A Payroll Approval Request allows a Bureau to send an approval request to an Employer on the Client Portal, so that the client can review and approve the payroll data created by the Bureau in BrightPay. This feature assists in minimising errors made by a Bureau on the payroll, and places the responsibility with the Employer.

 

Sending a Payroll Approval Request through BrightPay
 

• Log in to your employer in BrightPay, select the 'Payroll' section and select the pay period you wish to create the request for. 
   
• Then simply click on the 'Client Requests' icon and choose Start a Payroll Approval Request:

A Payroll Approval Request invites your client to view and approve payroll details for a pay period in the Client Portal. If you wish to create the Payroll Approval Request select 'Continue'.

Please note: only one Payroll Approval Request can be created for a pay period.

If there is no Super or Standard user set up for the employer on the Client Portal to receive the Payroll Approval Request, when you are trying to create the request a message will show there are no client portal users for this employer. You can still create the request but you will have to create the user after and advise them separately the request is available to process on the Client Portal.

The Bureau will have to select what type of users on the Client Portal they wish to view the Payroll Approval Request - all Super users or all Standard users.

Any instructions or comments can be added in the text field provided to include in the request. Click 'Submit' when ready. 

Employees can be selected or deselected to be included in the Payroll Approval Request. A filter option is available under the 'Select by' icon. Select the employees to be included on the Payroll Approval Request and select 'Continue'.

The Payroll Approval Request will now be sent to the Employer. The bureau can view the request if they wish to by selecting 'View Request'.

The employer will receive an email to notify them of the request, along with a notification on their Dashboard on the Client portal:

Once the Payroll Approval Request has been sent to the Employer, the outstanding request status will then appear in the pay period for the employer in BrightPay with the status of 'Has been requested and is in progress'.

The status of of Payroll Approval Requests can be viewed for a pay period by selecting the pay period in the Payroll section for an employer and 'Client Requests'.

The Employer's Process

A Payroll Approval Request allows a Bureau to send a request to an Employer, requesting their client to log in to the Client Portal and view and approve the pay details for the pay period. The payroll approved by the Employer can subsequently be sent back to the Bureau in order for them to update the data into BrightPay.

The employer will receive an email to notify them of the request, along with a notification on their Dashboard on the Client portal.

Payroll Approval Requests will have the heading 'Approval Requested'. Multiple requests may be displayed on the Dashboard on the Client Portal including Payroll Entry Requests. Further information on Payroll Entry Requests are available here.

Once the Employer clicks on their 'Review Payroll' button in the email notification or selects the Request on the Dashboard on the Client Portal, they will be brought to a screen where they can view the payroll information for each employee. The data for each employee will be broken down by gross wages, tax deductions, pension deductions, take home pay and cost to the Employer.

The employer can select an individual employee and preview their payslip, displaying all payroll details for that pay period and year to date information. They can also download or print the draft payslip in PDF format. The number of hours will be displayed on the individual employee's payslip.

The employer is happy with the payroll information they can select to 'Mark as Approved' for the individual employee. Once the employee is marked as approved they are highlighted in green and have the status as 'Approved'.

If the information is incorrect the employer can select 'Mark as Rejected' to advise the bureau that some information needs to be changed or updated.

The employer can enter in a comment and select 'Mark as Rejected'. The employee will be highlighted in red with the status 'Rejected'

Message facility

There is a message facility to the right hand side on the Payroll Approval Request for the employer to communicate to the Bureau and vice versa. The employer can add a message and an email notification will go to the bureau and the message will appear on the message facility on the request.

Email Notifications 

On the Payroll Approval Request if the employer is marked as watching the request the employer will get email notifications when a message is posted and or when the payroll approval request has been sent again for review. 

If the employer does not want to subscribe to getting these email notifications they can select 'Unwatch' and can subscribe again at any time by selecting 'Watch'.

All employees that have been completed will be highlighted in green and are marked 'Approved'. Employees may have the status of 'rejected'. All employees on the request have to be reviewed and marked as 'Approved' or 'Rejected' in order for the employer to be able to submit approval of the request to the bureau. 

To mark a batch of employees as 'Approved' or 'Rejected', the Employer can click on the spanner icon at the top right and select 'Mark all as Approved' or 'Mark all as Rejected'.

Once all of the payroll information is reviewed and the employer is happy to return the Payroll Approval Request to the Bureau, the Employer can select 'Submit'.

The employer can also include a note or a comment for the Bureau if required. To submit the request to the Bureau select 'Submit Response'.

 

Once the Employer has submitted the 'Submit Response' to the Bureau, the Payroll Approval Request will now show the status of 'a response to this request has been submitted'.

Please note: When the Payroll Approval Request has the status of 'A response to this request has been submitted' the request can no longer be edited by the employer. 

The Bureau will then see the status update for the request, along with an email to their registered email address to notify them that the payroll approval they requested has now been submitted by the Employer.

 

Once a Payroll Approval Request is submitted
 

When the payroll approval request is submitted by the Employer, the Bureau will then view a status update in the employer in BrightPay, along with an email to their registered email address to notify them. 

 

The Bureau can then click on the new response or select 'View Payroll Approval' to view the payroll approval information submitted by the Employer.

If an employee is marked as 'Rejected' the Bureau will have to review the information and may be required to update payroll information for the employee.

The Bureau can select the individual employee and view the reason why they are marked as 'Rejected'.

If any changes are required to update the employee's payroll information in the pay period, the Bureau can go to > Payroll > Select the pay period > Select the employee > Enter in the required information.

The information entered in by the Bureau will automatically update the Payroll Approval Request and the information can be submitted again to the employer to review by selecting 'Request Another Review'.

The Bureau can add a comment when sending the Payroll Approval Request to the employer to review again. Select 'Request Another Review' to send the request to the employer.

The employer can review the Payroll Approval Request again with the changes made by the Bureau and mark the employee as approved if they are happy with the updates. The employer can select 'Submit Response' to send the approval request marked as approved back to the Bureau.

 

The status of the request will be updated in the pay period in BrightPay.

At any point in each stage of the Payroll Approval Request the Bureau can view the request or they can Cancel the request by selecting the spanner on the request status and select 'View Request' or 'Cancel Payroll Approval'.

If the Bureau selects 'Cancel Payroll Approval' the Bureau will be asked to select Yes or No to confirm if they want to delete it.

All that needs to be done by the Bureau now is to review the data one last time and if everything is correct, click 'Finalise Payslips' in BrightPay. Once finalised, this will automatically synchronise with Client Portal and the payslips will be made available to the Employer and Employees.

The Employee will receive an email that their new payslip is available to view on the Employee Self Service Portal based on the availability settings set up in BrightPay.

Please note: If a new Payroll Approval Request is created when another Payroll Approval Request exists the new Payroll Approval Request will replace the existing request. All details on the previous request including pay records, notes and audit trail will no longer be accessible.
 

Note: If a payroll entry request has been cancelled, it can be requested again at a later date.

Manage Client Requests 

 
For Bureaus to view all Requests and their status for an employer in BrightPay by selecting > Payroll > Client Requests > View/Manage All Client Requests.
 

The bureau can view at a quick glance the pay periods that requests have been created and the type of requests and the status of each request. The bureau can access and view each request individually by selecting the 'View' option.

Audit trail

A useful feature for Bureaus in for the Client Requests is the Audit Trail. This can be found by selection the spanner to the top right of the  payroll request. It’s automatically updated with each step of the payroll process, and cannot be changed or manipulated in any way, in turn eradicating any breakdown of communication between a Bureau and their client.

BrightPay employer homescreen

On the employer homescreen you can add a column to show the Payroll Entry/Approval Status for all employers that are listed on the employer homescreen. In order to show this on the employer homescreen select > More > 'Choose Columns'.

Select the option of 'Payroll entry/approval status' as a column to show on the list of employers and 'Save'.

On the employer dashboard if a payroll request has been created in an employer you will see the status of the request and the period the request is for under the column 'Payroll entry/approval'. If you hover your mouse over the you can see more detail. The clock symbol indicates that the request is in progress. The exclamation mark indicates that the request is waiting for the Bureau to review it and the tick symbol is the request is completed.

If the next estimated pay date column is selected for the employer dashboard and the next estimated pay has passed, the date for the employer will be highlighted in red.