News

You may have seen on our socials that we have recently set up a partnership with the Green Light Trust and we will be fundraising for them for the foreseeable future. For those who are not aware, the Green Light Trust is a UK registered environmental charity working to transform lives with the power of nature from its head office in Lawshall, near Bury St Edmunds.

They work with adults, children and young people who have poor wellbeing and/or barriers to life progression, and who need support to rebuild and refocus their lives. They run a variety of courses in different natural habitats in the local area teaching practical skills and encouraging others to improve their confidence and self-esteem, as well as their physical and mental wellbeing, social skills, and networks.

Before our partnership started the CEO of the charity came to us with a problem and we were more than willing to step in and help them through a tough period.

The employee who would normally run the payroll for the charity was unfortunately unable to work for a period of a couple of months, payroll being a sensitive subject and using a software which was unique to the charity created an issue which needed immediate attention.

When we heard about the problem, we stepped into the employees’ shoes and followed their procedures including:

• Processing the Hourly & monthly wages on the client’s payroll software.
• Calculating and running the furlough calculations required and applying for the grant on the Charities behalf.
• Processing the companies NEST pension scheme including providing Auto Enrolment pension letters and submitting the payments by direct debit.
• Looking for efficiencies in the software and the way their payroll was run and suggesting a way forward when the employee was able to come back to work.

Now, as our partnership progresses, we have moved the Green Light Trust payroll over to our payroll software BrightPay and as we are a paperless office, we have included BrightPay Connect.
BrightPay Connect provides a web/mobile based self-service dashboard for employees to access their payslips avoiding the need to print or pass on emails, everything is covered by our system.
The self-service dashboard also allows employees to:

• Browse and download their history of payslips and other documents
• View their payroll calendar, including annual leave, sick leave, and parental leave.
• Request annual leave directly from Self Service. Approved requests will flow directly back down to BrightPay on your PC or Mac.
• View the personal details you currently hold for them, and request to make updates. Approved requests will flow directly back down to BrightPay on your PC or Mac.

Employees can access Self Service from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.

For the employer themselves we allow them access to the Employer Dashboard on BrightPay Connect which allows them to:

• Access the data for each of their employees, including the ability to set annual leave on the calendar and make updates to employee information
• View the employer-wide payroll calendar.
• View payroll reports at any time.
• View the schedule of HMRC payments, outstanding amounts, and access the P30 for each tax period.

Tom Brown the CEO of Green light Trust:
“Like most things, It wasn’t until we needed them that we fully appreciated the support from Gascoynes with our payroll. Gascoynes had supported us with several small accounting issues since I took as CEO almost four years ago. When we needed someone to run our payroll at very short notice I knew exactly who to turn to. They not only reacted quickly and efficiently to ensure our staff were all paid on time, but they were hugely sensitive to the situation at the time. We were so impressed with how easy it was that we have continued to outsource our payroll through Gascoynes. Relationships are clearly important to Gascoynes and we are very happy that our association has developed into Gascoynes becoming a business partner of our charity.”

If you have a payroll issue and are in search of a solution or are just looking for advice on your payroll systems, please don’t hesitate to contact us.