Let these important payroll dates do the priorisiting for you!
In the lead up to the end of financial year (EOFY), the accounting and payroll team are bombarded with demands by business owners, staff, external advisors and other stakeholders, each of whom think that their request is the most important.
So how do you decide what you need to prioritise and stay payroll compliant at this busy time of year?
24 June 2019 - MYOB Exo Employer Services 2019.01 Compliance Release
This is the date that MYOB expects to release its compliance upgrade of your MYOB Exo Employer Services software, Release 2019.01. The compliance release is expected later than usual as a result of the Federal election, which pushed back the timing of payroll-related laws through parliament.
We know that the last week of the financial year is a busy time, but you’ll need to make time to upgrade your Exo Employer Services software because without it, you won’t have the 2019-20 tax tables you need to process pays in the new financial year.
Note: If you have your Exo Employer Services software installed on a terminal server, you’ll probably need to involve your IT team or contractor in this process, and you’ll need full administrative privileges to successfully complete the upgrade.
30 June 2019 - End of Financial Year
This is the date that we've all been preparing and planning for. You’ll need to have successfully completed all your pay runs for the 2018-19 financial year by June 30, as well as paying all employee superannuation for the 2018-19 financial year in order for the employer to claim a tax deduction (if available).
Before the EOFY, you’ll need to update your reportable fringe benefits against the relevant employees by making a one-off pay with a physical pay date no later than 31 March 2019. If you’ve already started Single Touch Payroll (STP) reporting, you should select the ‘Do not send to ATO’ checkbox when processing this pay, as the ATO will only reject this one-off pay as it is back-dated.
If you haven’t already commenced STP reporting using your Exo Employer Services Software, now would be the time to do it. All employers (even those with 19 or less employees) are required to commence STP reporting by 1 July 2019. However, if you start STP reporting by 30 June 2019, you’ll have an extra 2 weeks to complete your Finalisation Declaration instead of providing your employees with PAYG Payment Summaries and submitting a Payment Summary Annual Report (PSAR) to the ATO.
1 July 2019 - Welcome to the New Financial Year
Welcome to the new financial year! STP reporting is now compulsory for all employers. If you didn’t successfully install the 2019.01 compliance release for your MYOB Exo Employer Services software, withholding tax will not be calculating. You can check which version is currently installed by going to the Help menu and selecting About.
You’ll also need to get familiar with the New Features in your Exo Employer Services software and update your existing setup for the changes to the:
- Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) and the Student Financial Supplement Scheme (SFSS) tax tables (they will be replaced by a new Study and Training Support Loans tax table (STSL)
- The increased Child Support Protected Earnings Amount (PEA)
- The increased maximum earnings base for SG Contribution Types
- The new Employment Termination Payment (ETP) threshold amounts
14 July 2019 - PAYG Payment Summaries (Non-STP)
If you didn’t start STP reporting before 30 June, you’re probably wishing you had because PAYG Payment Summaries now need to be distributed to all your employees and your Payment Summary Annual Report (PSAR) needs to be submitted to the ATO. Once you’ve completed these tasks, it’s a good time to lock down MYOB Exo Payroll for the period ending 30 June 2019.
If you did start STP reporting on or before 30 June 2019, don’t be tempted to produce PAYG Payment Summaries for your employees. Instead, let them know about the transition to STP by giving them the ATO’s STP Fact Sheet for Employees and encourage them to create or retrieve their password to their Encourage your staff to create a myGov account (if they haven’t got one already) by visiting https://www.my.gov.au and selecting ‘Create an account’. They'll need a myGov account to access their tax-ready payroll information once STP reporting has started rather than receiving a PAYG Payment Summary.
31 July 2019 - Finalisation Declaration (Already Adopted STP)
If you started STP reporting on or before 30 June 2019, you need to have submitted a Finalisation Declaration to the ATO by this date using your Exo Employer Services Software. Once this has been done, let your employees know that their pay information will now be showing as ‘tax ready’ in their myGov account as well as being pre-filled in myTax. Now is also a good time to lock down MYOB Exo Payroll for the period ending 30 June 2019.
BusinessHub is here to help you with an orderly end to EOFY in MYOB Exo Employer Services. Check out the EOFY section of our Exo KnowledgeHub for EOFY videos, guides and checklists for our MYOB Exo Employer Services clients.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already started STP reporting, then we encourage you to do so ASAP. Contact us to get started.
