Payroll

Payroll software in Ireland: what Revenue requires of it, and what BrightPay, Thesaurus and Sage charge

Since 1 January 2019, an Irish employer has had to report each payment to an employee to Revenue on or before the day it is made, with the deductions worked out from the latest Revenue Payroll Notification for that employee. Payroll software does both. The products differ in price, in where they run, and in what changes for them in 2027.

By Oscar CobbeCurrent as at 30 October 20266 minute read21 sources

What Revenue requires, since 1 January 2019

PAYE Modernisation moved Irish payroll to reporting in real time. The Income Tax (Employments) Regulations 2018 (S.I. No. 345 of 2018) apply to pay from 1 January 2019, and Regulation 10 requires an employer, "on or before the making of any payment of emoluments to an employee", to send Revenue the details of that payment. Revenue's guidance for employers says: you must submit payroll information to Revenue on, or before, the date you pay your employees.

Each pay period has three parts, and payroll software does the first two:

1Before the run: request the latest Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN) for each employee. It carries the tax credits, the cut-off points for Income Tax and USC, and any exemptions, and Revenue says payroll software should retrieve it automatically. Without an RPN, the employer must operate the emergency basis.
2On or before payday: the payroll submission, with the pay date, the amount of pay, and the deductions for Income Tax, USC, PRSI and Local Property Tax, for each employee.
3After the month: Revenue issues a monthly statement based on the submissions, available by the fifth day of the following month. If you take no action, it is deemed your return by the 14th day of the following month.

The employer stays responsible

Revenue's guidance says you are responsible for making sure your system complies with tax law whether you use payroll software, a payroll company, another agency or ROS itself. The software makes the submission; the figures in it are still yours.

Paying what the statement says

Revenue's table of due dates gives a monthly remitter's payment as 14 days after the end of the month, or 23 days for ROS users who file and pay online. Quarterly and annual remitters still get a monthly statement, which becomes their monthly return, and pay 14 days after the end of the quarter or the year, or 23 days through ROS.

Three ways to send a payroll submission

Revenue lists three routes:

1Direct reporting: the payroll software sends the payroll information to ROS by itself. Revenue publishes web services for this, to look up RPNs, request one for a new employee, send the payroll submission and check its status.
2File upload: the software produces a payroll file, and you upload it to ROS.
3No software: you enter the payroll details in ROS yourself, through the Submit payroll by online form option.

Since 2024: some expenses and benefits too

Section 897C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, inserted by section 9 of the Finance Act 2022, requires an employer to report what it calls reportable benefits to Revenue in an electronic format. They are small benefits, the remote working daily allowance, and travel and subsistence payments made without deducting tax. Revenue says the reporting began on 1 January 2024, and that each must be reported on, or before, the date of payment to the employee.

Revenue offers a file upload and an online form in ROS for this, and a facility for software providers to test integrations with its systems, and it asks employers to make sure their software provider knows about the requirement. Check that your payroll software reports these benefits before you rely on it.

BrightPay

BrightPay is made by Bright Software Group, the trading name of Thesaurus Software Ltd in County Meath, which also makes Thesaurus Payroll Manager. Its Irish price list for BrightPay Desktop, the Windows version, is per tax year and excludes VAT, and is in the table below.

That list comes with a notice. BrightPay says the desktop version moves fully to the cloud on 31 December 2026 and after that receives no updates, support or legislative compliance, and its customer notice says the 2027 upgrade is BrightPay Cloud. BrightPay Cloud is priced by a calculator from the number of employers and employees, either monthly as you go or yearly in advance, plus VAT. BrightPay says it is currently limited to 300 employees per employer, leavers included.

BrightPay Desktop licence	Employees	Per tax year, excluding VAT
Standard, one employer	Up to 10	€229
Standard, one employer	Up to 25	€349
Standard, one employer	Unlimited	€459
Free	Single-employee companies, with email support only	€0

Buying the desktop version now

BrightPay sells desktop licences per tax year, so a 2026 licence covers 2026. For 2027, BrightPay's own pages send desktop customers to the cloud version, and BrightPay Connect, the cloud add-on for the desktop version, is being discontinued with it.

Thesaurus Payroll Manager

Thesaurus Payroll Manager, from the same company, is a separate Windows product, priced per tax year excluding VAT: €239 for one employer with up to 10 employees, €359 for up to 25, and €479 for unlimited employees. Its page lists the 2027 tax year version as available in December 2026. Its feature list includes PAYE Modernisation compliance, real-time reporting through ROS, setting up employees from a ROS RPN file, and compliance with MyFuture Fund, and both it and BrightPay have pages on automatic enrolment.

Sage's Irish payroll

Sage sells two payroll products in Ireland. Sage Payroll, sold alongside Sage Accounting, is billed in three tiers that Sage's Irish help centre names Essentials, Standard and Premium, each with 5 or 10 employees included and each further employee billed automatically. Sage 50 Payroll Ireland is installed software, in Standard and Professional versions, and its May 2026 release added features for automatic enrolment. Sage's Irish pricing pages did not open for this article, so no Sage price is given here.

Payroll inside an accounts package

In Xero, Sage and QuickBooks, payroll sits outside the accounts plans. Xero's Irish payroll page says you connect a third-party payroll app, and names Parolla, SimplePay and Deel. Sage Payroll is a separate product from Sage Accounting, with one user limit across both. QuickBooks' Irish pricing page lists no payroll feature on any plan. Xero, Sage and QuickBooks compared covers the accounts side.

Before you choose

Four things to check, from the sources above:

1Where it will run in 2027. BrightPay Desktop has no updates after 31 December 2026, by BrightPay's own notice; Thesaurus Payroll Manager lists a 2027 version.
2How it reaches Revenue: direct reporting from the software, or a file you upload to ROS, for both payroll submissions and reportable benefits.
3Records. Revenue's manual on the 2018 Regulations says the information sent under Regulation 10 must be kept for six years after the end of the year it refers to, unless Revenue authorises a shorter period in writing, so check what the software keeps and how you would get it out.
4Automatic enrolment. BrightPay, Thesaurus and Sage 50 Payroll Ireland all list it.

Payroll data and automation

A payroll submission carries each employee's PPS number with their pay. Before an automation moves payroll figures anywhere, into the accounts or elsewhere, read what has to be written down first. Posting each pay run's journal into the accounts is a job that repeats every pay period, which makes it a candidate in what to automate first.

Sources

Pay-run figures into the books

Build connects your payroll software to your accounts package and the rest of your systems, so each pay run's figures reach the books without being retyped, and every automation retries and alerts a person when it fails. €1,500 for one connection, €3,000 for up to five workflows.

See Build

Who wrote this

Oscar Cobbe · Founder, FourWinds Digital

Writes and maintains the legal explainers on this site, and does the compliance work behind them. Every date and article number here is checked against the legislation itself before it is published, and each article shows the date it was last checked.

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