Archived employees and transition to phase 2

redman

Please help! I am trying to transition to the phase 2 platform, however I cannot move beyond the checklist because the platform is recognising employees who have left. the checklist is asking for income stream code and Employment type for employees who are labeled as terminated and have a termination date of some years ago. What do I do??

Rav

Hi @redman

In order to proceed with completing the checklist, you'll need to enter the STP Phase 2 fields for all employees as the checklist will present your full list. The reason behind that was due to the potential scenario of data validation & inconsistency issues if a terminated employee was later reinstated but did not have STP Phase 2-compliant information.

There's some work going on at our end at the moment to fine tune the checklist to only show active employees however at this stage I would not let this delay you from getting ready for STP Phase 2 and complete your checklist.

redman

I understand. I have read this response to several other users who have experienced the same problem. However, if this problem persists how do I now report the payroll information for the next two weeks as I have finalized the phase 1 EOFY amounts for my current 2 employees and have assigned new Payroll IDs (as instructed by ATO advice) to those 2 expecting that I could transition to phase 2 and complete the final two weeks of this financial year in phase 2. But now that is not the case. How can I fulfill my obligations to the ATO if the payroll platform won’t allow me to move forward?

Rav

Hi @redman

To clarify, the terminated employees will remain terminated, when you complete any new pay runs after completing the checklist, only data for employees included within the pay run will be sent as part of the submission (as normal). The terminated employees will remain as they are.

... and have assigned new Payroll IDs (as instructed by ATO advice) to those 2 ...

I'm not sure what the above is referring to. Can you give me a bit more detail around this.

redman

Yes I understand. This is not the problem.

I cannot move forward with the checklist into phase 2 because the Employee tab in the checklist won’t give me a green tick as it is waiting for me to enter income stream code and employment type for employees who no longer work for me. Why would it need this? They are no longer active?

The advice on the ATO website on transitioning to phase 2 asks you to choose one of methods before making the transition.

1. the Hybrid Transition method
2. the Replacing Payroll IDs method

1. I chose the Replacing Payroll IDs. Which asked me to finalize my EOFY 22/23 for my two employees and submit that data, which I have done. And assign new payroll IDs (numbers) to the employees in order to move into phase 2. I am at a road block for moving to phase 2, as I can’t report in phase 1 since it is already submitted and finalized and I can’t report in phase 2 as the Employee parameter will not give me the green tick until I deal with the archived employees (they don’t work for us any longer) who show up on the employee checklist. But I still have 2 weeks of this financial year to report on to the ATO. What do I now do?

Rav

@redman

In order to proceed you need to complete the checklist by completing it in full. That means you need to make selections within those fields for the terminated employees.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it seems a bit odd and unnecessary to do so however the same thing would apply if you had an employee that was terminated at some point in the financial year, they'd still be included for reporting in the End of Financial Year finalisation (that is just a generic example and not specific to STP Phase 2).

What you need to do at this point to move forward, is enter the relevant selections for those employees and you'll be able to progress. As mentioned, the terminated employees will remain as they are ie. all you're doing is satisfying the requirements of the checklist.

redman

Ok thank you.

so just to clarify, in order to be able to proceed into phase 2, for the employees who no longer are active, if I chose the parameters that best describes their status for the last time they where with us, and bring them across to phase two, they will still be inactive in phase 2 and I won’t be asked to input any sort of information for them? They will remain inactive and archived? As they have been in phase one. They won’t appear in my pay runs for each week?

Rav

Yes that is exactly right 😊

redman

Excellent thankyou for your patience

Rav

No worries at all, let me know how you get on.