#TipTuesday - Why does my Payroll Summary report not match my EOFY finalisation? 📆
Happy new financial year! 🎆
Hopefully this EOFY period is smooth and stress free for everyone 🙂
On that note, you're probably starting to think about getting your EOFY finalisation sorted for your employees so today's #TipTuesday is about understanding how to reconcile your balances and some key differences between the EOFY finalisation screen and the Payroll Summary report.
Payroll Summary Report
The Payroll Summary report gives you a quick summary of balances for employees from selected pay runs or a selected time period. By default this report also includes balances from draft pay runs.
Its important to note, the Payroll Summary report does not include any balances that have been added to the employee as an initial YTD balance in their profile by default. To include initial YTD balances in your Payroll Summary Report, click on Show More Options ➡️ select Yes to include Initial YTD ➡️ Click Refresh to refresh the report.
It also important to understand this reports shows aggregated balances for gross ie. the earnings and leave balance that you see in the report is comprised of Gross Pay, Leave, Overtime, Bonus & Commissions, Directors Fees, Lump Sum and ETP. It includes all pay run balances, including those from pay items which may not be reported by STP.
EOFY finalisation
The EOFY finalisation screen shows the balances of all pay items that have been reported via STP only.
Unlike the Payroll Summary report, the EOFY finalisation includes any balances added to an employee as an initial YTD balance. It also displays gross earnings balances disaggregated as required by Single Touch Payroll Phase 2.
As mentioned above, the EOFY finalisation screen displays balances from pay items that have been reported via STP, that means it does not include the following as they are not included in STP submissions:
- Reimbursements
- Company contributions
- Deductions that have the deduction type as Other (and Deduct from gross before calculating withholding is not checked)
- any Ordinary Time Earnings (OTE), Variable, Overtime, Bonus and Commission, Directors Fee where the Calculation method is Tax free
What's the best way to reconcile?
I'd also strongly recommend using the Employee Earnings Summary report. This report includes;
- All transactions, including draft pay runs
- Option to include initial YTD balances
- A look and feel similar to that of the Payroll Detail Report with simplified fields
- Employees listed alphabetically with pay items grouped as usual
- Clearly identifies pay items which are not reported via STP
This high-level summary makes payroll reconciliation with STP and other reports much, much easier!
If you'd rather stick with the Payroll Summary report, then when comparing the balances between the Payroll Summary report and the EOFY finalisation, you may notice the balances may vary. This is dependent upon what type of pay item has been used throughout the pay run, or entered as initial year to date (YTD) values.
For example, to reconcile earnings and leave balances, add the relevant disaggregated earnings & leave values in the EOFY finalisation report (such as Gross Pay, Leave, Overtime, Bonus & Commissions, Directors Fees, Lump Sum and ETP) and subtract any initial YTD values. This should equal the Earnings & leave total in the Payroll Summary Report.
That's just one example but we've also got a really helpful, detailed guide on reconciling your EOFY balances with working examples which I'd strongly recommend checking out here -
Comments
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@Rav this might be a silly question but is there a report equivalent of the EOFY finalisation that I can call up when I want to check employee balances throughout the year?
Or is there anything preventing from just generating a draft finalisation, printing it and then discarding it as and when required?
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Hey @Eric Murphy, that's a great callout.
There's nothing stopping you at all from generating an EOFY finalisation at any point throughout the financial year, either download it or print it and then discard it without sending.
In fact, that's a great way of keeping tabs with what's being sent via STP for employees when you need it over the course of the financial year.
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Sounds good, thanks Rav
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