How do I lodge a Single Touch Payroll (STP) finalisation event via the payroll platform?

Available for the following Payroll plans: Standard, Premium

Question

How do I lodge a Single Touch Payroll (STP) finalisation event?

Answer

You can use the Single Touch Payroll report to access the End of Financial Year (EOFY) wizard, which will guide you through lodging your STP finalisation event with the ATO. Before you can lodge your finalisation event with the ATO, you need to enable STP. To read further information on how to enable this feature, refer to the following article.

Important

You cannot lodge a finalisation event if you have not successfully reported any pay events during the financial year as this will cause a failed lodgement. To read further details on how to lodge a pay event, refer to the following article.

If, after having successfully lodged a finalisation event for a specific pay schedule, you realise you need to make a change or process an ad hoc pay for the same financial year, you must process an amended finalisation event.

Create a finalisation event 
  1. Log into your Employment Hero Payroll platform.
  2. Click the Report menu.
  3. Click the Single Touch Payroll submenu.
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  4. Click on Start Finalisation Process button.

    Helpful Hint

    If you click the Back button, it will take you to the previous screen, whilst clicking on the Save for Later button will exit you from the Wizard and save the details of the previous screen

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  5. Select the required pay schedule.

    Helpful Hint

    If you have employees paid using multiple pay schedules throughout the financial year, you do not have to complete a finalisation event for each pay schedule for that employee. Rather, you only need to complete the finalisation event for the pay schedule assigned to that employee.

    Also, once you create a finalisation event for a specific pay schedule, you cannot create another finalisation event for that same pay schedule. In addition, once you create a finalisation event for all pay schedules, you cannot then create a finalisation event for a specific pay schedule. Rather, you will need to create an Amended Finalisation Event for that specific pay schedule or you can choose all pay schedules.

  6. Click the Next button.
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  7. Confirm the displayed payroll data is correct by ensuring it shows the correct Year to Date (YTD) information at the bottom of each column for the employees included in this finalisation event. 

    Helpful Hint

    The employees that will appear in the finalisation event are all employees paid in the financial year who you have not previously marked as final in an earlier event. Also, please note that you can not edit the Is Final checkbox. This is intentional as the purpose of the finalisation event is to show to the ATO that no further payments are to be made to employees in this financial year, which is identified from this checkbox.

    You may also notice warnings displaying on your screen. You can refer to this section for more information on this topic, and you must clear all displayed warnings before you can proceed to the next stage of the wizard.

    If you need to download your payroll data:

    1. Click the Download button.
    2. Click either the Excel or the Excel (YTD) button.
  8. Click the Next button.
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  9. If you don't have employees with Reportable Fringe Benefits Amounts (RFBA) continue to step 10. If you have employees with RFBAs, then you have two actions you can undertake:
    • Individually edit the employee's RFB details:
      1. Click the Actions dropdown button.
      2. Click Enter RFB amounts.
      3. In the Reportable Fringe Benefits panel, make the required changes.
      4. Click the Save button.
    • Bulk import the employee RFB details
      1. Click the Actions button.
      2. Click Enter RFB amounts.
      3. In the Reportable Fringe Benefits panel, click the Export button.
      4. Make the required changes to the template.
      5. Back in the Reportable Fringe Benefits panel, click the Import button.
  10. Click the Next button.

    Helpful Hint

    You can refer to the Further Information section under the I have downloaded the RFBA spreadsheet. How do I complete it? premise for details on how to complete the RFBA spreadsheet.

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  11. If required, select the user who will approve this finalisation event.
  12. Enter any required notes into the Notes field.
  13. Click the Next button.
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  14. Select the I Acknowledge the Terms and Conditions tick box.
  15. Click the Lodge Finalisation Event button.

    Helpful Hint

    If you set up your business settings to require two-factor authentication before lodging an event to the ATO, you will need to enter a verification code after clicking on the Lodge Finalisation Event button, and prior to the event being submitted to the ATO.

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    Helpful Hint

    You will now see on your screen confirmation of your finalisation lodgement. You now have the option of returning to your payroll dashboard or to the actual finalisation event where you can keep track of the status of the event.

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Further information

I have downloaded the RFBA spreadsheet. How do I complete it?

This spreadsheet will contain all the employees attached to the pay schedule. This includes employees that may not appear in the finalisation event, so take care when entering the required amounts. The employees that are not in the finalisation event can remain in the excel document as long as they have 0 RFBA.

You can enter all the relevant grossed-up amounts against each applicable employee and, once you have saved the RFBA data, you can go back to the finalisation event and upload the information. Once you upload the spreadsheet, all RFB amounts will appear against each of the relevant employees.

If you have tried to import amounts for employees that were not included in the finalisation event, you will receive a warning stating that you did not include these employees in this finalisation event. If you still need to import fringe benefits amounts for these employees, you will need to do so via an amended finalisation event.

Some important points to consider are:

  • If your business has multiple pay schedules, there will be separate worksheets for each pay schedule and we will list the employees in their relevant worksheet based on their pay schedule.
  • You must only enter the grossed-up taxable value of these benefits.
  • Do not enter any cents in the amounts.
  • Do not include any FBT amounts in the employee's gross earnings.
  • Import the template on a per pay schedule basis for each finalisation event
  • The amount entered must be the YTD amount. If you have entered any amounts in other events, we will include these amounts in this data export. If you need to update an employee's YTD amount, enter the actual YTD amount in the field so that it overrides the existing amount.

Author recommended

So you have now lodged an STP finalisation event and you are now wondering what next can I do. There are two recommendations I would make on this front and they are:

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