An organisation you are required to include a termination reason from the 21/22 financial year onwards in compliance with Sinlge Touch Payroll Phase two and its additional reporting requirements. The following are some of the frequently asked questions regarding the recording of termination reasons.

Glossary

• How can I record a termination reason in the Payroll classic platform?
• What are the predefined termination reasons?
• Where can I view termination reasons for each employee?
• How do I cancel a termination?
• What happens if I do not provide a termination reason?

Frequently asked questions

  How can I record a termination reason in the Payroll classic platform?  

When terminating an employee, a reason can be entered during the offboarding process. Follow this link to learn of the different ways to record a termination reason.

  What are the predefined termination reasons?  

When terminating an employee, you can mouse over the information icon for the definitions of our termination reasons. These reasons include:

• Voluntary cessation.
• Ill health.
• Deceased.
• Redundancy.
• Dismissal.
• Contract cessation.
• Transfer.

  Where can I view termination reasons for each employee?  

There are different ways to view the termination reason assigned to an employee:

• Employee Details screen: At the bottom of the page, the termination reason will show alongside the employee's termination date.
• Employee details report: You can export the Template with Employee Data (including terminated employees) data type. The termination reason will appear under the TerminationReason column.
• Pay run: If the termination reason was selected whilst processing the pay run, you can view the reason within that pay run. A pink shading can identify terminated employees.
• Employee details audit report: Within the Employee details audit report, the JobHandler, Web, API and FileImport channels can identify a terminated employee and the recorded reason.
• Pay run audit report: You can view the termination reasons for any employee terminated within a specific pay run by selecting the Termination Details checkbox in the Summary Details page.

  How do I cancel a termination?  

If you cancel a termination in a pay run, we will remove the termination reason from the Employee Details page and the pay run as you are indicating the employee was not incorrectly terminated. However, if you terminate an employee in the pay run and then later re-activate that employee via the Employee Details screen the termination reason will remain in the pay run as the employee was still classified as terminated at one stage.

  What happens if I do not provide a termination reason?  

Recording a termination reason when terminating an employee has only become mandatory on the Payroll classic platform from the 19th October 2021, so there may be some terminated employees without a reason recorded. You must record a termination reason for any employee that has been terminated in the 21/22 financial year.

If you do not record a reason, any STP event that includes a terminated employee with no termination reason will fail validation. This means you cannot lodge the event with the ATO until you rectify this situation.

Author recommended

So you have now recorded a termination reason for an employee and you are now wondering, what next can I do. There are two recommendations I would make on this front and they are:

• Record a termination reason on Payroll classic This article walks you through the different ways you can record a termination reason for one of your employees.
• Reactivate an employee on Payroll classic This article walks you through the steps you need to follow to reactivate an employee in your Payroll classic platform.