BrightPay

Bright is the trading name of a software group that has its roots in Thesaurus Software, founded in Ireland in 1992 to sell affordable payroll software to Irish businesses. In 2012 Thesaurus introduced the BrightPay product, which became the leading payroll software provider in Ireland and expanded into the UK. In 2021 Thesaurus Software and UK practice-management vendor Relate Software merged to form Bright, and AccountancyManager, a UK onboarding and practice management product founded in 2017, was added to the portfolio. The group reports around 400,000 businesses using its products and lists head office in Duleek, County Meath, Ireland, with offices in Warwick and Leamington Spa in the UK and Kolkata in India.

BrightPay Cloud is the flagship product, running payroll for UK and Irish employers and for payroll bureaus and accountants processing many client companies at once. It covers pay run processing, RTI submissions, statutory reporting, payslips, an employee self-service portal, a BrightPay Connect variant with employer and employee logins, and a pre-built modern awards interpretation engine. A desktop version for Windows and Mac is still sold and supported alongside the cloud product. Other group products include Thesaurus Payroll Manager, Surf Accounts and Surf Accounts Production for accounting practices, AccountancyManager and Bright Contracts.

Pricing is quoted per employer or per bureau rather than published as a flat per-employee rate, and the group offers annual and monthly plans plus free support. The group is backed by private capital investor Hg.