This article explains how to complete an end-of-financial-year (EOFY) STP finalisation in Deputy Payroll (AU) and what happens before, during, and after the process.

Before you read

• Target audience: This article is for System Administrators, Payroll Administrators, Payroll Managers, and users responsible for managing payroll. 
• Plan restrictions: This information is relevant to Australian customers using Deputy Payroll (AU).

This article covers

• What is a finalisation event or declaration?
• Before you perform a finalisation event
• Submitting your finalisation
• Lodge an STP finalisation pay run
• Status of the STP submission

What is a finalisation event or declaration?

Finalising Single Touch Payroll (STP) data lets the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) know that your STP reporting for an employee is complete for the financial year. This triggers the notification to the employee and their tax agent that the details in their income statement are ready, allowing them to lodge their tax return. 

Employers reporting through STP generally need to make a finalisation declaration by 14th July each year, indicating they have fully reported for the financial year for each employee under every ABN. You make a finalisation declaration by providing a finalisation indicator for employees (and directors etc) as part of your STP reporting.
 

Before you perform a finalisation event

This guide assumes that you have already:

• Set your Software ID in the ATO manager
• Completed pay runs in Deputy Payroll and previously lodged STP submissions as a Normal Payrun to the ATO.
• Ensured total values in the STP report match your accounting suite.
   

Submitting your finalisation

In Deputy Payroll, you can submit your STP finalisation report and declaration in one of two ways:

• When completing your last normal pay run of the financial year - Submit the finalisation declaration as part of your final regular pay run.
• By creating an ad hoc pay run - If you have already completed and reported your last normal pay run for the financial year, you can create an ad hoc pay run to submit your STP finalisation report and declaration.
   

Why create an ad-hoc pay run for finalisation?

After you have completed your last normal pay run, it is good practice to do a reconciliation to capture any requirements for adjustments. For example;

• Amending Reportable Fringe Benefits Amounts (RFBA)
• Amending Reportable Employer Superannuation Contributions (RESC)
• Correcting wrongly reported payment types i.e. allowances
• Correcting Child Support amounts reported
• Correction Employment Termination classifications

By undertaking this reconciliation process before submitting finalisation, any adjustments can be made in an ad-hoc pay run. 

Lodge an STP finalisation pay run

When you have completed and locked your last pay run for the financial year, or the ad-hoc adjustments pay run and are ready to lodge your final STP submission for the year, follow the steps below.

1. Go to Submit to ATO in Pay runs.

2. Under Prepare to Lodge STP select Final Payrun and Submit event type. This will create the STP report as a Finalisation Event. Click Review Data. 

You can also review this data in spreadsheet software by clicking CSV Export which will download a CSV file to your local computer. 

Note: If this is being done outside of 30 days of the Payment Date, you may be forced to select Update. (An Update will not include the "Pay Period Tax Amount" value) See When to use an STP Submit or Update event in Deputy Payroll (AU)

Note: All staff, including previously terminated staff, will be included in the STP Final report for the current financial year. When you send this data to the ATO through Deputy Payroll, all staff in the report will be marked as Final in the STP submission. 

If there are any problems with your data, they will be listed in a warning pop up, similar to the example shown below. Since the Final Pay run includes all staff for the entire financial year, you may have to resolve errors with employees not specifically in this particular pay run.

You can click on the team members' names to open their employee profile in another tab (you won't lose your place in Payroll) and resolve the errors by completing the missing information. 

3. Once you have entered all the missing information, click Review Data again.

If you have corrected all errors in the data you will see a Data passed validation message.

You are ready to review your data:

4. Click Show Business Data to see the information about your business you are about to lodge.

Here, you will see all of the details about the business that will be provided to the ATO in the heading of the STP finalisation report.  

5. Review your employee data in the Business STP Data table.

 
To navigate the table:

• Scroll up and down to view all employees 
• Scroll left to right to view all columns. Relevant column totals are shown at the bottom of the report. Total Tax withheld for the financial year is shown at the bottom of the page. 

6. Once you are happy with the data, click I have reviewed data.

7. Read the Sign ATO Agreement statement with your name as the declarer. If you agree, tick the checkbox  and click Lodge STP.

This is the finalisation message sent to the ATO to confirm that all year-to-date (YTD) amounts reported through STP are true and correct. These amounts will be reported in the employee's Income Statement. It should change the status of the employee's Income Statement in MyGov from Year to date to Tax ready.

You will receive a success message when the STP is lodged.

Note: This submission could take up to 72 hours to appear in your ATO Business Portal and in the employees Income Statement.

Status of the STP submission

STP Log

The STP log on the Submit to ATO page will also give us more information on what is happening with the STP submission.

Checking the STP Log will inform you of when the STP submission was made and the state of the STP submission along with any errors and action required.

• Submitting 

• Unreachable