit you, your clients and their employees. The client will have more control over payroll data and can create custom reports without having to request them. There is less admin work needed overall, meaning that the time saved can be spent on other important aspects of the business that need attention.

We recommend that you list all of the additional services that your client can benefit from by introducing Thesaurus Connect. They might want to use all of the features or others might want to select a few. Either way, it’s helpful to include everything as they might want to re-visit the features at a later date. The client could be saving money themselves as they could have been paying for a separate annual leave system that they can now get rid of as Thesaurus Connect includes one.

By introducing Thesaurus Connect to your clients, you are giving them access to the great benefits of cloud technology. Integrate your payroll and HR processes to save time by eliminating manual data entries, using one system that caters for multiple processes. Book a 15-minute demo today to discover more about Thesaurus Connect.

To keep up with the latest payroll news, check out our new Bright website. There, you'll be able to register for any of our upcoming payroll webinars and download our payroll guides.

Related articles:

• Sharing a hybrid working policy with employees
• New Feature: Introducing direct payments through Thesaurus Payroll Manager
• Read our Thesaurus Connect customer testimonials

Posted byHolly McHughinBrightPay Connect

Data backup: three strategies to protect your business from data loss

Do you backup your data regularly? 17% of businesses keep no data backups whatsoever and store information only on their computer's hard drive. The purpose of a backup is to create a copy of your data which can be recovered in the event that the original is disrupted. Backups protect against hardware failure, virus attacks, natural disasters, and human error.

A recent Hiscox report, which surveyed 355 companies in Ireland, showed that 41% of Irish businesses suffered at least one cyber-attack in 2020. The report also revealed that 6.5% of Irish firms paid a ransom following a ransomware attack.

It is essential that you backup your payroll data to protect your business and your employees. Your business can save time and money if any of the above events occur, and you have a copy of your data elsewhere. Discover three ways you can backup your data below.

1. Backup using cloud storage

Investing in cloud storage such as Google Drive or Dropbox allows you to keep your data safe in the cloud. You will need to remember to manually backup your data regularly. With cloud storage, an advantage is that your data has multiple backups within your storage provider’s data centres. This means that if something catastrophic happened to your backup, it is already backed up somewhere else.

2. Use an external hard drive

A less popular option is backing up your data using a physical storage device or USB key. Your data transfer speeds are typically faster as you don’t require an internet connection. This method can come with its own risks and cost per GB can also be expensive.

3. Use Thesaurus Connect

If you process payroll in-house, Thesaurus Payroll Manager’s add-on product, Thesaurus Connect, enables users to safely and securely backup their payroll data to the cloud. A chronological history of backups will be maintained which can be restored to your PC at any time. Click here to book a free 15-minute online demo of Thesaurus Connect.

Discover more:

To discover more about Thesaurus Payroll Manager and Thesaurus Connect and how it can improve your payroll services and save you time, schedule a free online demo with a member of our team today. Thesaurus Payroll Manager also offers a 60-day free trial of its payroll software, an ideal way to test out the software to see if it’s the right fit for your business. The free trial version has full functionality with no limitations on any of the features. Thesaurus Connect is not included in the free trial.

Related articles:

• Ransomware: How to protect your payroll data
• 4 mistakes to avoid when running payroll
• New Feature: Introducing direct payments through Thesaurus Payroll Manager

Posted byHolly McHughinPayroll Software