BrightPay Hosting – Simple with Your Office Anywhere

Customers and users of BrightPay will recognise it as the award-winning payroll software designed to run on a desktop PC or Apple Mac. But did you know it is very easy to run BrightPay online, in the cloud? Using the exact same version that you would install on your PC, running in exactly the same way, you can run BrightPay Payroll Software on a cloud hosted remote desktop service.

Not only does a hosted desktop service provide a great way to run BrightPay in the cloud, it also gives you a platform to run other desktop software applications alongside BrightPay, enabling easy integration with desktop accounting packages like Sage Accounts as well as integration with cloud-based accounting packages like Xero and QuickBooks Online.

The hosted desktop platform works just like a normal PC and is connected to the outside internet. This means that direct API integration with pension providers like NEST, Smart Pension, Aviva, and The People’s Pension will work in exactly the same way. Similarly, integration with Modulr to make payments will also work the same when running BrightPay on a Hosted Desktop.

Many applications use Microsoft Office to produce reports, send emails, and create documents. By running BrightPay in the cloud on a hosted remote desktop you can also run Microsoft Office on the same desktop, giving you all the tools you need at your fingertips.

Microsoft 365 is a suite of cloud services that, along with the Office apps, provide all the tools to for the modern business to manage their data. Your Office Anywhere are a reseller of both Microsoft 365 subscriptions, or if you want something a bit simpler with no contracts, we can include the standard Office apps under our Service Provider Licence Agreement (SPLA).

If you are not already a Microsoft 365 customer, or are looking to change provider, or simply want some advice on the right licence to use then speak to us about Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 licencing.

The simple answer is none. The support team at Your Office Anywhere look after all the technical aspects of looking after your hosted remote desktop server; this includes all the behind the scenes infrastructure to enable you to connect securely using 2,048 bit encryption over the internet. We also monitor your server and check for low disk, poor performance, malware, and other technical issues as well as backing up all your data to a second data centre.

• Run BrightPay from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. This includes: working from home, from your main office, from branch offices, from your customer’s site, hotels, conference centres, or cafés and coffee shops.

• Run other applications on your hosted desktop as well as BrightPay such as your accounting package and Microsoft Office. If you have Microsoft 365 save your documents to SharePoint or OneDrive from the hosted desktop using the OneDrive for Business app.

• Outsource your workload. Many accountants, tax consultants, and bookkeepers make use of offshore resources to help run their businesses. By providing all the members of your team the same working environment, and keeping the data on the hosted desktop you can help meet your GDPR obligations as all the data will remain in the UK.

• Remove the need for local servers. Many businesses are looking for alternatives to replace their Windows Server 2012 machines which went out of extended support in October 2023. Hosted Desktops are the modern, flexible alternative to local on-premise servers.

• Hosted Desktops are a fully managed service, our support teams look after all the technical aspects of the platform so you have no concerns about the IT side of things.

• Fixed costs. Some cloud providers like Azure and AWS charge for compute time, so you are never quite sure what your bill is going to be at the end of the month. Not so with Your Office Anywhere, the price remains the same unless you change something such as adding another user, or renting some more disk space. Of course, prices may change occasionally, for example if Microsoft increase licence costs, but we always give 3 months advanced warning of any change.

• Complete scalability. The platform will suit any size of business from single users to companies with dozens of users. If your business grows then the resources on your BrightPay hosted desktop can grow with it.

• There are no contracts to tie you in, you can increase or decrease user numbers and cancel at any point without penalty.

• BrightPay is designed to run on Windows PCs and Apple Macs. With our cloud solution for BrightPay you can also connect to it with iOS or Android devices.

• We look after all the Microsoft Windows and Remote Desktop licences, advising on the most cost-effective method of licencing for the service.

• ISO 27001 certification for Information Security Management

• 24/7 support for critical issues

• 99.5% uptime guarantee

• Managed antivirus and antimalware plus web content filtering

• Managed Windows updates

• Data backups to a second site, geographically distant from our main site, data retained for 20 days

• Various connection methods including a full remote desktop, RemoteApps (like streaming the BrightPay app to your local desktop), running BrightPay in a browser, as well as running BrightPay on iPad or Android using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client App

• Microsoft 365 subscriptions. See what plans and prices are available here.

• Third Party cloud backup. While we do of course backup your BrightPay data, many companies want the added reassurance of having a second backup of their data with another company entirely. This may also be a requirement of regulators, or your customers. To help with this we resell Redstor cloud backup which you can manage without our involvement and restore to your chosen destination. Find out more here.

• Two Factor Authentication – also called Multi Factor Authentication. An extra security layer that uses you smartphone or other devices to prove you are who you are when logging on. Find out more about MFA here.