BrightPay has two distinct portal user types: Client Portal Users and Managers. They have different access levels and capabilities.

Client Portal Users

Client Portal Users have access to payroll viewing, reporting, and employee/leave management functions within the scope granted to them by the payroll processor. They can:

• View payroll for employees they have been given access to
• Run payroll reports
• Approve and decline employee annual leave requests
• Approve and decline employee requests (e.g., change of address)
• View the amount due to HMRC
• Enter payment amounts made to HMRC
• View employee documents (payroll records and resources)
• Add resources to employee records
• Invite employees to the Employee Portal
• Enter or approve payroll (only if requested by the payroll processor)
• View and manage the employer calendar
• Invite and manage other Client Portal users (super users only)
• Add and manage Global Managers (super users only)
• Change Employee Portal settings (e.g., payslip or P60 availability dates, turn the Employee Calendar on/off)

Email Notifications

Client Portal Users can receive optional email notifications. However, these must be enabled by the payroll processor within BrightPay — Client Portal Users cannot enable these themselves:

• HMRC PAYE reminders (if enabled by the payroll processor)
• Payslip finalisation notifications (if enabled by the payroll processor)

Once enabled by the payroll processor, Client Portal Users will automatically receive these notifications.

Note: Client Portal Users do not automatically receive email notifications when employees submit requests. Instead, new requests appear on their dashboard when they log in. To receive email notifications for employee requests, they must also be added as a Global Manager.

Managers

Managers have limited access focused on employee approvals. Their primary role is to approve or decline requests from employees assigned to them. They can:

• Approve and decline employee leave requests
• Approve and decline employee change of details requests (e.g., change of address)
• View the employee calendar
• Receive email notifications when assigned employees submit requests

Managers cannot:

• View payroll
• Access any payroll information
• Enter or approve payroll

Adding Users Who Are Not Employees

Both Client Portal Users and Managers can be assigned even if they are not employees on the company payroll.

For Client Portal Users:
Only an email address and name are required. Set this up in Employer > Client Portal.

For Managers:
BrightPay provides three options when setting up managers:

• a) They are an employee of [company name]
• b) They are a member of the organisation on BrightPay
• c) They are not an employee or member of the organisation

If the manager is not on payroll, select option c) and enter their name and email address.

Using Different Email Addresses for Manager Role

In some cases, a manager may be an employee but want to use a different email address for their manager role. For example:

• Their personal email is registered in their employee record
• They prefer to use their work email for approving leave and managing employee requests
• They want to keep their personal and manager roles separate

To set this up:

When adding this person as a manager, do not select option a) "They are an employee". Instead, select option c) "They are not an employee or member of the organisation" and enter their work email address.

Email notifications for leave and change of details requests will then go to their work email address, keeping the two roles separate.

Note: If the employee has more than one email address on their employee account, it’s more efficient to use option C and manually enter the email details. If you choose option A, the request will be sent to all email addresses linked to that employee profile.