Each pay period a summary of Year To Date payroll data must be sent to the ATO. This guide will explain how this is done and the best practice to get successful submissions.
Menu > Payroll > Payruns > Payslip > ATO Lodge
| EOFY | End Of Financial Year |
| ETP | Employment Termination Payment |
| Final | Last STP submission for this employee for the financial year |
| PAYG | Pay As You Go - Employee tax obligation |
| SBR | Standard Business Reporting - The gateway used to talk to the ATO |
| STP | Single Touch Payroll |
| TFND | Tax File Number Declaration - Required from all staff when first hired |
| YTD | Year To Date - All STP data is YTD |
STP is a method of reporting your payroll data electronically to the ATO. The payroll data is sent from your payroll software to the ATO via a service called SBR.
The data must go through a software solution at some point, thus using a cloud payroll provider like Microkeeper does all the heavy lifting on your behalf.
STP is designed to streamline payroll reporting. Once fully implemented, a few tasks will be eliminated from the payroll officer and HR duties. This includes:
One way to think of STP is like submitting a Group Cert every payrun.
STP data must be submitted when payroll is processed, thus your employees onboarding processes has to be efficient and timely.
Employers are going to need to run a tight ship, especially those with high staff turnover rates as they're going to need to collect all relative data from their staff before their first payrun is processed.
Microkeeper has integrated Single Touch Payroll heavily into the application, thus we help collect all relevant data from the employee as soon as they first login including the TFND fields.
All payments and deductions can be classified with the appropriate STP classification on the Payslip. The table below shows a list of all possible classifications.
Only staff that are included in a payrun are included in a submission via STP, this means terminated/inactive staff will not be included.
When it's an employee's final payrun for the year their payslip must be marked as Final, thus there are two cases were this will be relevant.
Employers are going to need to submit Payment Summaries for 2017/18.
This is because all past payments will not have been classified correctly and terminated staff were not finalised correctly for STP.
Microkeeper does use the Lump sum class in STP to fill the Payment Summaries Lump values.
ETP classes are not used and a manual ETP form will need to be filled.
When an employee is first added to Microkeeper they should be provided with their login credentials.
Staff should log in and, from the Employee Console, fill all fields required, they should know all fields required for STP with the exception to the TFN.
If the staff member doesn't have a TFN they should apply for one immediately, the employer can insert a temporary place holding TFN if required.
Microkeeper only reports on staff that were included in a payrun with PAYG tax or Gross value greater than 0 to the ATO.
Thus, when an employee is receiving their last payslip from the business, this must be marked as Final.
Step 1 Process a payrun as normal
Step 2 Click the Final button on the employees payslip
Step 3 Review the Final form and apply ready to STP submission
The Final button on the Payslip will set the Employee as Terminated set the Termination date and mark the Payslip as Final.
This will be the last time time the employee is included in an STP report.
Warning if an employee is terminated AFTER an STP submission they will not be included in the next payrun, thus the ATO will never receive a Final STP submission.
If an employee is rehired or reactivated a few steps need to be followed.
Step 1 Go into the Employees Profile and set the employee as Active.
Step 2 Remove the Terminated Date
Step 3 Set a new Start Date
The next time the employee is included in a payrun, their payslip will not be marked as Final and the ATO will know you have commenced work again.
Make sure to double check all the employees details are still current.
When you process the last payrun for the year all payslips must be marked as Final.
If an employee was terminated throughout the year but did not have their last payslip marked as Final Microkeeper will flag an issue.
Microkeeper has extra validation for the last payrun of the year to help ensure all staff were reported correctly.
There are 4 main parties involved to make STP possible, if any one party doesn't fill their obligation in a timely manner, STP will not be successful.
| Staff obligations | Employer obligations | Microkeeper obligations | SBR ATO obligations |
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Todo 1 Review all the Payroll rules
Review all Shift rules, Extra rules, Deductions Rules and Public Holiday Rules, select the correct STP classification
Example "Car allowance" select STP class "Car"
The option Employee Profile - Tax is used to automatically select the correct STP class from the employees profile
Example Employee Tax set to Australian Resident then the STP class Individual Non-Business will be selected when payroll is process
If setup is completed successfully, the next time payroll is processed all the correct STP classifications will be selected automatically.
Todo 2 Add your Software ID to Access Manager
Settings > General > Global
Copy your Software ID
Access Manager https://am.ato.gov.au
Login and go to My hosted SBR software services
Search for Microkeeper and Paste your Software ID
| Steps | Title | Description |
| 1 | Review staff details | Ensure all staff details are complete and accurate, especially for any newly hired employees |
2 | Process payroll | Process payroll as usual Make sure all payments are classified correctly Run Final button on staff that need to be terminated Pay staff and Lock payrun as per usual |
3 | Validate | Click ATO lodge Microkeeper will run validation on all data and provide an STP report to review the data that will be submitted to the ATO If Microkeeper's validation fails, you will not be able to submit payroll data until all required fields are filled You will be supplied with an error that will include a list of missing values and which staff are affected |
| 4 | Submit | Digitally sign the form and submit the STP data |
5 | Review | After a response has been returned from the ATO, you can review and check to see if your submission was successful If the submission to the ATO fails, the ATO will reply with a list of errors that are (hopefully) human friendly |
The specifications from the ATO are incredibly complicated, therefore Microkeeper has simplified the breakdown of the options into a single list and automated the reporting from there.
This chart will help select the correct payment or deduction option/s, however, if you're not sure of a classification, Microkeeper cannot legally assist. You will need to refer to the ATO website or contact legal assistance.
There are many other fields that need to be filled but everything else is either self explanatory or automatically filled by Microkeeper.
Some fields have been hidden but are available upon request.
| Microkeeper Title | ATO Brief Description |
| Normal earnings | |
| Individual Non-Business | Include all salary, wages, bonuses and commissions paid to the payee as an employee, company director or office holder. Include the total gross amount before amounts are withheld. Gross payments also include: pensions and annuities; compensation, and sickness or accident pay. Also include the following amounts: - allowances you paid to compensate for specific working conditions and payments for special qualifications or extended hours - allowances you paid to cover expenses that are not tax deductible to the payee - for example, normal home-to-work transport expenses - holiday pay or bonuses, and - amounts you paid for unused long service leave, unused holiday pay and other leave-related payments that accrued after 17 August 1993, except if the amount was paid because the payee ceased employment under an approved early retirement scheme, invalidity or bona fide redundancy. |
| Working Holiday Makers | The amount earned by the Working Holiday Maker for the relevant period. |
| Labour Hire Arrangement | The amount of gross income earned by an individual worker through a labour hire firm without establishing a contractual arrangement with the worker. |
| Foreign Resident | The total of all gross payments made to the foreign resident payee for the financial year. |
| Allowances | |
| Car | Car expense allowance. |
| Transport | Award transport payments up to reasonable amounts. |
| Laundry | Laundry allowances. |
| Meals | Award overtime meal allowance. |
| Travel | Domestic or overseas travel allowance above the reasonable limit and all overseas accommodation allowances. |
| Other | All other allowances for expected deductible expenses. |
| Employee Termination Payments ETP | |
| Type R - Taxable | ETP made because of one of the following: early retirement scheme, genuine redundancy, invalidity, or compensation for personal injury, unfair dismissal, harassment, or discrimination. |
| Type R - Fax-Free | As above line except tax free component |
| Type O - Taxable | Other ETP not described by R (for example: golden handshake, gratuity, payment in lieu of notice, payment for unused sick leave, or payment for unused rostered days off). |
| Type O - Fax-Free | As above line except tax free component |
| Type S - Taxable | ETP code R payment received in the current year and received another ETP (code R or code O), or a transitional termination payment, in an earlier income year for the same termination of employment. |
| Type S - Fax-Free | As above line except tax free component |
| Type P - Taxable | ETP code O payment received in the current year and received another ETP (code R or code O), or a transitional termination payment, in an earlier income year for the same termination of employment. |
| Type P - Fax-Free | As above line except tax free component |
| Type D | Death benefit ETP paid to a dependant of the deceased. |
| Type B | Death benefit ETP paid to a non-dependant of the deceased and a termination payment was made to the non-dependant in a previous income year for the same termination. |
| Type N | Death benefit ETP paid to a non-dependant of the deceased. |
| Type T | Death benefit ETP paid to a trustee of the deceased estate. |
| Lump Sum Payments | |
| Lump A - Type R | Type R = Where payment was for a genuine redundancy,invalidity or under an early retirement scheme. Lump A = The amount paid for unused long service leave that accrued after 15 August 1978 but before 18 August 1993; unused holiday pay and other leave related payments that accrued before 18 August 1993 or unused long service leave accrued after 17 August 1993 or unused holiday pay or related payments, where the amount was paid in connection with a payment that includes or consists of a genuine redundancy payment, an early retirement scheme payment or the invalidity segment of an employment termination payment or superannuation payment. |
| Lump A - Type T | Type T = Where payment was not a payment for a genuine redundancy, invalidity or under an early retirement scheme. Lump A = Description above |
| Lump B | The amount paid for unused long service leave that accrued before 16 August 1978. |
| Lump D | The amount of genuine redundancy payment or early retirement scheme payment below the tax-free threshold. |
| Lump E | The amount of back payment received including salary or wages that accrued in a period more than 12 months before the date of payment. |
| Deductions | |
| Workplace Giving | Workplace giving is a simple way to regularly donate to charities or organisations that are entitled to receive tax deductible donations. |
| Fees | Union fees, subscriptions to associations and bargaining agents fees, can be entitled to receive a tax deduction. |
| Hidden STP fields available on request | |
All details mentioned in the above table are not legal advice, please refer to the ATO website or get legal assistance when classifying payments or deductions.
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