Brunton

About Brunton

Brunton is an accounting, ERP and business growth software consultancy and implementation specialist. They’ve been supporting medium to large businesses in New Zealand and Australia for 20 years.

Brunton has a specific payroll division, offering managed payroll services with their bureau team. They also implement payroll software so clients can run the process themselves, starting with initial consultations and needs assessments to implementation and training. For their work, Brunton was awarded the ‘Best Outsourced Payroll Provider’ by NZPPA (New Zealand Payroll Practitioners Association) in 2020.

We spoke to CEO, Sue Brunton, about her company’s approach to client service and how KeyPay has been a key player in their payroll support. 

Brunton supports businesses in managing crucial functions through implementation and outsourcing

Payroll can be a challenge, especially for businesses where time is precious. Brunton is there to make the process easy. As Sue describes: “We can set up a payroll system for companies who do their own payroll. We train them, set them up and get their own reports set up.”

“Then there’s our bureau team, who support customers who want a large payroll completed for them, either weekly, fortnightly or monthly.”

Brunton supports a variety of business functions, and not just payroll. Their challenge was that they needed a stronger payroll offering than they had, both for their team to use in-house and for their clients. That’s where KeyPay came in.

Brunton, meet KeyPay

Brunton has their own patented system, called BizEx, which is used by a large number of their clients. While the system is designed to support many aspects of business, it was missing a modern payroll solution. 

After researching several payroll options, Sue and her team reached out to KeyPay and received a rapid response from the team. “The interaction with KeyPay was very good; excellent support and great follow up.” Another big reason as to why Brunton decided on KeyPay was its global presence, with the ability to roll out the solution for clients across multiple regions.

“At Brunton and BizEx, we have clients that are in New Zealand and Australia, so what we find is that we’re now able to support the payroll for the Australian team, as well as the New Zealand team, so that’s a big plus. We’ve definitely found that being able to use both the Australian and New Zealand versions of the payroll has been great.”

Sealing the deal with white label payroll

Together, Brunton and KeyPay found a perfect partnership that builds on the client trust of BizEx but brings in the functionality of KeyPay. Brunton adopted and white-labelled (or ‘rebranded’) KeyPay as a new arm of BizEx, titled BizPay. “We liked the idea of being able to brand it as BizPay. Our main brand, BizEx, is well-known but we also wanted to get more clients onto an easy payroll where clients would be comfortable doing their payroll and being compliant.”

They now use BizPay both in-house, supporting their bureau team, and implementing it for clients.

It’s been a strong partnership so far between the two companies. Brunton has been supported by the KeyPay marketing team in promoting BizPay throughout Auckland and New Zealand, giving them a good pipeline for payroll.

Sue and her team also have steady tech support from KeyPay when they need it, whether that’s security queries or ideas for new features. “We’ve found that when we need support, the support team has been excellent at getting back to us. They’re happy to do demos or calls when required.”

Cloud, compliant and clear benefits with KeyPay 

Sue is open about the benefits that KeyPay has brought Brunton. Trust is hugely important – they wanted to give their clients the assurance that their pay is done properly, and that employees are paid what they’re due. With KeyPay’s automated payroll, leave calculations and a unique pay conditions engine, they were able to offer clients that extra security.  

KeyPay’s ease of use has also proved popular with Brunton’s client base. They’ve been able to speed up their payroll processes and automate work that was previously completed manually. Likewise, Brunton’s bureau team have been able to speed up their turnaround for client payroll and processing for larger clients: “With KeyPay, we can easily support up to or over 1000 employees.”

Crucially, cloud-based software KeyPay has provided a future-focused solution to a key part of Brunton’s business. “With Brunton, we’ve been around for 20 years. Times have changed; payroll used to be server-based, but now people want a cloud-based solution,” says Sue.

“With KeyPay we’ve found that having that cloud-based tool available to the wider community has grown Brunton as well.”

Holidays Act compliance and KeyPay’s ability to interpret this has dramatically helped their team as well. Sue says: “One of the first clients that we brought onboard with BizPay had 12 staff and were running payroll on spreadsheets. It was not really compliant with the Holidays Act, and that client spent a lot of time calculating all the different types of leave.”

“When they moved to BizPay (which is KeyPay, but white-labelled), they found that processing the pay was so much quicker. The payroll was handling all those calculations, and it made their life a lot easier. And the employees were more than happy to get a payslip, which they hadn’t before - because the client had been using spreadsheets.”  

Brunton’s clients find benefits in the rostering and timesheet features

Brunton works with a lot of seasonal employers, so the timesheets and rostering features have been a game-changer for many of their clients. “I think one of the main features that we’ve found excellent in the payroll is the ease of use, both for the bureau and for the end-user.”

“Being able to capture the time very quickly on timesheets, and being able to view the roster and reschedule staff. Especially at times with COVID, where one day, staff are at work and the next day, they’re not. So having that functionality within the payroll and using it for our clients has been a huge benefit.”

In addition, the seasonal employers that Brunton works with have benefited from the pricing model that KeyPay, and in turn, BizPay has offered. As opposed to paying a set rate for a group of 10-20 people, or 20-50, payment is charged per employee. This has proved popular with clients whose workforce changes size significantly over a year.

Their clients also have enjoyed the addition of the WorkZone app, which enables off-site staff to log in and track different jobs – a great benefit when your team works across different locations. As Sue says: “It’s a great little app that makes it easy for the end of day reporting. Managers and staff can have a look and verify what’s been happening.”

The time-savings of processing client information from within a centralised dashboard cannot go unnoticed either: “Being able to send the information to clients in the bureau - it used to take 2 or 3 hours depending on the payroll, but that time has definitely reduced. It’s allowed us to process more bureau pays for the client.”

Brunton’s advice to others

With their solution successfully implemented and further training underway, Brunton is clear on the benefits of KeyPay and their ability to rebrand the solution as BizPay. “We really have found that rebranding KeyPay to BizPay has been beneficial for our clients. They already know the BizEx company and the service they get from that, so calling it BizPay was a great benefit for us, and easy for the clients in knowing they already knew the service we provided - and knowing we’d continue to get the service from BizPay.”

“We’re confident to be able to support a company of any size, after receiving excellent support from the KeyPay team.” 

KeyPay is transforming payroll for businesses around New Zealand

We love hearing about how KeyPay is making a difference for our partners. For Sue and the team at Brunton, KeyPay has enabled them to have a solution that fits with their existing brands and brings crucial new support to clients.  

If you’d like to learn more about how KeyPay can transform your clients’ payroll processes, get in touch.

‍

Results summary:

• Ease of support for up to (and over) 1000 employees through KeyPay
• Increased brand trust through white-labelling KeyPay as BizPay
• Streamlined Holidays Act compliance, with payroll calculations handled in-platform
• 2-3 hours of time saved on sending information to clients in the bureau