Hi Joanne,
I can confirm that this is correct. I received an email from Brightpay advising of their price increases. I love the ease of the software and its versatility, but have to admit it's a hugh increase. I have e-mailed them to say this, adding in that if I increased my clients fees this way the vast majority would look elsewhere. I suggested that they might find the same thing happening to them. I am disappointed that they haven't, as yet, had the courtesy to reply to me, even if it's to say tough luck.
Debbie
Hi Debbie
If only everyone who is disgruntled would email them then they might do something! Pretty poor that they havent responded to you. Kind of surprised that they havent responded on Aweb nor on here - perhaps the sales lady who used to be on both cant be bothered any more! I might drop it on Linkedin!!!!
Hi Jay
Im a moneysoft user too. Easy to use and a great price.
Must say - Brightpay's CIS scheme was p*ss poor at one point but they did take on board the feedback given and improved it. Just a shame they think they can up the prices so much and whats worse deliver the info when there is so many other things going on (Jan silly season) - classic hiding bad news behind worse news!
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thank you for your comments and apologies for not replying sooner.
This review of prices was a comprehensive and time consuming exercise. It is not something we intend to do annually, apart that is from cost of living increases, where relevant. This is the first major review of pricing in 7 years.
This price increase will enable this continued improvement of our product and support services and ensure we are able to continue to provide the best possible solution to support your payroll process.
In relation to the January timing, we wanted to ensure that you were aware of the change in plenty of time before the start of the tax year.
@Debbie - Apologies you didnt receive a response. Ill get my colleague Ann to get in touch with you.
I very much hope youll reconsider and decide to remain with BrightPay.
Thank you for your comments and apologies for not replying sooner.
This review of prices was a comprehensive and time consuming exercise. It is not something we intend to do annually, apart that is from cost of living increases, where relevant. This is the first major review of pricing in 7 years.
This price increase will enable this continued improvement of our product and support services and ensure we are able to continue to provide the best possible solution to support your payroll process.
Hi Karen, I think you've definitely shot yourselves in the foot with the pricing structure, which imo is more to do with milking your clients than software development. For more than 10 companies it will be a no brainer. £399 or about £150 ish with Moneysoft.
I've no doubt that your software has the edge over moneysoft, but it's only a small edge, and I predict you will lose a fair few.
Personally I looked at your product when it first came out but decided to stay with moneysoft, as I liked it and it did a very good job. Boy am I glad I did.
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
We dont believe we are milking our clients. We do continue to invest in new features that enhance the payroll experience for our customers. We have also significantly invested in new customer support staff and will continue to do so in the future.
Thank you for your comments and apologies for not replying sooner.
This review of prices was a comprehensive and time consuming exercise. It is not something we intend to do annually, apart that is from cost of living increases, where relevant. This is the first major review of pricing in 7 years.
This price increase will enable this continued improvement of our product and support services and ensure we are able to continue to provide the best possible solution to support your payroll process.
In relation to the January timing, we wanted to ensure that you were aware of the change in plenty of time before the start of the tax year.
@Debbie - Apologies you didnt receive a response. Ill get my colleague Ann to get in touch with you.
I very much hope youll reconsider and decide to remain with BrightPay.
Karen @ BrightPay
Im afraid it does sound like platitudes at best!
Your offering is generally well received of that there is no doubt. But you are already dearer than the other supberb bit of kit out there, before the increase. So anyone with 25+employers, which isnt even a large bureau/Accountancy practice by any means is being hit by a more than 100% increase.
Im sure if I passed on such a huge increases to my clients and said the review was time 'a comprehensive and time consuming exercise' they would just say 'oh ok thats ok then'! Its all a bit a la Sage and Iris and look what has happened to their market share.
So come on - a challenge for you. Tell us WHAT is going to be so much better now the fee has increased?
We dont normally give any software providers the time of day on here, but the floor is yours. Assuming the moderator doesnt come on and delete one of your profiles/links or whatever given the rules of the site.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to defend ourselves. As you say, this will probably be taken down in a matter of hours but hopefully!
It boils down to profit and loss. Over the last 7 years, we have made a huge investment (and will continue to do so) in technology, people, security and support infrastructure.
After the first major review of our business in 7 years, to continue providing what we believe is the best payroll and support on the market, we need to change our pricing model.
We fully recognise that there are cheaper alternatives and our price increase has been flagged in plenty of time to enable customers to migrate to these alternatives if they choose to do so. We and most of our customers strongly believe that our product/service is way ahead of the cheaper alternatives. If you disagree with this, then the logical thing for you do is to move and we will be sorry to see you go.
Karen isn't here to shill or spam her product. As such it seems somewhat unfair to threaten her posts with oblivion. In fact if her posts were to be removed or she were to be banned from further posting I would ponder whether I should ever have been welcome here either.
I would like to offer a couple of thoughts from a semi-detached point of view. I guess if the mods disagree with me doing this, as a non-practitioner, they will take appropriate action.
A board consensus seems to be that practitioners should drop Brightpay and switch to Moneysoft, because with Brightpay's new pricing Moneysoft is now significantly cheaper, particularly if you have more than 25 payroll clients.
But maybe at least some Brightpay users considering that course of action should look beyond the headline price of the product.
Moneysoft is superb software, and so is Brightpay, but their perfect clients are slightly different. Moneysoft is probably unbeatable if you want to run 30 threshold payrolls. Why pay for anything more functional? Where Brightpay would score is if any of your clients are larger or have more sophisticated needs. My understanding is that Brightpay's handling of Auto Enrolment, for example, is considerably ahead of that of Moneysoft, and there are other more sophisticated features of Brightpay that one might regret losing following a switch. I guess I'm just urging people not to cut off their noses to spite their faces. You wouldn't need to spend many extra hours a month extra operating a slightly less functional payroll package for the extra cost of Brightpay to be cost-effective.
I can understand annoyance from some users at the percentage size of the price increase. But maybe from Brightpay's point of view those users were previously getting the product on the cheap. I recall being harangued on the phone by a couple of users when I put the unlimited scheme price of 12Pay up from £50 to £100. You wouldn't believe how upset a few people got about £50/pa, "I wish I could get away with doubling my prices!" neglecting to notice that what they charged each client was a multiple of what they're paying for their entire payroll software bill; but in the end I'm not sure that I actually lost a single user because price is only part of the equation and essentially the cost of products like Brightpay and Moneysoft are *all* ludicrously low, in some ways, when you think about what you're getting.
Anyway, pompous lecture over. Feel free to disagree.
-- Edited by Tom McClelland on Tuesday 12th of February 2019 02:04:37 PM
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to defend ourselves. As you say, this will probably be taken down in a matter of hours but hopefully!
It boils down to profit and loss. Over the last 7 years, we have made a huge investment (and will continue to do so) in technology, people, security and support infrastructure.
After the first major review of our business in 7 years, to continue providing what we believe is the best payroll and support on the market, we need to change our pricing model.
We fully recognise that there are cheaper alternatives and our price increase has been flagged in plenty of time to enable customers to migrate to these alternatives if they choose to do so. We and most of our customers strongly believe that our product/service is way ahead of the cheaper alternatives. If you disagree with this, then the logical thing for you do is to move and we will be sorry to see you go.
Good afternoon Karen,
simple accountancy dictates though that one would build a product for the intended market rather than investing heavily without concern for the limits that such market would accept.
I feel that a wiser approach would have been drip feeding price increases over several years allowing your clients to pass on price increases where a single rise like this will hit the wallets of people who use your product.
I am very much reminded here of the frog in boiling water.
put a frog in cold water, slowly raise the temperature and it will remain until it boils to death.
drop a frog into boiling water and it will leap out.
I fear your approach will see many of your current clients leaping so you could end up with the best product on the market that nobody buys (think Betamax).
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Hi both Re the suggestion of moderation - if you look at my post it actually cites the duplicate profile that Karen has (which goes against the rules of the site) rather than anything else - although perhaps to some I was being a bit vague when I typed it! I certainly dont consider the response type of posting would be spam or such, given I popped the challenge on here in the first place.
Indeed, Karen and I have swapped info in the past, away from BKN, although she may not recall as it was some time ago, certainly at a time when Brightpay's offering re their CIS module was woefully lacking/dismal to say the least and Im glad to say they took up that challenge (albeit Im sure not just on the back of my moans!) and beefed up their offering.
Im also one who quite happily works on the basis of - you dont like my prices, there is the door. Value is key. But getting a huge increase for not getting anything that is actually new/improved is another.
Plus not helped by ignoring a user when it was queried (Debbie) is poor form.
Where Im a wee bit disappointed is in the fact that Karen hasnt really taken up the challenge perhaps to explain why the pricing is so huge between the small and larger bureau clients, so challenge back on.
By challenging someone I do think I giving them a fair crack of the whip!! Plus at least BP have responded - more than you can say for Sage with their old posts!
Edited to correct typo
-- Edited by Cheshire on Tuesday 12th of February 2019 02:25:36 PM
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Bureau users, who may wish to purchase BrightPay Cloud for multiple clients, can get a bulk discount depending on how many employers they require (see pricing for details). The BrightPay Cloud pricing model is employer-based, unlike that for BrightPay on your PC or Mac, because it runs on a cloud platform that costs us in direct proportion to its usage. But we're competitively priced, and you still get the same support at no extra cost.
That's fair enough, £50 for that sort of functionality is acceptable, and the employer has a choice as to whether they add that on or not. What BP have introduced though is a tiered pricing system that costs you the same to produce whether there are 10 employers or 26 + employers, but for those with 26 employers they pay double the price than someone with 10 employers. I don't currently charge an employer for my use of Moneysoft, but if I was a BP client I would have little choice as to either put my prices up or make an additional charge.
It will be interesting to see how your main competitor reacts, but they too have invested heavily in their product, and whilst their product may not be as slick as BP, it practically has all the same features not including connect. Looking at the reserves of both Companies, they are in a very healthy position anyway, and the ones you lose will be their gain.
There is also unfairness in the pricing model. Someone with 10 employers will pay £24.90 an employer, but if they have 11, they will pay £36.27, and it only becomes cheaper pro rata when they have 16 or more employers.
You're bound to lose quite a few of your customers, which no doubt will have been factored in, but I struggle to see where your growth will come from.
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
Hi all,
Just an update to say I have received a call from Anne at Brightpay. She was very apologetic about nobody responding earlier and as a goodwill gesture has offered next year's subscription at £100 less than the increased price.
