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Payroll updates are not flowing through to the ATO Portal

TonySmith

Hi,

I have had to do a payroll update in November and when going to submit the November IAS the updated information has not flowed through to the ATO portal and as they now prefill all payroll data for you this is a bit worrying. The same thing happened last year and it affected an individual as the information did not flow through to the employee ATO income. I actually had to lodge the query with the ATO and it took months to sort out. The problem is we can't check the employees YTD figure on the ATO to see if it matches the payroll YTD Can someone please look into this for me as it worries me every time I have to adjust payroll that it will not flow through to the employee ATO income statements.

Kind Regards

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Rav

Hi Jo

When you actioned your update, I'm assuming you did so through an update event-type submission, is that correct?

If so, an update event-type submission doesn't have any employer component in the submission, it only adjusts employee data. When you send an Update Event ie. to make changes to, or make corrections to employee balances it only adjusts that employee data only.

This is why it only shows that an entry has been received in the ATO Portal but doesn't show any detail. Since there is no employer data component in the submission it won't make any changes to the BAS prefill either.

To explain this in a little more context, there are two things included in an STP submission when you send it to the ATO; Employer Data & Employee Data

Employer Data includes a total gross and total PAYG for the pay run itself and is not a YTD balance. This is the data that the ATO have now started using to prefill the W1 and W2 fields in the BAS.
Employee Data includes the Year to Date (YTD) breakdown of the employee’s pays which is used for their Income Statement.

Under the old STP Phase 1 method, you could potentially miss a submission and then just send the subsequent one when the next pay run rolls around and the employee YTD balances would update & be correct.
However now that the ATO is using STP Phase 2 data to prefill using employer data, which just to reiterate, is the total gross & PAYG of that individual pay run itself and not reported as a YTD balance like employee data is. Since its a total of that specific pay run itself this means it will impact prefill balances in the event you send through the same submission multiple times, miss a submission, update a submission, submission results in an error etc.

So with all that said, if the ATO's prefill balances are incorrect, its recommended that you edit the W1 & W2 fields to correct them to what they should be.

TonySmith

Hi Rav,

thanks for that we always know to check for updates when the figures don't match and that's always the reason however I did get an employee call as her end of year figures had not updated, that's the one I had to escalate with the ATO so maybe it was a one off but as employers you have no way of checking the individuals YTD figures are correct so when the ATO prefill is not updating you can't help but think the same thing is happening to the employee. Anyway thank you for your help.

Kind Regards

Kali

We're having the same issue! When there is an update/amendment and lodged accordingly, gross and PAYG are not being updated on the ATO end from Reckon.

Our accounting firm has also brought this to our attention.

Rav

@Kali what you've outlined is normal.

As explained above, an update event-type submission doesn't have any employer component in the submission, it only adjusts employee data. When you send an Update Event ie. to make changes to, or make corrections to employee balances it only adjusts that employee data only.

Kali

So how do we update the employer component via payroll?

From the information from our Accountants - Reckon Software is the only software not flowing this through to the ATO post amendment?

Rav

I can't speak for your accountant however my belief is that advice is incorrect.

All update event-type submissions only adjust EMPLOYEE data only. There is no EMPLOYER component to update event submissions regardless of which software you're using.

If you need to adjust BAS prefill data, then you'll need to manually edit the W1 & W2 fields in the ATO Portal.

Kali

Ok - will go back to them with this. This is only since STP2?

Rav

No, update event submissions have never included an employer component since STP was introduced in 2018.

Its just a bit more evident now since the ATO is using STP Phase 2 submission data for pre-filling BAS whereas previously they weren't.

I'd recommend checking out the info in our latest #TipTuesday here - #TipTuesday - What's in an STP submission? although the majority of it is the same info outlined above.