EMPDUPE FILES

Hi Jo-anne.  The ones created by Reckon do not have an extension at all and they work just fine.  I have lodged them via floppy disk and through the ATO site using my Auskey and I have never had a problem.  John L G 

Jo-anne.  As Kim said, the validation report is what you need to find out what is wrong.  This is generated after you check the file first on the ATO website.

From the ATO website, here is a list of some common errors:
Common errors

Some of the common errors that may occur when lodging online include:

• The annual report file cannot be located on the hard drive (EMPDUPE, NOABN or FRW) – you must use a complying payroll software product to generate the annual report file.
• Income amount fields – invalid characters – remove blanks or non-numeric characters.
• Tax withheld – the tax withheld must be less than or equal to the sum of the income fields in the payment summary reported.
• Amendment indicator – the Amendment indicator field must not be blank. TheAmendment indicator field must contain either A or O.
• Supplier contact details (the supplier contact is the person lodging the report) – the supplier contact name and contact phone number must be completed. Refer to your software product manual to find out where to enter the supplier information within the payroll product.
• ECI Error Message SS – E039 – we could not accept the file as you are not authorised to return files for the ABN contained in the file Check that the ABN recorded in the activated AUSkey matches the ABN in the supplier data record of the file being sent.
• ECI Error Message – E912 – the ECI Client was unable to establish a connection to the ATO. Check that you have a live internet connection when transmitting the ECI report.
• When using ECI, the word 'NULL' is displayed when trying to locate a file (for example, EMPDUPE or NOABN) on your computer hard drive – perform an ECI application update for the business function first (for example, PAYG payment summary report). If you have already updated the application, type the full path of the file then select Check File.

John L G

You make a very good point Kim, but this also raises something else.  In days gone by. people using Outlook/Express, sometimes ended up with an attachment which had a .dat extension which then made the attachment unreadable (although there were ways to enable it to be read by going to a specific website to have it decoded).  This then raises the question as to whether, as you have pointed out Kim, the file left with the .dat extension or whether the process of downloading the file caused it to become corrupted.  I have only ever been aware of this problem with attachments in emails, rather than something being downloaded.  Has Reckon somehow created the .dat extension when you created the file prior to download?  A potential fix would be to rename the file without the .dat extension.  With a text editor, you can actually read the empdupe file as "running text"  John L G