If you need to pay your employee a bonus as part of their pay, you will need to add an extra earnings payment to their payslip.

• If the bonus is to be paid regularly to the employee in every pay run, you should set it up as a recurring extra payment in Payroll settings.
• If the bonus is a one-off payment, you can add it while completing the relevant pay run.
• If you're paying bonuses to multiple employees, you can add these in bulk

In this example, we add a one-off $1000 "QTR1 Bonus" to an employee's pay as an extra payment.

Note:

• The title we enter - "QTR 1 Bonus" - will appear on the employee's payslip.
• We have chosen to select the Class as a Bonus (this will appear in the STP report as a Bonus)
• STP category we select as Gross

Note: Refer to the Single Touch Payroll guide or the ATO website for assistance with selecting the correct category. It is your responsibility as the employer organisation for ensuring correct employee payments according to relevant laws and agreements.

Deputy does not provide advice on employment law or taxation matters, including payroll specifics. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are correctly classifying and reporting payment types through Single Touch Payroll. Please seek professional advice from your legal/tax expert if you are unsure which category to select.

Adding bonuses to multiple employees in bulk

From the Payslips tab, click the Bulk Actions dropdown in the top right and select Payment.

From this page you can add bonuses:

• One-by-one for each employee
• Based on a [Rate x Hours x Multiplier] formula
• Via a CSV import

Add bonus figures one-by-one

To add bonuses for specific employees, first select them by ticking the box to the left of their name, and fill in the:

• Title - this will appear on the employee's payslip
• Rate - this will default to 10 for all employees, so ensure you've only selected employees who you're adding a bonus to. Change the rate to the bonus rate you wish to be applied.
• Classification - in this case we've selected Bonus (this will appear in the STP report as a Bonus)
• STP Category - in this case we've selected Gross

Add bonuses based on a formula

You might calculate your bonuses as a formula, where a set Rate is multiplied according to Hours (or units) and/or another Multiplier, such as units sold. The formula used on this page is

Earnings = Rate x Hours x Multiplier.

In the example below, each unit sold earns a $250 bonus.

In this case, we'll use the 'All Staff' row to set the Title, Rate, Classification and STP Category. This will then pre-fill this same information for all rows. 

Note: the Hours and Multiplier fields will default to 1. 

Now, fill in the unique Hours and/or Multiplier for each employee to automatically calculate their bonus figure in the Earnings column. In the example below, Ali sold 3 units for a total bonus of $750.(The hours field can be changed to 0 if you like)

To add another bonus to an employee, click the "+" symbol on the right of the employee's row to create an additional row and fill it in as required.