Lodging PAYG Payment Summary Report Electronically

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 apply to:

• WPN holders; or
• Closely held employees of businesses with 19 or less employees (but only for the closely held employees who have not been reported via STP before).

The ATO requires that all businesses submit a PAYG payment summary report for their employees by August 14. To make the process as simple as possible, you can lodge the report electronically to the ATO, directly from the payroll platform.

N.B. The other method available for lodging the payment summary annual report is via uploading the EMPDUPE file to the ATO Business Portal. For WPN holders, the ATO no longer supports lodging payment summary data electronically so you must complete the process using the EMPDUPE file method.

This should be read in conjunction with the EOFY Guide.

Prior to commencing the lodgement process:

• Ensure your company details are recorded correctly in the ATO Settings screen.
• You must also be enabled for electronic lodgement, ie set up a connection between the payroll platform's software ID and the ATO. Instructions on this and the above step can be accessed here.
• Make sure you have published the employee payment summaries.

Once the above is done, simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Payment Summaries screen from your payroll dashboard via Reports > Payment Summaries (listed under 'ATO Reporting').                                                                                             
2. If there are multiple employing entities set up in your payroll business, you must complete this process for each employing entity. As such, you must filter by employing entity and then the relevant financial year. Businesses with only one employing entity will not see an 'Employing Entity' filter and so just need to filter by the relevant financial year.                                                         
3. Click on "Show Payment Summaries",  then click on "Lodge":
   
                                 
   At this stage, you may see the following errors:                                                                                                                                                            The above error will appear if a WPN holder is attempting to lodge payment summaries electronically. As mentioned at the start of the article, WPN holders cannot lodge electronically and so need to lodge their payment summary annual report via an EMPDUPE file.         
                                                                              
   
   The above error indicates that no payment summaries have been published and so there is no payment summary data to lodge. To fix this, you must publish the employee payment summaries.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
   The above error indicates that the business has not enabled electronic lodgement. To fix this refer to these instructions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   The above error indicates that the business has multiple employing entities set up and has selected "All" in the 'Employing Entity' filter. To fix this you must select one employing entity at a time when lodging.                                                                                                                                           
4. A popup box (example below) will appear. Make the appropriate selection of what you want to lodge, tick that you accept the terms and conditions and then click on "Lodge now":
   
   
                                                                                                                                                                         
5. The file will go through a validation process and if everything is correct, the following confirmation message will appear:
   
   
6. The lodgement process is complete! Don't forget - if you have multiple employing entities set up in your payroll business, you must complete the above process for each employing entity.

Once the payment summary annual report has been lodged with the ATO, you will be able to view a Lodgement Receipt number by hovering over the 'Status' field on the payment summary:

The lodgement details are also available within the excel file that is available for download.

N.B. If you have a combination of published and unpublished payment summaries when you commence the lodgement process, the following message will appear:

You can still lodge the published payment summaries, however you will need to submit a further lodgement once the unpublished payment summaries are published.  

What if I need to lodge amended payment summaries?

If you have lodged the payment summary annual report with the ATO and then realise there are errors in an employee's payment summary, you will need to unpublish the affected payment summaries. Then, refer to the section "What if I need to amend the payment summaries after I’ve published them?" of this article for instructions on marking the affected payment summaries as amended and republishing.

Once you've completed the steps in the article mentioned in the above paragraph, you can lodge the amended payment summaries again. Ensure you select only amended payment summaries to be lodged: 

If you have any feedback or questions please contact us via support@yourpayroll.com.au.