Honest Review:

BrightHR

• Ease of use
• Swift and easy onboarding with responsive reps
• Effortless integration with existing workflows and IT ecosystems
• Dedicated time tracker app
• Fuss-free interface
• Comprehensive leave and time off management
• Value for money

• Inconsistent tracking of time and locations
• Signing in from mobile phones can be difficult or downright impossible at times
• Random clock-outs from the mobile app
• Does not have offline functionality
• Bugs and glitches
• Heavy battery consumption
• Cancellation and renewal policies cause friction and frustration
• Reports need more depth and precision

BrightHR offers their HR software beginning at $8 per employee per month for a minimum of three employees. Features include staff holiday planner & booking system, shifts and rotas planning, absence management software, overtime tracker, expense and mileage tracker app (PoP), clocking and timekeeping (Blip), CPD accredited e-learning and LMS, online marketplace and employee perks, HR document management, payroll navigator, and custom reporting.

The BrightHR health and safety software starts at $5 per employee per month for teams composed of a minimum of three employees and allows users to enjoy risk assessment software, accident and near miss reporting, task management and reporting, and CPD and ROSPA accredited e-learning and LMS.

Both BrightHR options can be purchased together starting at $11 per employee per month for a team composed of at least three employees. This paired option combines all the features of both solutions.

Prices for the BrightHR HR software, health and safety software, or the paired solution option vary depending on the number of employees who will be using it. 

For more specific tailoring of features, BrightHR offers custom quotes according to the number of employees and feature requirements. Features are grouped into seven categories from which prospective users can choose at least one, namely time tracking, absence management, shifts and rotas, document storage, recruitment, health and safety, and expense tracking. The number of employees and feature requirements can be specified on their quote request page, and quotes are sent privately via email.

1. Time Tracking

Time tracking is the most important aspect for me in any software that I review. As previously mentioned, BrightHR gives users a separate time-tracking app called Blip that comes free with the HR solution.

BrightHR’s Blip app allows users to track time from their mobile phones using geofenced locations with virtual boundaries or QR code scanning. The geofence option prompts users to clock in when they enter the area and clock out when they leave it, allowing for greater accountability across the ranks. QR code scanning is useful for on-site operations and allows easy clocking in and out using a unique QR code that can be printed and displayed in the workplace. And when enabled by admins, users can also clock in and out on the go complete with location capture, which is handy for field staff, transport crews, and similar teams.

With Blip, Bright HR records working hours and locations, tracks overtime, ensures that staff takes law-mandated breaks with reminders and notifications, and saves work history records according to FLSA standards, with the option for export. 

The geolocation feature of BrightHR’s Blip app also means that admins have real-time visibility of where employees are. This is very useful in ensuring that workers on the clock stay where they are supposed to be. Aside from that, Blip also shows who’s on break, and who’s out for the day.

The data captured by Blip is automatically translated into timesheets that can be reviewed and modified on BrightHR, saving admins time that is usually spent agonizing over manual entry.

2. Payroll Navigator

Timesheets are only useful if they can be translated into payroll with ease. BrightHR allows employers to pay workers their hard-earned dues based on timesheet data and stay compliant with HMRC legislation with its payroll navigator.

The BrightHR payroll navigator allows users to store employees’ payroll details in one secure place for convenient access. It also generates and allows downloads of payroll reports so that users can supply accurate details to HMRC.

Payroll reports are important in ensuring that employees receive the right amount of compensation for their work. While recording hours and translating them to wages using rates is a fairly straightforward process, factors such as time off and sick days complicate the process. BrightHR helps users navigate these complications with a range of payroll reports that include absence, annual leave summaries, staff information, and payroll exception reports.

Aside from that, BrightHR also helps users factor in PAYE deductions, tips, bonuses, allowances, statutory sick pay, maternity pay, auto-enrolment pension, and more to payouts. If all of that isn’t quite enough yet and payroll questions still linger, users are given access to the BrightAdvice helpline which connects them with legal experts Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. 

3. Shifts and Rotas

BrightHR streamlines the creation and distribution of shifts and rotas. Using the shift scheduling and rota planning software, managers can create work schedules in a simple table layout in a matter of clicks, assign shifts, copy schedules, and duplicate rotas across multiple days and employees in minutes, use filters to find and edit any employee’s shifts, and automatically inform everyone of new schedules and rota or any changes to existing ones with notifications. 

With BrightHR, employers can also kiss dropped shifts and last-minute no-shows goodbye with the open shifts feature, which allows employees to pick up extra shifts with ease. Managers only need to release unfilled shifts, and staff are automatically notified with real-time alerts. They can then pick up vacant shifts according to their availability and preferences. For more focused shift distribution, admins can also decide who among their staff can accept or decline shifts.

Best of all, creating and managing shifts and rotas can be done wherever there’s an internet connection with the BrightHR mobile app, so admins can find and implement scheduling solutions anytime, anywhere.

4. Leave, Time Off, and Absence Management

BrightHR simplifies the long-winded process of requesting leaves and time off into four very easy steps: staff submits a time off request in a matter of a few clicks using the app, employers are instantly notified of the request, the system flags any scheduling clashes to ensure that businesses are never understaffed at all times, and admins can then approve or deny the request — even on the go.

Aside from easy leave management, BrightHR also empowers businesses to be compliant with time off and leave legislation by doing all the calculations of leave entitlements and statuses.

In case unexpected life events prevent employees from showing up on time or showing up at all, BrightHR has a suite of absence management features to help employees and employers navigate lateness, sick leaves, and more all in one place. 

The system logs common absences and allows users to upload and store documents, pictures, and forms for absence requests. It also generates reports from recorded absence data to identify trends. Plus, BrightHR gives visibility to employee availability so dropped shifts can be covered with ease.

But what I love the most about this suite of features is that it recognizes that it recognizes that sometimes, lateness and absences are more than just that — sometimes, they’re symptoms of something deeper. To help with this, BrightHR gives them access to leading employee assistance programs that may help them deal with personal challenges so they can eventually bounce back and return to an optimal state of productivity.

5. Employment Law Support

There will inevitably be legal and HR questions that businesses will struggle to answer on their own. To ensure that these important questions are answered correctly, they often have to consult or hire expensive solicitors. That is not a sustainable model for SMEs. 

To help businesses with their legal advice needs, BrightHR connects them with legal advisors who provide them with expert employment law advice via phone call to help them avoid costly mistakes, employment tribunals, and other similar headaches. 

BrightHR’s employment law assistance is available 24/7 and guaranteed confidential. Advisors won’t bombard users with legal jargon, and will always give clear and tailor-made answers to HR and legal questions any time of the day — or night.

And if talking to someone doesn’t sound quite appealing for any reason, users can access the BrightBase library of expertly-written HR policies, document templates, and guides. Users can access and download employment contracts and handbooks, how-to guides, and factsheets, along with articles on parental leave, agile working, employee management, disciplinary action, grievances, onboarding, and a lot more.

BrightHR’s BrightBase is continually updated to reflect any changes in legislation and guidance, so users are assured that any material they’re accessing is up-to-date and in line with the law. And best of all, it’s accessible from the BrightHR dashboard, so users have the power to discover answers to any HR or legal question at their fingertips at all times.

(As of December 2023)

• Capterra: 4.7/5
• G2: 4.4/5
• Software Advice: 4.7/5
• TrustRadius: 8.2/10
• TrustPilot: 4.8/5 
• GetApp: 4.7/5
• Google Play Store: 4.3/5
• App Store: 4.8/5

BrightHR is a thoughtfully and beautifully designed HR software that addresses many pain points in the modern workplace. But aside from being just an HR software, it also tackles time tracking, payroll processing, scheduling, time off management, and even employment law support. Its respectable arsenal of features is designed around the concept of simplification, and the way the features function is proof of that.

The Blip time tracking app is BrightHR’s answer to the pressing need for easy time tracking for employees and is a great attempt to shift a huge chunk of the burden of attendance monitoring off of managers’ backs by automatically capturing time and location data upon logging in and out of shifts and when starting and ending breaks. The data captured by Blip is instantly reflected on a dashboard that shows managers who’s in, out, and on break in which locations. The additional layer of accountability added by geofencing and log-in photo capture reduces the risk of buddy punching and other time theft shenanigans that make businesses lose money amounting to tens of thousands of dollars annually. Punches are also automatically translated into timesheets that allow employees and management to transparently see time entries and correct them if necessary.

Paired with the payroll navigator which takes care of the number crunching from time sheets to actual wages, the Blip app aims to ensure that workers are paid their hard-earned dues by capturing every minute of every working hour. When timesheets are finally processed by the payroll navigator to factor in variables that affect pay such as deductions, statutory sick pay, mandatory holidays, and more, BrightHR then keeps records of all payroll reports for easy access and for ease of supplying correct information to HMRC.

However, the fundamental flaw in these processes lies within the BrightHR time-tracking solution itself. It can be unreliable due to bugs, glitches, and lack of internet connectivity. This leads to frustration among users who struggle to navigate its features during the times that Blip is down or acting weird. But more importantly, it affects the ability of the time tracker to do its most important job — track time accurately. And because timesheets and payroll are dependent on the information captured by the time tracker, the integrity of their output is compromised when Blip fails to function as advertised.

But on to the more positive things: the shifts and rotas features make scheduling so much easier and help ensure that all sites are manned adequately at all times. The leave, time off, and absence management features make quick work of the traditionally cumbersome process of requesting leaves and managing tardiness and absenteeism. With these suites of features, BrightHR demonstrates its commitment to simplicity and helps ensure that businesses are always on top of issues that affect attendance. If they could make the scheduling features more intuitive by listening to user’s requests for more granular customizability, they’d have an even more powerful tool to offer.

I really admire BrightHR’s commitment to actively assisting its users with two very important features. First is the employee assistance program that helps employees deal with life and its challenges with advice from mental health professionals. Second is their employment law support that empowers businesses to solve complex legal and HR questions with 24/7 phone consultations with legal experts and the BrightBase library.

Listen, I’d say that overall, BrightHR is a promising solution worth looking into if you’re in the market for something more than just the usual time tracking. It’s an all-encompassing system that takes care of many aspects of HR that would be difficult if not downright impossible to handle gracefully and easily without the help of a powerful tool such as BrighHR. That is, if you can forgive the occasional time tracking deficiencies that plague the Blip app. So if you wanna take things a step further and see for yourself if the solution they offer is compatible with your needs, go ahead and pop into their site and book a free demo today.