EOFY Payroll Activity & Register

Hi NatalieEG,

Thank you for your post and I can see that the Payroll Activity report & Payroll Register Report are out of balance. The key thing to remember is the payroll reports in AccountRight are designed to look at things from an accounting point of view and the STP reports from the ATO STP reporting requirements. They will not align for several reasons.

• Wage categories with an ATO Reporting Category of Not Reportable will not show on STP reports but their totals affect payroll reports.
• Wage categories that are PAYG (tax) exempt will not show on STP reports but their totals affect payroll reports.
• Wage categories for allowances, overtime, bonuses etc for STP2 don’t total under Gross Wages on the STP report but are separated, however they total under gross wages on payroll reports. 

First, check if you have done an Update Event, or zero dollar ($0) pay for all employees (including terminated employees), so the most recent YTD values have been sent to ATO.

Next, check that the Payroll Activity and Payroll Register reports match.

Another reason a customer's payroll report may not match the STP report is if their Payroll Activity and Payroll Register reports don't match. These reports retrieve information from different places within the company file:

The Payroll Activity report pulls data from the pay runs processed within the company file
The Payroll Register report pulls data from the employees' card histories

Any differences in the report figures mean the card pay history has been altered for the affected employee(s). You will need to expand the reports to get detailed versions to check each pay item and identify any differences.

If they do match, make sure you have done an Update Event (or zero dollar pay) and see the next section for more things to check.

If they don't match, then the Pay History on the employee's card needs to be fixed.

Feel free to write a post if you need further assistance.

Cheers,

Jem