Accounting software house Bright has announced the release of BrightPropose, its new cloud proposal tool, designed to streamline and standardise communication, pricing and service levels for accounting firm clients.
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The vendor describes BrightPropose as “an enhanced proposal software”, that enables users to create bespoke branded proposals and engagement letters for clients and prospects.
Expected to compete in the same arena as the likes of GoProposal by Sage and Ignition, the software offers the ability to create templates with a firm’s brand and visual identity or adapt and edit pre-existing BrightPropose templates.
It also features a pricing calculator, allowing users to accurately and consistently price for the services they offer, depending on factors including the client’s billing frequency, record-keeping quality and number of employees. Users can also amend the services offered or fees charged from within the system, and offer clients or prospects an e-signing functionality to streamline the process.
BrightPropose has been released to AccountancyManager users as an expansion of their existing onboarding functionality. The tool will also be available as a standalone product later this year, with accountants able to express an interest via the BrightPropose site.
While BrightPropose is built as a standalone product, it offers direct integration with Bright stablemate AccountancyManager. Once a client has been onboarded or a new proposal accepted, the BrightPropose system pushes the data into AccountancyManager’s practice management software reducing the need to duplicate data entry.
According to pricing details on the BrightPropose site, the product starts at £50 a month for five proposals per month for unlimited users. This rises to £100 a month for 20 proposals and £150 for 35 proposals. Users can also 'pay as you go', which is charged at £15 per proposal.
Practice protection
“We’ve set it up to be as easy to use and ‘out of the box’ as possible so it provides all standard services you’d expect for UK accounting firms,” James Reilly, senior product manager at Bright, told AccountingWEB. “But it’s been interesting to see how firms are using the flexibility in the product.”
Reilly highlighted one early adopter offering services to international clients who had adapted the templates into a multilingual format using the free text fields.
“The majority of usage we’ve seen so far has been for renewals or new proposals for existing clients,” continued Reilly. “The feedback we’ve received has consistently talked about having protection in place for the practice where previously adding new services was ad hoc and updating the engagement letter was tacked on to the end.”
Integration ambitions
Backed with investment from private equity house Hg Capital in 2021, Bright Group has embarked on an ambitious programme of acquisition, integration and expansion in the UK and Irish markets.
Bright has assembled a range of products from across the accounting software spectrum, bringing together payroll tool BrightPay, cloud practice management product AccountancyManager, tax and accounts production engine BTCSoftware, and Irish products Relate and Surf Accounts.
The vendor recently launched its BrightTax cloud compliance solution, using BTCSoftware’s cloud product as a foundation, but BrightPropose is the first new product to roll off the Bright production line.
The software house has made no secret of a desire to further integrate its diverse range of products for the accounting markets.
“Within the Bright family, we’ve got highly-regarded products that play nicely both with each other and externally, and we want to offer our users as much of the practical benefits of this as possible,” Bright CEO Kevin McCallum told AccountingWEB.
“We don’t want our users to experience jarring shifts of perspective when they switch between the Bright portfolio, but as our products become more integrated the real game-changer will be the integrations and the workflow automation this drives,” continued McCallum.
Bright’s new chief technology and product officer Ben Bishop told AccountingWEB the vendor is working towards having one unique Bright ID that accountants and their clients can use to log in to any of its products. It is also working on what Bishop called ‘Bright Hub’: an area where users can manage product subscriptions, billing and payments for themselves or their clients.
“We’re creating what you might call an ‘old school ERP’ for accountants but we’re taking a new approach,” continued Bishop. “We’re happy that each of our products is a best-of-breed app that adheres to a set of Bright rules and plays well with other elements.”
Bright also revealed it will be releasing a company secretarial tool. This is still at an early stage of development but is expected to follow a similar path to the software offered by BTCSoftware’s desktop CoSec product, including features such as full statutory books, Companies House e-filing, and production of Dividend Vouchers, company minutes and resolutions.
Get practical tips and advice on how to implement a pricing strategy that aligns with your practice's goals, as well as how to evaluate it on an ongoing basis in this guide from AccountingWEB and Bright.
