Publishing Employee Payment Summaries – Payroll Support (AU)

Note: This only applies to businesses that are exempt from reporting STP, and have therefore chosen not to, during the 2019/2020 financial year. Exemptions only to:

WPN holders; or
Closely held employees of businesses with 19 or less employees (but only for the closely held employees).

This should be read in conjunction with the EOFY Guide.

Please remember that payment summaries must be published and issued to employees by no later than 14 July.

Once all pay runs (with a pay date within the financial year) are finalised and you have successfully completed your reconciliation you can commence the process of publishing employee payment summaries, as follows:

Navigate to the Payment Summaries screen via Reports > Payment Summaries (listed under 'ATO Reporting').
Select the relevant financial year and click on "Show Payment Summaries". You can also filter by employing entity (this option will only appear if you have multiple employing entities set up in your payroll business) and/or location:
If you see the following message on your screen, take note that the payment summaries will still generate but will NOT include wages data contained in unfinalised pay runs so we strongly suggest you finalise all pay runs prior to continuing:
You will now see on your screen a list of all employees and their YTD earnings. For businesses that include a combination of closely held employees and non-closely held employees, take note that only closely held employees will appear on this screen. All non-closely held employees must be reported via STP.
If you need to enter Reportable Fringe Benefit Amounts in an employee's payment summary, you should do this now. To do this, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of the employee earnings line. Then click on "Edit": This will open the field in the 'RFBA' column, thereby allowing you to enter the required amount and then click on "Save":
When reporting RFBA, please ensure you:
- Enter the 'grossed-up' taxable value of these benefits;
- Do not enter any cents; and
- Do not include this amount in the 'Gross Payments' field.
You may need to seek advice on which FBT deductions are reportable. Further information on FBT can be found here.
You may see a "Warnings" tab on the screen, as follows: N.B. Warnings indicate there is an issue with the employee setting or earnings that will prevent the publishing of the payment summary. This validation is required so that when it comes time to reporting the payment summary annual report with the ATO, the lodgement does not fail. As such, all warnings must be rectified before proceeding any further. The type of warnings you may need to rectify include:
- employee name contains invalid characters;
- postcode is invalid (must contain 4 digits);
- tax file number is invalid;
- address line 1 is required and must be no more than 38 characters;
- email is invalid;
- employee date of birth indicates they are older than 110 years;
- YTD allowance amounts reported are less than zero (you cannot report a negative amount);
- YTD RESC amounts are less than zero (you cannot report a negative amount);
- YTD union fees are less than zero (you cannot report a negative amount).
Once you have rectified any warnings, click on "Show Payment Summaries" again to refresh the data.
You can preview all payment summaries prior to publishing by clicking on "PDF", as follows:
This will generate a PDF document containing all payment summaries and employment termination payment summaries so that you can quickly review.
To view and/or download an individual employee's payment summary, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of the employee earnings line, then click "Download":
If you need to change the payment period start/end date of an employee's payment summary for a particular reason, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of the employee earnings line, then click "Edit". This will unlock the 'Payment Period Start' and 'Payment Period End' fields so that you can enter the correct dates. Then click on "Save".
Once you have finished reviewing the payment summaries, you can publish them by clicking on "Actions" > "Publish x payment summaries":

Or to publish an individual employee's payment summary, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of the employee earnings line, then click "Publish":
Once you publish the payment summaries, the data is now locked. They are now available to the employees for download via the self-service portal and WorkZone. If you would like to send the employees an email notification to let them know that their payment summaries are available, click on "Send Notifications":

Once all payment summaries have been published, you must by no later than 14 August lodge the payment summary annual report with the ATO. You can choose to lodge the data in one of the following ways:

Generating and uploading an EMPDUPE file via your ATO Business Portal; or
Lodging electronically (this method cannot be used by WPN holders as it is not supported by the ATO).

Correcting RESC values within payment summaries

This action can be used for fixing incorrectly allocated payment methods against super salary sacrifice payments. Payments that have been set up to be paid to a 'bank account' or 'manually' will not appear in the pay/update event as RESC. Once you have created your update/pay event the process to fix this is:

Select the Actions > Correct RESC values option:
Select the employee you need to make the correction for and either one of, or any, relevant deduction categories:
Show deductions - will display a list of all the incorrectly allocated deductions for the current financial year. Once the relevant deduction/s have been selected, a ‘Change the payment method of these deductions to this superfund’ section will appear with a drop-down list of all the super funds that are listed for the employee. Once the required super fund has been selected click on the ‘Change payment method’ button:
Click on 'Yes' to confirm the number of deductions and the super fund they will be allocated to. NOTE - this action cannot be undone!

Once the confirmation modal is closed the payment summary will update automatically.

What fields can be edited in a payment summary?

Only the following sections of a payment summary can be edited:

Payment Period Start date;
Payment Period End date;
RFBA;
Amended checkbox.

If you need to make changes to an employee's earnings, tax withheld, or any other payroll figures you must make the changes in a pay run and ensure the pay run is finalised. If the payment summary is published, unpublish it, click on "Show Payment Summaries" to refresh the data and then you can publish the payment summary again.

What if I need to amend the payment summaries after I’ve published them?

You may need to do this because you had to make adjustments to employee earnings, fix employee details or fix an error in a pay run. The process here depends on whether you have:

published and lodged the payment summary annual report with the ATO; or
only published the payment summaries.

Regardless of the situation, you will initially need to unpublish the affected payment summary or payment summaries. If this affects ALL employee payment summaries and so all need to be unpublished, click on "Actions" > "Un-Publish x payment summaries", as follows:

Screen_Shot_2020-06-01_at_8.08.45_pm.png

Otherwise, if it's only one or a select number of employees, you can unpublish their payment summaries on an individual basis. To do this, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of the affected employee earnings line, then click "Un-publish".

Once you have unpublished the payment summaries, they will no longer be available for download by employees in their employee self-service portal or WorkZone.

You can now make any necessary changes to the pay runs or create a new pay run (ensure the date paid is within the relevant financial year) and finalise the pay run.

N.B. You cannot unpublish Employment Termination Payment payment summaries. Rather, once you have made the relevant adjustments in a pay run to fix whatever required amending, click on the "Refresh" option to refresh the pay earnings.

Scenario 1: Payment summaries have been published but NOT lodged with the ATO

In this instance, because the ATO has not been provided with the payment summary annual report, all you need to do is publish the affected employee/s payment summaries again. It is also best to send out a notification again so they are aware another version of their payment summary is available. The template email sent to the employee is the same as the email sent when the payment summary was first published so we suggest here you notify the employee that an updated version has been published.

Scenario 2: Payment summaries have been published AND lodged with the ATO

In this instance, because the ATO have already been provided with the payment summary annual report, you will need to complete the following steps:

Where only one or a specific set of employees are affected, click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of each affected employee earnings line, then click "Edit".

Tick the "Amended" checkbox and then click on "Save":

Click on the "Actions" button, located on the right of each affected employee earnings line, then click "Publish".
Alternatively, if ALL payment summaries need to marked as as amended this can be done in bulk when you publish them all. Click on the "Actions" button (top menu) and then click on "Publish x payment summaries". The following pop up will appear:

Click on the "Amended" checkbox and then click on "Publish".