Sybiz Visipay 17.20
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Single Touch Payroll Compliance
Single Touch Payroll (STP) has arrived in Australia and compatibility is only available in Sybiz Visipay from version 17.20. Sybiz Visipay, combined with our Sybiz Employer Portal, will enable you to complete your STP reporting and ensure it is verified with the ATO.
Single Touch Payroll is mandatory for businesses with 20 or more employees from 1 July 2018. Smaller employers are also able to opt into STP early but it is not mandatory for them until 1 July 2019, assuming relevant legislation is in place.
For more information regarding Single Touch Payroll, including Frequently Asked Questions and information on the Sybiz Employer Portal, please visit our dedicated STP page.
Making Single Touch Payroll active
Enabling Single Touch Payroll reporting within Sybiz Visipay is relatively easy. The relevant settings are accessible by going to File > Options > Tax Details, and select Active under Single Touch Payroll (as shown below). Enabling STP in Sybiz Visipay allows you to identify that you want to use Single Touch Payroll. If you need to perform payment summary reporting you can temporarily disable STP by unchecking the box.
Employee address errors
Employee addresses are required to be complete and correct for Single Touch Payroll purposes.
A few rules have been added, such as: Address Line 1 must be present; Address Line 2 is optional if Address Line 1 is used; Postcodes must be entered; Where 'Other' state has been chosen, the relevant country needs to be selected from the drop down menu.
It is recommended to review employee on-boarding processes to ensure the collection of address details is formalised.
Errors will appear on employee records where necessary Single Touch Payroll data is missing.
Categorisation of Allowances
An additional field called ‘Category’ has been made available for Allowance pay items. By default, all Allowances are set to the value ‘Other’ and you will need to recategorize as appropriate into one of the 5 specific options; or leave as ‘Other’ in the event that a specific option does not apply. Sybiz Visipay utilises the description field for 'Other' categorised Allowances which can be customised.
Each employee is limited to 20 'Other' allowance categories in any one financial year.
Warnings on Employee Number
The employee numbers allocated against an employee record in Sybiz Visipay are now recorded by the ATO. The ATO will use these numbers as another form of unique identification against individuals.
Warnings will now appear on employee records when you attempt to change the employee number after you have made an STP submission for those employees (refer to Zero Update Event below).
Sybiz Employer Portal
A link to the Sybiz Employer Portal is now available in the software via the application menu. The Sybiz Employer Portal is required for STP reporting through Sybiz Visipay and is used to verify your STP submission with the ATO.
STP Transfer
Under the Utilities menu, the 'ATO Transfer' button is used to initiate the STP reporting process and now shows the event type options for Single Touch Payroll reporting. Employees can be included or excluded from reporting by selecting or unselecting the checkboxes. The Single Touch Payroll Declaration needs to be checked on every submission. For security reasons your Sybiz Employer Portal Credentials are not saved in the database and these will need to be entered each time.
The event options in the Sybiz Visipay STP Transfer include:
Pay Event
A Pay Event is used each time you pay your employees and needs to occur on or before the scheduled pay date. The Event Date should reflect the date that employees are to be paid rather than the processing date, which may differ. Weekly, fortnightly and monthly tick box options for pay events automatically generate based on your employee pay frequencies.
Update Event
An Update Event can be used when a change has been made to an employee's balances, details or categorisations after a Pay Event has already been submitted. If a change is to be notified for an employee it is not essential to perform an update event as the changes will be reflected in the next pay event.
Zero Update Event
A Zero Update Event can be used if you wish to reset your employees balances to zero and must be used when changing Employee Numbers during a financial year.
Employee Income Statement
The Employee Income Statement option can be used when you wish to submit a Final Event Indicator for all employees at the end of the financial year, after your last Pay Event has been submitted. The ATO will then release the employee’s information into the tax return pre-filling process after 30 June.
Final Event Indicator
Final Event Indicators can be attributed to an employee at any time of the year to signify to the ATO that you will be sending no more data for that employee for that financial year. For example, when an employee has been terminated and all reporting completed.
STP Transfer Prior Year
Under the Utilities menu, the 'ATO Transfer Prior Year' button is now named 'STP Transfer Prior Year' and shows the relevant Event Options for Single Touch Payroll reporting. Prior year reporting has two options, Zero Update and Employee Income Statement and the Event Date will be automatically set to the last day of the previous financial year. The Single Touch Payroll Declaration needs to be checked on every submission.
Zero Update (for prior year)
A Zero Update Event can be used if you wish to reset your employees balances to zero for the prior year.
Employee Income Statement (for prior year)
The Employee Income Statement option is an update event that can be used when you wish to submit a Final Event Indicator for certain employees for the previous financial year.
Superannuation Alternate File Format (SAFF) export module
Sybiz Visipay now includes an export option for use with alternative SuperStream portals.
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Other Fixes and Improvements
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Emails now send correctly when leave is applied for from the iPhone App. (180537648)
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If the termination date is in the future for Prior Year Payment Summary files it is now set correctly to the end of financial year date instead. (180537457)
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Grouping quick selection is now enabled on the payslip printing form for email and printing columns. (180437309)
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Changes made to the pay processing date after starting a pay run will now update correctly. (180437245)
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The email address validation has been extended to support more obscure domain names. (180437197)
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The Active flag on the training history report now filters correctly. (180537525)
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