nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Submission has been rejected by the ATO

jennyhwang

Hi,

I am receiving the following STP validation error:

"A text character must be one of the following: A to Z, a to z, 0 to 9, ! @ $ % & * ( ) - _ = [ ] ; : ' " , . ? / or a space character."

I have reviewed all of the contact details for both my company and my employees, but I could not find any unsupported or special characters.

Does anyone know what else could be causing this error or how to resolve it?

Accepted answers

All comments

Rav

Hi @jennyhwang

Have your STP submissions prior to this particular one been successful?

If so, is there a new inclusion such as a new employee included in the pay run for this STP submission or anything else that might have changed?

jennyhwang

Hi @Rav ,

This is the first pay run for this company, so I am unable to compare it with any previous pay runs.

I have already printed and reviewed the employee details report to check for any unsupported special characters, additional spaces, or formatting issues, but I could not identify anything unusual.

The same issue has also occurred for another company. I reviewed all recent changes made to that company’s payroll and employee records, but I still could not find any information that appears to be incorrect.

Could you please advise whether there are any other fields or system settings that may cause this validation error?

Rav

The main areas I've seen this error stem from is the address, phone number and contact person details, either in an employee's profile or in your company details in your Reckon One book/payroll settings.

Can you confirm that you've checked over those fields?

jennyhwang

Yes @Rav

I have checked the company details in both the Book Settings and Payroll Settings. Are there any other fields that I should review?

I have also checked each employee's name, email address, residential address, and phone number.

Thank you.

Rav

I think we might need to take a closer look as that does sound strange if you've checked over all the fields.

I'd like to shoot through an access request to your book for a closer look, can I just confirm that this is occurring on the book that is registered under the same email address that is listed on your Reckon Community account?

jennyhwang

@Rav

We are a Reckon Partner, Charm Accounting. You should be able to access our partner account using <email address removed>

This issue has occurred for the following client books:

<book name removed>
<book name removed>

Could you please access these accounts on your end and investigate the issue for us? We have reviewed the records but have been unable to identify the cause.

Thank you for your assistance.

Rav

Thanks for that @jennyhwang

I've edited your post above to remove the email address and book names for your privacy, but I've also sent through an access request to each book.

They will come through separately via email to the owner of each book. They'll just need to grant access first by clicking the option within the email.

If you can facilitate that and let me know then I can take a look.

Cheers

Rav

Morning @jennyhwang

I believe this should now sorted for both books, can you please try sending through a submission for each when you have a chance and let me know if its successful for you.

Cheers

jennyhwang

@Rav

Thank you.

For the first company, 'GOLDEN', the STP submission for the 22/06/2026 pay run was lodged successfully. However, the 25/05/2026 pay run is still showing an error.

As a result, we are unable to complete the EOFY finalisation for this company. Could you please investigate this issue and advise how we can resolve it?

Thank you for your assistance.

Rav

The previous submissions that have returned an error status will remain as they are and cannot be changed.

However with that said, that shouldn't prevent you from performing an EOFY finalisation. Is there a specific issue or error that you're running into when you attempt to create and send the EOFY finalisation in this book now that the STP issue has been resolved?

jennyhwang

@Rav

The previous error had two same description:

The current error has only one description:

Based on my review, it appears that there were previously two employees affected by this error, but only one of them has now been resolved.

Could you please check this issue again and investigate why the other employee is still showing the error?

Thank you for your assistance.

Rav

Yes you're exactly right, sorry about that @jennyhwang

That should be sorted now as well, could you give it one more go and see how if its successful for you now?

jennyhwang

@Rav

Yes, everything has now been resolved. Thank you for your assistance!

May I ask what the root cause of this issue was? We'd like to understand what caused it so that we can avoid the same problem in the future.

Rav

It was a bit of a strange one to be honest. There was a space after the email address for a couple of employees but it wasn't immediately apparent looking at the email address field in their profile ie. it looked fine/normal when viewing it.

All it took was to remove the email address and put it back in again and save the profile.

We've got the devs to open a ticket and look into why that was happening and see if there are any extra validations we can put in to make it easier to identify.

jennyhwang

@Rav

Hi,

One of our another client complained that there was the same error happen for EOFY finalisation.

The book named:

<book name removed>

Rav

Morning @jennyhwang

I've just sent through an access request to that book. I'll be able to take a look once access has been granted 🙂

Rav

Hi @jennyhwang

Can you please give it another go on that additional book when you have a chance and let me know if it looks better?

jennyhwang

@Rav

Yes, everything has now been resolved. Thank you for your assistance!

Could you please also remove the client's book name?

Rav

Glad that sorted and yes no problem, has been edited from the previous post.

jennyhwang

@Rav

Hi,

One of our another client complained that there was the same error happen for STP… :)

The book named:

Rav

Hi @jennyhwang

I've just shot through an access request to that book. Once access has been granted, I can take a look

Rav

Hi @jennyhwang

Give it another go when you have a chance. I'm a little less certain about this one as a good number of employees within this book don't have valid address details listed. Specifically, they only have a number with no street address name etc.

jennyhwang

@Rav

Hi,

Another client has reported experiencing the same STP error. 🙂

The book name is:

M2K Australia - 14/05/2026 Payrun STP Error & EOFY Error

Sorry for having to contact you again about the same issue. We were hoping there might be a clear root cause so that we can identify and resolve this type of issue ourselves in the future.

Could you please have a look at this book from your end and let us know what you find?

Thank you for your continued assistance.

Rav

Hi @jennyhwang

I've just sent through an access request to that book.

In the meantime though, if you click on Contact Centre on the menu on the left, then select Employees

Open up the employee profiles for each employee included in that latest STP submission which has been rejected.

Check if the email address has a leading or trailing space (like in my example below) and if so, remove it then save the profile.

That should fix the problem in the interim while we're investigating a more permanent solution on our end.