JoeW
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Correctly dealing with and reconciling to ATO ICA; Effective Date vs. Processed Date?
Prepare yourselves for a tale of woe. My accountants of 15 years turned out to have quietly maintained a second set of books. Whenever they found an issue in my MYOB file rather than tell me about it or offer to fix it, they silently did whatever was required to prepare the accounts and company tax return, and ignored the issues in MYOB. This included failing to properly deal with all of the tax-related MYOB accounts: GST Paid and Collected, PAYG Withholding, and GIC penalties and penalty remissions. Most notably there was simply no ATO ICA account in MYOB at all. You can imagine the mess. I am no longer with those accountants. My next accountant started the process of working with me to correct this in MYOB - I now have an ATO ICA liability account and all BAS/IAS are entered into it, and payments to the ATO are shown as payments to the ICA liability account in MYOB. So far so good? To my sorrow this excellent accountant retired and I moved to a third set. This new one disagrees greatly with how the second one fixed things. The chief disagreement is about reconciling the MYOB ATO ICA liability account to the actual ATO ICA. The second accountant said that this should be based on the ATO Effective Date. The third client says it should be based on the ATO Processed Date. e.g. if I revise a BAS for the 2020-21 financial year in the 2021-22 financial year, which of the two ATO dates should my balance sheet match as of 30/06/2021? The third accountant argued persuasively that it should look like what the ATO thought it looked like at that time, i.e. reconcile to the Processed Date, and this intuitively makes sense to me. The second accountant said that since the amendment was made before the accounts and tax return were prepared, the reconciliation should be based on best knowledge at that time, i.e. reconcile to the ICA balance Effective Date as of 30/06/2021. I am now hopelessly confused because using Processed Date (that's surely what "as of" means, right? This is what both my company and the ATO thought the numbers were as of that date) is not correctly balancing GST Paid, GST Collected, PAYGW, etc. I would have thought that if all of this was done correctly they would have a NIL balance in the balance sheet and not appear at all, because all liabilities were transferred to the ATO ICA liability account. I know the usual advice for these sorts of things is "ask your accountant" but three sets of accountants all have given me wildly differing approaches... and none of them seem to properly reconcile to the ATO's numbers. I would be most grateful for anyone who can make some sense of this.2.1KViews0likes1CommentRe: Using liability account for ATO ICA: how/when to adjust the various tax accounts?
Thank you Tracey_H ! Relieved that I haven't missed something. Pay Liabilities for PAYGW is an interesting notion. What are the benefits? (This is now only for curiosity; you have answered my original question.)2.1KViews0likes1CommentUsing liability account for ATO ICA: how/when to adjust the various tax accounts?
I have followed the excellent advice in many forum posts here and now have a liability account for the compant ATO ICA, as a credit card liability to allow Spend/Receive Money and Reconcile modules. Each IAS/BAS original or amended statement goes into the ATO ICA liability. It is fully in sync with the actual ATO ICA account, both reconciling as of EOFY but also as a running balance. Payments from my bank account and refunds received to it also reconcile. Cash boost credits and offsets against ATO ICA balance owed to the ATO, ditto. In theory it seems like I'm doing everything correctly. But... I don't think I am. When do the underlying tax-related accounts get zeroed out? When do they get "paid"? Example: Activity statement shows I owe the ATO $147.00 for PAYGW. I generate a Spend Money transaction from my ATO ICA "credit card" to pay PAYGW liability account $147.00. My ATO ICA liability account agrees with the ATO. I then receive a $10,000 ATO Cash Flow Boost payment. The ATO shows this is offset against my $147.00 debt. I generate a Receive Money transaction to my ATO ICA "credit card" for the $10,000.00 payment, against an income account ATO Cash Flow Boost. My ATO ICA liability account agrees with the ATO, they owe me $9,853.00. ATO refunds me $9,853.00. I generate a Spend Money from my ATO ICA "credit card" for $9,853.00 to my bank account. My ATO ICA liability account now agrees with the ATO (zero balance), and also agrees with my bank account (transaction paid in of $9,853.00). So far so good right? But what happens to the PAYGW liability account? It is still down $147.00. When and how do I show that that amount was "paid" via offset with a credit? I thought this was done in the ATO ICA account but it's bothering me greatly that I don't show a zero balance in the PAYGW liability account. Likewise payments to the ATO are currently payments to my ATO ICA "credit card" and not to the underlying PAYGW and GST liabilities. I would expect that when the ATO says there is a zero balance and my ATO ICA liabilty account agrees, that I should also see a zero running balance as of that day for PAYGW, and that GST Paid = GST Collected. But I don't and so I feel sure I have missed something basic. Apologies for long post, I don't know enough to write you a short one so I wrote a long one.Solved2.5KViews0likes3CommentsRe: Options for entering pays more than two years ago?
Thank you, I've decided against major surgery via restoring backups, I need to be able to trust that all reports generated by MYOB match the records in MYOB and I won't knowingly break that trust without much stronger reason than I currently have. It's good to know how to should I ever have that much stronger reason.1.8KViews1like0CommentsRe: Options for entering pays more than two years ago?
Hi gavin12345 The situation is that there are some long term liability DL loans where the company owes the director as of 30 June for the 2018/19, 2019/20, and 2020/21 FYs. It's been suggested that some of the salary paid in those years could be restated to instead be repayments to the DL accounts. The total dollar amounts moved from company bank account to director bank account would not change, but they would be re-explained as DL repayments not salary. I'm aware of the trick to issue a new payslip for the period, which would have a negative to wages, a positive to Employee Reimbusement (already linked to the DL liability account). There would have to be some kind of restatement to Payroll Deductions and that money would then be reclaimed from the ATO via a revised IAS or BAS. I think that some Superannuation SGC amount (perhaps all if the wage on a given payslip was 100% converted to DL repayment) would have be negative with a corresponding positive to Employer Additional Super. This is (relatively) easy for the current and previous financial years as MYOB will allow me to write new payslips. I'm wondering if it can be done for 2018/19 as well. I'm prepared to say that 2018/19 is Just Too Difficult and do it only for the years where MYOB permits new pays.1.8KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Options for entering pays more than two years ago?
That's all very useful, thank you. I'm concerned about the Payroll module being oblivious to changes entered as general journal entries. That seems to imply that MYOB couldn't issue an amended Payment Summary (for the years that used them) or even show me correct numbers in the various Payroll reports? I could in principle issue a manually generated Payment Summary and I know how to issue an amended EMPDUPE file (for the years that used them), but I'd be nervous doing so without MYOB being able to tell me the correct YTD numbers for amended payslips and for the Payment Summary. I suppose in principal I could access those numbers through GL reports, yes?2KViews0likes4CommentsOptions for entering pays more than two years ago?
AccountRight Premier AU 2021.5.2 Is there any way to enter pays older than the current or previous financial year, specifically in 2018/19? I know there's a two year limit so this can't be done directly. Can it be worked around? For example can I restore from an earlier year, enter the pays there, export the transactions, and reimport them into a current backup? Or will AR detect the current financial year no matter which backup I'm working from? Or for example can I check out the file locally rather than working in the cloud, change the system date, enter the pays, reset system date, and check the file back in? Or my third idea and I'm out on a limb here, manually create a file that looks like exported transactions (or edit an export of actual pays), and then import that file? I'm out of ideas after these three and I'm hoping people can tell me "no don't even bother trying, that won't work" before I start messing around with things...Solved2.2KViews0likes6Comments