BrightPay

BrightPay is one of the payroll packages UK practices and bureaus use most, and its AI story is deliberately narrow: Oscar takes over the new starter chase, one of the most annoying parts of running payroll for clients.

What it does well. Oscar targets a real problem. Getting a new starter's details, bank account and P45 usually means days of emails between bureau, client and employee; Oscar talks to the employee over WhatsApp, which most people already use, pulls data from uploaded documents, validates it and hands a completed record to BrightPay Cloud for a person to approve. The core payroll is mature, with HMRC submissions, auto-enrolment automation, batch processing across bureau clients and direct payments to employees and HMRC via Modulr. Journals post to Xero, Sage and QuickBooks, and pension integrations with NEST, The People's Pension and Smart Pension remove another manual step.

Where it falls short. The move to cloud-only is the main issue for many firms. With the Windows desktop version discontinued after 5 April 2026, practices on desktop licences face a migration and a different cost model, and the pricing page shows no figures, only a calculator, so compare total cost per payroll carefully. Oscar's time savings are the company's own claims, and the page is inconsistent about whether onboarding takes hours or minutes. The Oscar page does not say whether it is included or charged as an add-on, and security detail for data collected over WhatsApp sits on a separate page that should be read before rollout. FreeAgent and IRIS are not named among journal integrations.

Best for. UK and Irish payroll bureaus and accounting practices running payroll for many small employers, especially those with frequent new starters such as hospitality and retail clients. Firms with US clients should look at Gusto or Asure instead, and those paying staff abroad should consider Deel.

Verdict. A dependable UK bureau payroll with a sensible, focused AI agent for new starter onboarding. Run Oscar on a handful of real new starters, check how clients and employees react to WhatsApp, confirm the security arrangements and whether Oscar costs extra, and price the cloud migration before your desktop licences lapse.