Super pay Liabilities

[Tina1959]

I have an employee that I paid super using Pay Liabilities in December last year. For some reason the employee was paid more than was owed - not sure how this happened as I use the Pay Liablities function and I just tick the amount that is generated.

I now have a situation where the employees balance in the Liability account is less than the amount that is showing to be paid using pay liabilities.

I put in the date that the liability orginally occured  but that has made no difference and I am unable to manually change the amount that I want to pay to make it balance using Pay Liabilities.

How do I fix this?

[Tracey_H]

Hi @Tina1959 

From what you're describing it sounds like there may have been a super adjustment or pay transaction reversal that was not picked up in the Pay Liabilities window when processing the December payment.

The amounts in the Pay Liabilities window come from the pay transactions so it's not possible to change those amounts. Any adjustments will need to made through Process payroll. I'd recommend following the steps in this help article to check the super amount and make the necessary adjustments: Checking and adjusting super

Please let me know if you need further help.

If my response has answered your enquiry please click "Accept as Solution" to assist other users find this information.

[Tina1959]

Hi Tracy,

I cannot see that any adjustments have been done - and if I ever do any I always do them via payroll anyway.

For this employee she had accumulated $600 for November but when I check through the ledger $800 was paid via the Pay liabilities function.

The only thing I can think is that this was paid in January - I tend to pay monthly not quarterly - and by then she had accumulated more for December - however when I checked the payment it has the dates as being from 1st to 30th November - there are no December amounts included but the payment amount was for $800. If I put in the pay liablities to use the dates from 1st November to 28th February it still includes the extra $200.

OK - have now found it!

I checked Payroll reports via the tax office and can see that 2 reports were done for this employee on the same day - one had salary sacrifice and one did not. So the $800 that she has been paid is correct but it is not showing in the liability account - it should be for the period 27/10-2/11 but this liability is only showing from 8/11 not the week before.

Is the easiest thing to do to just reverse the pay for the 27/10 - 2/11 and redo it and will this make it all balance? It could be a bit fiddly as I use electronic payments so I assume this will amke all of those out of balacne too - will I have to reverse every payment done for that pay run?

[Tracey_H]

Hi @Tina1959 

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. In this type of situation, before reversing pays I'd check the pay transaction that is in question. If you open the 27/10 - 2/11 pay transactions then Ctrl+R to recap you'll see what accounts were posted to for that transaction. 

As the amounts in the Pay Liabilities window were correct, it sounds like the super was posted to a different liability account. If that's the case, generally speaking you could record a general journal to move the amount to the correct liability account. I'd recommend checking with your accountant before recording a journal to ensure that is correct for your situation.

Please let me know if you need further help.

If my response has answered your enquiry please click "Accept as Solution" to assist other users find this information.

[Tina1959]

Thanks Tracey,

When I click the  arrow next to the pay I can see that $200 went as salary sacrifice - but it was coded as PAYE tax payable. No idea why - it showed as the correct account for all future payments so it was set up incorrectly for that pay run. I assume this is why it is not showing in the salary sacrifice account but is coming up in pay liabilities.

When I checked the PAYE tax payable it shows there as an additional $200 in tax.

When I do Ctrl + R it does not show the salary sacrifice anywhere - it just shows as wages and salaries but if I click a later pay then it does - so something has gone wrong for this particular pay.

I think - cannot be sure - that when the pay was first put in the salary sacrifce had not been set up correctly - so I think that after the pay had been recorded - but before the bank transfer happened - I altered the pay to allow for the salary sacrifice. If I check the payroll reprts on the ATO I can see that a separate report has been sent on the same day. The first report does not show the salary sacrifice but the next report does. However the YTD tax amount matches (I think!)

Is the simplest thing to do a journal that credits salary sacrifice and debits PAYE tax? If so I wil date it for this quarters BAS (or should I do it for todays date as I have already done BAS reports for the period in question)

I may find that at the end of the year that PAYE tax is out by $200 and if so I can journal that amount in or out as necessary.

[Tracey_H · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tina1959 

I'd check to make sure that the YTD amounts in your STP YTD verification report are correct. Each STP payrun report overrides the previous one, so it's best to check the YTD verification report or the last payrun report sent for the up-to-date figures.

The STP reports filter by the ATO reporting category assigned to the payroll category. The linked accounts won't have any impact on the STP reports so I would expect that the PAYG amount in the STP report would be correct.

From a software perspective, if the $200 has been posted to the wrong liability account so you can record a journal to move it to the correct liability account. From a reporting perspective, if you've already lodged and paid the BAS for that period the PAYG amount may be incorrect. You'd need to speak to your accountant about amending the BAS.

Please let me know if you need further help.

If my response has answered your enquiry please click "Accept as Solution" to assist other users find this information.

[Tina1959]

Thanks Tracy,

I checked the ATO reports against the MYOB reports and all are now correct.

I will journal it for this month but make a note that it applies to a previous transaction - as it is the same financial year it should not be a problem.