#TipTuesday - What's in an STP submission? 💻

Rav

Hey everyone!

Welcome to the final #TipTuesday of 2024! Can you believe how quick time has just flown by!

Today we're going to explore STP submissions in a little more detail including some important things to understand when it comes to prefill data for BAS.

What is sent in an STP submission?

Since the introduction of STP back in 2018, there are two things included in an STP submission when you send it to the ATO; Employer Data & Employee Data

✨ Employee Data includes the Year to Date (YTD) breakdown of the employee’s pays which is used for their Income Statement.

✨ 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.

What should I be aware of?

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 from the employee data.
There would be no bearing on BAS prefill as employer data wasn't being prefilled under STP Phase 1.

However, as you know we've switched over and are exclusively reporting STP under STP Phase 2 from 2023. The ATO is also 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 (not reported as a YTD balance like employee data is).

Now, since its a total of that specific pay run this means it will impact prefill balances in the event you send through the same submission multiple times, miss a submission, the submission results in an error etc.

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

How does an update event affect prefill data?

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.

More info

I'd also recommend checking out our help guide on this here -  https://community.reckon.com/home/leaving?allowTrusted=1&target=https%3A%2F%2Fhelp.reckon.com%2Farticle%2Fh2bfwmfz9z

I know that's a lot of information but hopefully it helps in understanding how an STP submission works and also why, at times, BAS prefill balances may need amending.

We'll be back next year with more #TipTuesday, thank you to everyone who has contributed this year! 🙌

Eric Murphy

Thanks for this info, it's quite interesting. Are you aware if this is the way forward with the ATO or are there improvements in this process on the horizon?