Pay Australia > Ability to zero out STP data for all payees of a pay company (v12.17)

Description

There are circumstances where it may be necessary to zero out any STP data that has been reported by a pay company during a financial year. For example, if a pay company has been reporting under the wrong ABN/ABN branch number and therefore all reported year-to-date (YTD) amounts must be transferred to another ABN/ABN branch number, the amounts reported under the original ABN/ABN branch number must be zeroed out.

Previously, the process to achieve this was cumbersome as you had to reverse all payments made under the original ABN/ABN branch number and report the reversals through STP, update the ABN/ABN branch number and then reprocess all payments and submit STP reports to report the payments using the new details. Now, you can simply submit a zero-out submission to zero all YTD values previously reported against the old ABN/ABN branch number, correct the ABN/ABN branch number on the Pay Company record and then continue to submit STP reports, without having to reverse the payments made using the old ABN/ABN branch number.

To facilitate this, we have added a new Zero Out action to the Payroll > ATO Reports > STP EOFY screen to allow a payroll officer to trigger a zero out of previously reported STP data for a pay company.

Open

To zero out YTD amounts that have been reported for a pay company for a financial year, follow the procedure below:

1. Navigate to the STP EOFY screen.

2. Select the name of the relevant pay company, the tax year for which STP data has already been reported and select Search.

3. Click on the relevant batch in the Results section of the screen.

4. Select Zero Out and click OK to confirm the action at the prompt. A confirmation message is displayed, warning you that you are about to zero out all reported STP data for the selected pay company and financial year.

5. To continue to zero out, click OK. The STP declaration is displayed and you are prompted to sign-off the submission declaration that applies to the corresponding pay company.

6. Where the declaration is signed, the submission status of the batch is set to Queued and the batch is queued for sending to the ATO.

7. As per the pre-existing batch submission process, where the service sends the queued batch, the submission status updates to Submitted. Once a success or failure response is received from the ATO the submission status of the batch changes to Completed, Completed with Exceptions or Rejected depending on whether the zero out was successful, whether there were data errors for one or more payees in the batch or whether the entire submission was rejected respectively. Alternatively, if there is a problem sending the submission, the submission status of the batch will be set to Technical Error.

8. Where the submission status changes to Completed with Exceptions, Rejected or Technical Error, you will be able to resubmit the batch by following steps 3-5, after fixing any relevant issues.

Benefits

This enhancement provides an agency with the ability easily zero out STP submissions for a pay company during the financial year where a pay company has been reporting under the wrong ABN/ABN branch number.

Configuration

No configuration is required to use this new action. The following steps are required where you need to zero out submissions for a particular pay company: