Description
The pay batch process has been enhanced so that it is no longer possible to close a pay batch if there are payees in the batch who will have negative year-to-date (YTD) gross earnings if the pay batch is closed. The following error message is now displayed at the Review pay batch stage if you attempt to close the pay batch but doing so would result in negative YTD gross earnings.
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If this situation occurs, the following can be done before attempting to close the pay batch again:
remove the affected payee(s) from the batch
adjust or remove any transactions for negative amounts that may be reducing the affected payee(s) gross earnings to less than zero.
If an overpayment, which occurred in a prior financial year, needs to be recovered in the current financial year, it is important that the payee’s YTD earnings for the current financial year are taken into account when reducing the payee’s earnings to claw back the overpayment. For example, you may need to recover the overpayment over multiple pay periods to ensure that the payee’s YTD earnings would not potentially go into negative.
If a payee has repaid the overpayment directly, such as by refunding the overpayment in cash, then a balancing payments adjustment batch should be processed to adjust the payee’s YTD earnings. If the overpayment related to a prior financial year, the balancing payments adjustment pay batch must be for a period in the relevant, prior financial year.
Benefits
This enhancement facilitates compliance with statutory reporting requirements whereby the ATO will reject Single Touch Payroll (STP) submissions if a payee’s gross earnings for a financial year are reported as negative. By preventing a pay batch being closed if the transactions in the pay batch would result in negative YTD earnings, STP submission rejections due to negative aggregate YTD gross earnings are prevented.
Configuration
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