Single Touch Payroll is a government initiative to streamline business reporting obligations.
Employers will be able to report salary or wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and super information to the ATO from their payroll solution, at the same time they pay their employees. There will also be more options for completing tax and super forms online. STP has begun for employers with 20 or more employees (1 July 2018 being the mandated date). It will be expanded to include employers with 19 or less employees from 1 July 2019, subject to legislation being passed in parliament (has been passed).
This means that reporting by Single Touch Payroll is no longer an option and penalties will start to be applied in the next financial year. (On ya ATO!)
On the surface, not much. Underneath, well just think of the duck. Most of the changes for the payroll person are actually procedural and this is what we are addressing in this document. Conservatively we have pumped 8 months into this project, with more too come.
Not yet implemented, but required by the ATO going forward is Multi-factor Authentication. Essentially this means you won't be able to access sensitive personal employee data, such as Tax File Numbers, Birth Dates and addresses unless you key in a code which will be sent to your mobile.
We also want to improve the interface to the Superannuation Clearing House, currently it's a big clumsy & could be made better.
This will pre populate W1 and W2 on your BAS statement.
Again, this is used to populate their tax returns.
In an ideal world, yes. But this is the ATO we are talking about, so no, it doesn't. In order to hook up directly to the ATO they imposed some security requirements. These security requirements are so tough almost no Payroll provider was able to write a 'connector' to get the job done. Faced with this dilemma, rather than relaxing the requirements, or writing and giving software developers the connector, the ATO decided to implement 'Sending Service Providers', or SSP's.
So it works like this. The SSP has the connector to the ATO, we, as in Minder and almost all other Payroll software companies, then connect to the SSP, who transmit the information on you behalf. That fixed the security problem didn't it! So we now have a situation where a commercial third party has to sit between your payroll and the ATO. The ATO says this protects 'their' network, but it's you that are having to pay for it.
Which brings us to SuperChoice. Early on, once we flagged with the ATO that this whole security thing sucked big time, we started to cast around for a third party SSP we could work with. There aren't many, but the SuperChoice guy's are really good at what they do and provide a number of benefits that the others didn't. Primarily is the 'Validation' of the file before it gets to the ATO. This validation is fantastic as it picks up 98% of all problems before they become a major headache. Remember, once the ATO have the file it is very difficult to correct mistakes, so by Validating the file first we can be fairly sure that it is acceptable to the ATO.
Your company will have an account with SuperChoice, we will set that up when we implement STP with you. You may request a log in to that account should you want one.
Sorry about that, blame the ATO. You will see a line item on your software maintenance invoice which is to cover the fee's. Honestly it is not a lot of money and represents good value.
See your Support contact for Important Setup information.
Note that the ATO requires that all access to a Payroll system is logged and prtected by 2 Factor Authentication. See this document for further details. |
Assuming your are already logged into the Payroll System:-
be it direct entry, via time sheets, or a combination. Arrive at the point where you are ready to get approval.
Normally this will be 'Payroll 3 - Pay Summary Listing'.
Once you have sign off, you can proceed with the payroll.
You will have done this before, but now you cannot leave it open, it must be closed prior to processing Single Touch Payroll.
Once the Payslips are run, the ABA file has been uploaded to the bank & the Pay Period is closed, we can now commence the new part of the process.
You can Check the status of your last upload here.
This is a double check that you have CLOSED the Pay Period
It also gives you a clue as to what should be in the following section (ie the Pay Period & Run No should be less 1!)
You must set the following:-
Once those fields are OK, you can then press 'Compile File'
This creates the file & produces the actual Payroll report that is sent to the ATO in the next step.
The screen will now display the Totals for:
This should equal your previous Payroll Reports.
Now Click on the 'Upload File' button
A new screen is displayed
The browse box will display the status of previous submissions.
If the Validation is Successful, then the file will be automatically submitted to the ATO.
Once this has occurred, you will be able to click on the latest Issue ID and receive the status from the ATO.
The Message you are looking for is 'ATO_SUCCESS'.
"INVALID_API_REQUEST"
"SUPERCHOICE_SYSTEM_ERROR"
"SUBMISSION_FAILED_VALIDATION"
"PRE_SUBMISSION_PASSED_VALIDATION"
"SUBMISSION_INITIATED"
"SUBMISSION_FAILED_SECONDARY_VALIDATION"
"ATO_RECEIPT"
"ATO_WARNING"
"ATO_PARTIAL_SUCCESS"
"ATO_SUCCESS"
"ATO_ERROR"
"CANCELLED"