Why is Reckon stuffing up the STP?

Robert_10157118

I have the below 2 issues with Reckon STP.

Issue 1

PAYG Payment summary taking ages to get on some employees MyGov account

When I have reported the EOFY STP to the government, not all employees are getting the PAYG Payment Summary added to their MyGov straight away. For example, we have 2 employee's that use the same tax agent one has had no issues and the other since STP came into effect has had issues with the PAYG Payment Summary being added to their MyGov. every year I have had to generate and print them one direct from reckon.

Issue 2

The new STP Employee Payment Tax Tracking is only recording the "Gross Payments" tracking code on the payment summary and not including the other necessary details.

We have printed the PAYG Payment Summaries for our employees and under Gross Payments it has only included the payments under Tax Tracking "Gross Payments" and not ones for Holiday Leave "Leave - Other paid leave (O)" or overtime "Overtime". But on Reckon https://stp.reckon.com/company/ it has all the payments split into their tracking types.

For example, Reckon shows the below on their site, but on the reckon generated PAYG Payment Summary it only shows the Gross Payment of $14,623 and PAYG of $3,221.

Payment Type Amount Type

Gross Payment $14,623.67 INB Gross

PAYG $3,221.00 PAYG

Leave $1,398.26 O

Overtime $1,234.64 Overtime

Rav

Hi @Robert_10157118

In regard to the first issue you've outlined, do you mean after you send your EOFY finalisation the status for that specific employee isn't changing to Tax Ready? You've mentioned in your post that it 'takes ages', does that mean that it eventually does update to Tax Ready?

Is this occurring only on the EOFY finalisation? ie. do they receive their regular pay information to their MyGov income statement in a timely manner on your regular pay run submissions?

Are your submissions returning a Success status and if so, have you spoken with the ATO in relation to this yet. What have they advised so far?

In regard to the second situation, you've mentioned payment summaries, are you referring to the old payment summaries required to be given to employees prior to STP coming into effect?

If so, those payment summaries are obsolete but more importantly they shouldn't be used to compare or review data in a financial year that includes STP Phase 2 submissions as they won't reflect accurately particularly if you've made changes.

There's some more info on this from one of our previous posts which I'll link below - #TipTuesday: Why payment summaries are obsolete with STP Phase 2 in Reckon Accounts

Robert_10157118

Hi Rav

Issue 1

Everything on our end shows that it was successfully submitted to the ATO. The employee and a few others have gone to their tax agent on the 20 July or later and it is not showing up, some have weighted and after several weeks it has finally shown up. I have not spoken with the ATO yet.

Issue 2

This is the report I have referring to. If this feature is now obsolete and produces inaccurate information when STP Phase 2 is involved, then why is it still included in the software and or why is there no warning information stating that it may produce inaccurate PAYG Summaries?

Kris_Williams

this happened to me last year and no amount of contact with the ATO could sort it out. I had to give the employee a payroll report showing the totals for the year to take to the accountant. On the ATO’s advice I resubmitted the EOFY file but to no avail. The Payment summaries have been obsolete for a couple of years and there was a lot of discussion about that on this forum. However their presence could cause confusion and I’m sure this will be rectified as soon as practicable

Rav

@Robert_10157118

Everything on our end shows that it was successfully submitted to the ATO. The employee and a few others have gone to their tax agent on the 20 July or later and it is not showing up, some have weighted and after several weeks it has finally shown up. I have not spoken with the ATO yet.

Unfortunately we don't have any visibility or control over what happens on the ATO end after the submissions have been sent, and I'm genuinely not trying to pass the buck here, but if the submissions are showing a Success status, which you've mentioned they are, then the response we've received back from the ATO is that its been processed successfully.

My recommendation to you would be to give the ATO a buzz and have a chat on why that's occurring and in case it helps them you can provide the ATO receipt number for your submission which you'll find in GovConnect.

This is the report I have referring to. If this feature is now obsolete and produces inaccurate information when STP Phase 2 is involved, then why is it still included in the software and or why is there no warning information stating that it may produce inaccurate PAYG Summaries?

Payment summaries became outdated when STP first took effect back in 2018 so they haven't necessary for a while now. However its only now that STP Phase 2 kicked off last year where they became fully obsolete.

The removal and/or disabling of this functionality is something that's been raised. The product team are being a little careful about it though in the event doing so has adverse effects in other areas of the software, however yes its been flagged now that everyone is on STP Phase 2.

Acctd4

Just to add to Rav's advice ….

The Payment Summaries will still work IF you only have "Gross Payment"-mapped earnings eg for an employer who just has casual employees on a normal hourly pay/salary, with no allowances, leave or bonuses. At the moment there's no default report that shows that so the Payment Summaries can still be useful in some capacities.

Employees are still able to lodge their tax returns with unfinalised or missing STP data! It just means it doesn't necessarily prefill automatically (depending on the tax return software used) so just needs to be entered manually (like it was, pre-STP) You can also provide the employee with a printout or screen snip of their STP lodgment figures by clicking on the Detail link of your finalisation submission, then on the Detail link for the relevant employee line within it.

If your submission shows as Success in Reckon's portal, you have completed the process correctly & that is the extent of what can be done from your side. Re-submitting the finalisation can sometimes work, but not always. Incorrect or non-display for the employee in their myGov is actually an ATO/myGov issue & also happens when using other accounting software too (hence it's not actually to do with Reckon) 😊