As we are coming up to the start of another tax year, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for continuing to trust us with your payroll, share some internal achievements, and begin helping you prepare for next year.
Our Progress in 25-26
25-26 was our second full year in operation and brought some milestones along with it. We underwent first renewals of both our PAS99:2012 IMS, incorporating ISO standards 9001, 14001, 27001, and 45001, and our Cyber Essentials Plus certifications. Both external audits went smoothly, and we are satisfied we are meeting our own expectations around continuous improvement.
In September, we moved into our new offices at the lovely Lancashire Gate building in the busy town centre of Stockport, a significant step forwards enabling us to expand our team in the future.
At the beginning of this month we made the first addition to our team, hiring Amanda, who will become your contact for matters not directly related to payroll, such as invoicing, billing, and general enquiries. You will all be properly introduced to her shortly.
At the same time, we’ve passed 25,000 payslips processed under the Payroll Unlimited name and have been busy working alongside our bank to achieve Paperless Direct Debit sponsorship after previously being rejected due to a lack of company history.
Improvements for the Next Tax Year
Heading into the next tax year, we are improving our service by switching from desktop-based payroll software to cloud-based software to allow better collaboration, ease of access, and data redundancy.
Alongside this move, the Connect portal that many of you have been using will change to include a new Employee Portal and Client Portal, all under one login: your new BrightID, which you will be invited to set up in April.
This portal has a fresher look and several new and upgraded features, including upgrades to the optional Leave Management section:
- Splitting of Employer and Employee login domains so one person can have both Admin-level and Employee-level access. Previously only one option was available for users.
- Real-time synchronization with our payroll software and vice versa, which was previously a 15-minute wait.
- Manager function: admin users can invite department and line managers to access their team’s leave requests and payroll documents directly in the employee portal.
- Leave Management functions: ability for managers and admin users to add any type of leave for an employee into the calendar, including custom leave types, which immediately syncs to our cloud payroll software. Previously this was limited to Annual and Unpaid leave.
- Reporting: ability to export summaries of employee leave entitlement, days taken, remaining entitlement, and summaries of all different types of leave taken by employees within a given period.
Portal Access and Pricing Changes
As we are integrating this portal directly into our payroll service, it will be included as standard for all clients. You will see this reflected in your pricing table: the portal will no longer be listed as a separate item and has been absorbed into the charge per payslip.
All clients will therefore have access to the portal starting from April. If you do not wish for your employees to use the portal, please contact us so we can arrange alternative ways of distributing documents.
Pricing is being simplified as part of a two-stage process. Clients who were with us from Enjoy Benefits were given completely custom pricing upon signing up with them, and we have honoured this for two years.
However, we want to streamline our pricing structure in order to better understand our profitability for each aspect of the service, advertise pricing simply to potential clients, and scale our service.
The first stage is coming this new tax year: instead of each client being on bespoke packages, we are moving to six different itemised packages based on size and level of support. These will closely resemble your existing package in terms of total cost, but individual items may vary.
The second stage will come in 27-28, where we will have three packages with different levels of services and support, which scale appropriately with the size of the customer. This will better help you understand what is included in your payroll service and better predict payroll costs from month to month.
Agreements and Next Steps
Agreements will be sent out with your updated pricing and will be for the whole of the 26-27 tax year. Please let us know who to send out the agreement to, which will be signed via Adobe Sign.
We are excited to continue supporting your business through the new tax year and beyond, and hope that we are providing the value that you deserve from your fully managed payroll service.
