Getting Ready for the New Tax Year

Before you can bring your employer into the new tax year, make sure these end-of-year steps are completed.

Step 1: Complete Your Final Year-End Tasks

1. Finish your last payroll – Process the final payroll for all pay frequencies.
2. Send RTI submissions – Submit any outstanding RTIs to HMRC.
3. Submit your Final EPS
   • Go to the RTI tab → create a new Employer Payment Submission (EPS) for Tax Month 12.
   • Tick the box for ‘Final Submission’ and send to HMRC.

Step 2: Import Employer into the New Tax Year

1. Open the new year
   • Ensure you are in the Home screen - Browse Employers screen
   • Select the new tax year from the top-left drop-down menu.
2. Check employers
   • Employers not yet imported will show with a dotted icon.
3. Import employer
   • Click the employer’s name → Import
   • Or click the spanner icon → Import
   • Select Import Now
4. What transfers over
   • Employee details (except leavers)
   • Payroll schedule (auto-setup based on last year’s settings)
5. Ready to go!
   • Payroll can now be processed in the new tax year.
   • HMRC budget updates are already applied.

If you do not see the option for the new tax year, ensure you are on the 'Browse employers' screen.

Note: All importable employers will show when you are in the 'Browse employers' screen within the new tax year. If you do not wish to import an employer into the new year, if you do not click on them & import them, they will not move over to the new tax year. All previous years' data will remain.

Once you have transferred all required employers into the new tax year, you can choose to hide any importable employers that are not being carried forward by clicking on the More spanner icon > Hide importable employers (from previous tax year).

There is no requirement to delete an employer that you do not wish to import into the new year.

Q. How do I remove or hide an employer or ex-client from the list of importable employers when starting a new tax year?
A. If you do not want an employer (such as an ex-client) to appear in the list of employers available to import into a new tax year, use the ‘Hide importable employers from previous tax year’ option. Go to the import screen, click “More,” and select “Hide importable employers from previous tax year.” This will remove the selected employer(s) from your importable list but will not delete their historical data.

Note: If you see duplicate employers in BrightPay Cloud after importing from BrightPay Desktop, it is likely because you imported the employer file separately into both the 2025/26 and 2026/27 tax years from the desktop data. This creates two distinct employer records in the Cloud.

To avoid duplication, you should import your employer to BrightPay Cloud at the end of the 2025/26 tax year. Then, when starting the 2026/27 tax year, use the Cloud-to-Cloud import (the 'duplicate' option shown in light grey) to roll your employer forward into the new year. This ensures that there is only one continuing employer record.

If you haven’t processed payroll in the 2026/27 tax year yet:

• You can delete the duplicate employer for 2026/27 that was created from importing the desktop file.
• Then use the Cloud-to-Cloud import option (light grey ‘duplicate’) to bring your employer into 2026/27.

Caution:
Before deleting, double-check that you have not already processed any payroll in the 2026/27 employer record and confirm the duplication is due to importing for both tax years, not another issue.

Employees not transferred after importing into the new tax year

If you have imported an employer into the new tax year but no employees have come through, this is most commonly caused by importing from the wrong source data. Check that you have selected the correct employer data from the previous tax year — if a desktop export file was generated but is empty, or if you have navigated to the wrong file, the import will complete successfully but no employees will appear. All active employees (those not marked as leavers) should transfer automatically when the correct data set is used. Employees who were marked as leavers before 5 April will not be imported into the new year.