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

What is a finalisation event or declaration?

Finalising Single Touch Payroll (STP) data is how employers let the ATO know that STP reporting is complete for an employee for a financial year. This is what will trigger the notification to the employee and their tax agent that the details in their income statement are ready for 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 an employee (and directors, contractors, 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.

Lodge a STP final pay run

When you have completed and locked your last pay run for the financial year and are ready to lodge your final STP submission for the year, go to Submit to ATO in Pay runs.

Under Prepare to Lodge STP select Final Payrun and Submit event type, then 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 after the Payment Date, eg in July, you'll need to select Update. (An Update will not include the "Pay Period Tax Amount" value)

All staff, including previously terminated staff will be included in the submission for the current financial year. When you send this data to the ATO through Deputy Payroll, all staff will be marked as Final in the STP submission. This is the finalisation message sent to the ATO to advise that all YTD amounts reported are true and correct and these amounts will be report in the employees income statement. It should change the status of the employees income statement in MyGov from "Year to date" to "tax ready".
Note: The ATO advises that this process can take up to 72 hours to take effect in MyGov. 

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.

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. 

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:

• 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. 

• Review your employee STP data, scrolling right to see all columns

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

Sign the ATO Agreement

Read the following statement, and if you agree, tick the box provided and click Lodge STP.

I acknowledge that neither Deputec Pty Ltd (Deputy) nor Microkeeper Pty Ltd (Microkeeper), are providing an agent service and neither Deputy nor Microkeeper are responsible for the preparation of any taxation, superannuation or other related documents on behalf of this business/entity.
Microkeeper can however, submit transmissions through the SBR channel that this business/entity chooses to make.
I "Your name", declare the information transmitted in this payroll report is true and correct and I am authorised to make this declaration for "Your Legal Entity".
Tick this box to sign this declaration with your unique username "your username" and the machine credentials provided by Microkeeper.

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.

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.

• Submitting 

• Unreachable