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Employee earning opening balances on payroll classic

Updated

Available for the following Payroll plans: Essentials, Standard, Premium, Core Payroll, Unlimited+Payroll 
Available for the following user access levels: Admin

When transitioning from another payroll provider to the payroll platform, you may have employees that have existing Year-to-Date (YTD) earning amounts. It is important to transfer these earning amounts over to make sure your employees have the correct financial records. 

The Opening Balances Earnings feature allows you to select an employee file and enter their accrued YTD earning amounts. You can also use this feature to clear the opening balances if you entered the wrong YTD figures into their employee file. To view more information, please see our Hero Academy training video on Opening Balances here.

Important

Earnings are the year-to-date gross values for the financial year specified. We will allocate earnings to the employee's primary location (set via the employee's Pay Run defaults page) at the time you enter the data into the platform.

Getting started

Add opening earning balances

Please ensure you have reviewed the transition options before adding opening balances, as requirements differ depending on which option is chosen.

  1. Click the Employee menu.
  2. Click the List submenu.
  3. Click on the employee who needs the earning amounts added.
  4. Click the Opening Balances button.
  5. Click the Earnings tab.
  6. Enter the required earnings figures.
  7. Click the Save button.
    Earnings_1.jpg

Maintain

Clear opening earning balances
  1. Click the Employee menu.
  2. Click the List submenu.
  3. Click on the employee who needs the earning amounts cleared.
  4. Click the Opening Balances button.
  5. Click the Earnings tab.
  6. Click the Clear button.
  7. Click the Save button.
    Earnings_2.jpg

Further information

Leave balances
When entering leave balances, enter the balance as at the point of transition to this payroll platform (that is, as at the last pay run processed in your previous payroll platform). Partial units are entered as a decimal (e.g.: 6.5 hours) rather than as HH:MM (e.g.: 6:30). If your previous payroll platform only provided leave balances in hours and you want to convert the balance into days or weeks, refer to this: for instructions on how to do this.
Earnings
Earnings are the year-to-date gross values for the financial year specified. If you need to change the Initial Financial Year, click the 'Opening Balances Settings' button at the top of the page. Earnings will be allocated to the employee's primary location (set via the employee's Pay Run defaults page) at the time the data has been entered.
Deductions

Enter the year-to-date deduction amounts for the financial year specified. If the pre-tax deduction amount needs to be recorded as a Reportable Employer Super contribution (pre-tax deduction), you will need to check the 'Include on payment summary as RESC' checkbox accordingly if it is not already ticked. This will ensure the amount entered in this field is placed in the correct field on the employee's payment summary. 

Likewise, any deduction set as Member Voluntary Super (post-tax deduction) will need the 'Member voluntary super contribution' checkbox selected. This will ensure the amount entered in this field is recorded as part of an employee's super contributions.

Employer liabilities
If you were previously recording employer liabilities in your previous payroll platform, you will be able to enter those YTD figures here. If you have not yet set up any employer liability categories, the following articles will help: 
Super and PAYG
Enter the year-to-date tax-withheld amounts. If your previous payroll platform does not provide a breakdown of PAYG and STSL amounts, you can enter the one figure in the 'PAYG Amount' field. You should only enter an amount in the 'PAYG Method B (ii) Amount' field if you had previously paid an employee a lump sum payment and used the Method B (ii) formula to calculate their PAYG. This amount needs to be separated from the 'PAYG Amount' as it affects the calculation of PAYG for any subsequent lump-sum payments made using this method in this payroll platform. As such, this amount should be excluded from the 'PAYG Amount' field. With regards to SG contributions, ensure you do not include any salary sacrifice, super and/or member voluntary amounts in this section; rather, these must be added in the Deductions tab. Additionally, any SG amounts in Opening Balances cannot be processed through our inbuilt clearing house integration. If you have any amounts not yet processed (because you have moved to this payroll platform mid-month or mid-quarter) you will need to create an ad-hoc pay run and enter these amounts - they will then be picked up when submitting super via 'Super Payments'. N.B. If you do create a special pay run for SG contributions, ensure the amounts are not included in the employee's Opening Balances as the amounts will be overestimated on the employee's pay slip and on payroll reports). 
STP
This tab displays the STP Payroll ID, which is the employee identifier used when transmitting data to the ATO. By default, an employee's STP Payroll ID is identical to their employee ID (i.e. the platform generated employee ID, as opposed to the External ID).  The employee's STP Payroll ID can be changed only if it meets the requirements of Scenario 2, Option 2 detailed in this transition article and the BMS ID of the employee's employing entity has changed. If there is no "Change" button in the employee's STP Payroll ID field, then the BMS ID has not been changed and therefore there is no ability to change the employee's STP Payroll ID.
Importing opening balances
If you have many employees, you can bulk import their opening balances. To access the template spreadsheet, click on 'Opening Balances Settings' at the top of the page, then click 'Export'. Refer to for more information.
Employment termination payments

If you are migrating terminated employees' data across to this payroll platform, you can include ETP data so that you only need to access one platform for reporting and payment summary purposes. You are able to select the following ETP payments:

  • Type R - e.g. genuine redundancy, early retirement scheme, invalidity, compensation
  • Type O - Other ETP payments not included in Type R
  • Type S - where a Type R ETP was made in a previous financial year and another ETP is made in the financial year the same termination
  • The same termination.

Take note of the field 'Generate ETP Payment Summary'. The default value is 'No' - if you leave this option as is, the employee's ETP Payment Summary will not be published and so the employee will not have access to it. If you change the value to 'Yes', the employee's ETP Payment Summary will automatically publish and they will be able to access this via their employee platform. 

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