🚨 IMPORTANT INFO - BAS W1 prefill & Salary Sacrifice

ℹ IMPORTANT INFO - BAS W1 Prefill & Salary Sacrifice

Hi everyone,

The ATO have started prefilling BAS from STP Phase 2 data however it has come to our attention that Reckon Accounts Hosted 2023 is not reducing the total gross by the salary sacrifice component and therefore the BAS W1 prefill is showing the incorrect balance.

Example

Gross earnings: $1000.00 - Salary sacrifice: $200.00 = BAS W1 $800.00

Whereas the W1 prefill in Reckon Accounts will show $1000.00

What you currently need to do

The prefill amount is editable and the ATO advises to compare the prefilled amounts and to correct where it does not match your records. See information from the ATO in the screenshot below.

More info from the ATO here.

What is Reckon doing about it?

Our teams are reviewing this as we speak and working toward the best way of addressing the issue. More updates and information to follow as soon as possible and will be posted below.

We sincerely apologise for the confusion and inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask below.

Comments

Rav

🚨 UPDATE - 28 August 2023 🚨

Hi everyone

I just wanted to provide some new info on the above. Reckon Accounts Hosted 2023 has been updated to resolve this issue affecting the BAS W1 prefill along with a few other bugs.

Check out more info in our announcement linked below -

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/8034112/important-info-for-reckon-accounts-hosted-2023-bug-fixes

HXP

Morning,

Are these "bug fixes" available on Reckon Accounts Premier Desktop Edition yet?

Thank you.

Rav

@HXP

Yes they certainly are, there is specific information for the Reckon Accounts Desktop software HERE.

John Graetz

Hi Rav

This query relates to the issues for BAS Label W1 which you refer to above and the effect on the pre-fill with the ATO for monthly PAYG payers. I have no issue with what I need to do in changing the figure for August to reflect the adjustment for Salary Sacrifice deductions.

My problem relates to what the BAS report in Reckon is saying. When I re-run the report for July, there is no problem. However, when I run this report in Reckon for August, it is way out, with the W1 figure reporting more than $1,500 less than it should be.

Whilst I can easily ignore this figure and use the correct one, it is a bit mystifying as to why there is such a large discrepancy for August, but not when I re-run July. I have just run an interim report for W1 for September, and note that it is showing a figure that is more than $1,800 less than it ought to be.

The variances have nothing to do, as such, with the amount of salary sacrifice super, which are a long way different to the value of the discrepancy. There are no other readily identifiable salary items which could provide a clue as to the variances. On the face of it, it seems to me that whatever changes that Reckon made at the end of August, may have now raised another problem.

As I said, it is very easy for me to edit the Reckon BAS report, however, do you have an explanation as to why this discrepancy is suddenly arising for August and now for September, but not for July?

In order to rule out any other possibilities, I have run rebuild three times, but that proven not to have changed the problem. John L G

Rav

Hi @John Graetz

Good to hear from you, its been a while 🙂

I'll be honest, I'm not quite sure what's happening there but if you click on W1 in RAH, are all the relevant tax tracking types (including the new STP Phase 2 ones) ticked that are supposed to be ticked?

Also, can I just clarify where you are comparing these figures to?

John Graetz

Hi Rav. Yes it has been a while - very busy and slowing down in my old age!

I have done a large amount of research on what I reported above and will detail my findings. In the first instance, any BAS reports that I have run, have exactly the same selections at W1. I have looked at three different companies to see what any effects might be. Here they are:

Company 1 - only 1 employee with no discrepancies showing up in July, August and September. There is no salary sacrifice of super involved.

Company 2 - between 2 and 3 employees. Over a quarter, there are a maximum of 5 gross pay items and one salary sacrifice item. There is a quarterly lodgement. However, in view of problems in another company (see further below), I ran payroll summary reports for July, August and September. I then ran a BAS for each of those months. July and September agreed. However, there was also a problem with this one for August. Gross pay for August on the payroll summary report was $4,873.01 less salary sacrifice super of $800 leaving adjusted gross pay of $4,073.01. When I run a BAS for August it provides a figure at W1 of $3,260 which is a shortfall of $813. Whilst that is close to the salary sacrifice amount of $800, I cannot find anything like a $13 or $813 in any of the gross pay items. When I run another report for September, I find that it is ok. So, for this company it is only August that is a problem, from a BAS report point of view.

Company 3 gets more tricky. As reported, there is no problem with July. This company has 7 employees with generally only 6 gross pay items being used. There are two employees who have salary sacrifice super. The same BAS reports with no changes to W1 selections, are run for these two months and here is what happens. For August, on the Payroll Summary Report, we have gross pay of $19,139.46 less salary sacrifice super of $192.18 leaving adjusted gross pay of $18,947.28. When I run a BAS for August (we do have monthly reports to the ATO for PAYG) I end up with a figure at W1 of $17,566 which is a shortfall of $1,381.30. There are no combinations of payroll items that I can see which add up to anything close to this amount. I then come to September and whilst there is still a pay to come, I can still run interim reports. Here is what happens then. The payroll summary report (for two pays) has total gross pay of $21,176.15 less salary sacrifice super of $127.20 leaving adjusted gross pay of $21,048.95. When I run a BAS for September, the figure at W1 comes out as $19,152 which is a shortfall of $1,896.95. Once again, I cannot see any sort of combination of figures which could come to that amount.

The only conclusion that I can come to at the moment is that salary sacrifice is causing some sort of problem which could throw out at a higher rate for increasing values of payroll. From the ATO website I can see that the prefill amount is able to be reconciled with the monthly payroll summary reports. As mentioned earlier today, I have run a rebuild three times on company three without any improvement in results occurring when I re-run reports. I am happy to provide any reports that you might want to look at. John L G

John Graetz

Aha! Amazing what one finds out eventually. This problem reared its head once again. But, this time I was able to spot what appeared to be the reasons why the W1 Label in Reckon may be reporting short of what it should be. I could see that it seemed to have something to do with different leave types. A look through how I had setup the different pay items because of STP2, led me to note that leave types for annual leave and personal leave were generally classified as being Type O. When I then went back and clicked on the W1 Label for Reckon's BAS, I noticed that I hadn't included Type O items in Label W1. Once I did this, my W1 Label has balanced - phew!! That was a pretty dumb mistake!

John L G

Eric Murphy

This helped me out, thanks @John Graetz