JOBKEEPER-TOPUP and STP

[aoboau]

Can anyone instruct how to record JobKeeper topup with correct STP report? Thanks.

I tried the following steps, but the STP figures was incorrect.

1. Create a New Payslip Item, named JOBKEEPER-TOPUP, in Settings/Payslip Items. Assign it to Expense/Wages account, and choose Allowance - Other for ATO reporting category, and No for OTE.
2. Create a New Payslip. select JOBKEEPER-TOPUP in Earnings, fill in 1500 in Rate, then add 192 for PAYG deduction.
3. Create New Report for Single Touch Payroll Worksheet for the pay run period. The period W1 shows 0, which should be 1500?? Gross pay figure for the employee is not correct as well.

Did I miss anything? Thanks.

[Tut]

I know nothing about your Jobkeeper program. But localization reports work only with payslip items and custom fields that have been defined and installed from the Localizations page at the time the report was created. Since you have created a new payslip item, it will be ignored by the STP report. The report simply does not know it is there.

No report in Manager is an official filing mechanism. They are only to be thought of as worksheets. Sometimes, you need modifications before submitting filings. And nothing in the program is adaptive to changing external circumstances.

[Patch]

@aoboau

Allowance - Other for ATO reporting category

I believe that is your mistake.

JobKeeper requires you pay your employees a wage of at least $1500 before tax for each pay fortnight (defined by the ATO as 30/03/2020 - 12/04/2020, 13/04/2020 - 26/04/2020 etc so at least $3000 in April).

• Both your ordinary pay below $1500 and any top up payment are classified as “Gross Pay” for the ATO.
• Any top up payment does not attract compulsory superannuation contribution so, select no for OTE - ordinary time earnings (as you did).

See https://community.ato.gov.au/t5/Single-Touch-Payroll/Jobkeeper-Top-up-payment/m-p/42020
And for more details see https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-04/JobKeeper_frequently_asked_questions_2.pdf

[Patch]

For those who need to update prior fortnights pay to meet the $1500 minimum / $3000 in April requirements this can be done by:

• include the back pay as part of your routine pay cycle (add the back pay pay payslip items to their latest payslip and submit it routinely. This will work if there is a remaining routine pay day prior to the end of April.

• or edit your last payslips to include the back pay, create a new cvs file in Manager, used Single touch / ATO replace facility to “Replace” the last pay event file. Email updated payslips to employees from Manger.

• or generate an out-of-cycle payslips in Manager (eg for the day after your last normal pay run) containing the back pay requirements. Generate the cvs file for the 1 day in Manager, upload it to Single Touch and submit to ATO. The next fortnights pay run will need to be for 13 days (ie not including the out-of-cycle pay day) so as to not double report the out of cycle pay in the reported W1 (period gross salary or wages) and W2 (period PAYG withholding tax). Note the employee data is only report as year to date quantities so they would be OK.

• A Single touch / ATO “update” pay event can not be used as they must have W1 and W2 zero ie involve no employee net pay or withholding tax changes.

[Patch]

@aoboau

Can anyone instruct how to record JobKeeper topup with correct STP report? Thanks.

I tried the following steps, but the STP figures was incorrect

The information I gave above is wrong according to the “Single Touch JobKeeper instructions.pdf” available after logging into https://www.singletouch.com.au/

That document specifies and JobKeeper topups are to be reported as you describe above

• Other allowance description 1 (or 2) = JOBKEEPER-TOPUP
• Other allowance 1 (or 2) = year to date topup amount

In addition the Pay period top up amount is to be included in the reported in W1, and the tax withheld included in W2.

In Manager if the Payslip item is defined as a “Gross payment”

• The amounts are included in W1 as required.
• The payments to “JobKeeper-TopUp” are separately listed in “Payslip Totals per Item and Employee” report
• But in the “Single touch Payroll Worksheet” they are included in “Gross Pay”

If instead the “ATO reporting category” = “Allowance - Other” is used

• The amounts are not included in W1 as required.
• The payments to “JobKeeper-TopUp” are separately listed in “Payslip Totals per Item and Employee” report
• In the “Single touch Payroll Worksheet” they are listed separately under “Other allowance 1 value”
• But the “Other allowance 1 description” is set to “Other” not “JobKeeper-TopUp”

In the short term the easiest is to edit this later file (calculate values then copy & paste special values only, then save the csv file). Particularly as for the first pay event with JobSeeker requires “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” in the “Other allowance 1 description” with “Other allowance 1 value” = 0. ( “Other allowance 2 description” = “JobKeeper-TopUp”)

In the longer term I can have a look at the localisation but it will be up to @lubos to decide it he wants the shared version changed / want to do the coding.

It appears there maybe other options after the 4 May 2020, either to enter the data directly into the ATO business portal or up load a cvs file directly to there
https://www.ato.gov.au/general/jobkeeper-payment/In-detail/JobKeeper-guide---employers-reporting-through-STP/

[lbc]

Hi,

With the new Australian government stimulus for the JobKeeper payments, we are required to top up staff pay who receive less than $1500 to a new amount of $1500.

I have read details from PWC and MYOB help pages.

JobKeeper and Single Touch Payroll

COVID-19 wage subsidy (JobKeeper) payments - MYOB AccountRight - MYOB Help...

Here is what is required for us to set up JobKeeper on Manager:

• Create new Payslip Item “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” with ATO reporting category “Allowance - Other” and OTE “No”.
• Create new Payslip Item “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” with the same other values

Then to create the payslip, the payslip items will contain:

• Regular wages of $1000 (for example)
• JOBKEEPER-TOPUP of $500
• JOBKEEPER-START-FN01 of $0.01

Upon generating the STP report in manager, I can see the value of “Other allowance 1 description” is “Other” which is a hard coded value from “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet.json”.

{% if employee_otherAllowance != 0 %}{% assign employee_other_allowance_description = "Other" %}{% endif %}

I believe the required value needs to say “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” or “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” instead of “Other”, which comes from the payslip item description. I’m not too certain what the value should be if both “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” and “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” exists in the payslip, but I’m guessing “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” takes precedence.

How should I change the json file so that it does not have “Other”, but instead take the value from the payslip item description?

After making that adjustment, do I re-import the “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet.json” file because I cannot find a copy of it inside the “Manager” file directory.

Thank you for your help!

[lbc]

[Tut]

@lbc, please search the forum before starting new topics. Your posts were added to the existing discussion of this subject.

[Patch]

@lbc

I’m not too certain what the value should be if both “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” and “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” exists in the payslip, but I’m guessing “JOBKEEPER-START-FN01” takes precedence.

The ATO and Single Touch support “Other allowance 1 description” to “Other allowance 4 description”.
When more than 1 are needed then multiple separate entries are used. Single touch has a parameter which user can set specifying the maximum number of “Other” entries in the cvs file.

For settings changes such as specifying the start (or finish) “JobKeeper” fortnight, the notification is to occur only once (not repeatedly each STP event). The amount must be zero, so for Manager I will need to check what happens when 0 or 0.001 is entered. Although as these are one off entries doing it by hand maybe easier.

@lbc

After making that adjustment, do I re-import the “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet.json” file

See

Localisation: GST/VAT worksheet programming guide

https://forum.manager.io/t/philippine-bir-reports-templates/23777/4 As a result of this post it is probably best to not put too much effort into localisation at the moment. The following thread describes what can currently be done. I assume the future implementation will enable a larger range of use cases to be addressed and hopefully maintains relative ease of implementation for those with a good understanding of local tax requirements such as local accountants. Background information Develo…

The changes I was considering were:

1. Including “Other” amounts in W1. I had assumed all “Payslip Earning Items” would be included but perhaps there are cases I’m not aware of where this is not appropriate.

2. For “ATO Category” “Allowance- other” use the “Payslip item name” as the “ Other allowance description”

[lbc]

Hi @Tut
I did read this post, but thought although my question relates to JOBKEEPER-TOPUP, it was more to do with the json setting, and hence kept it as a separate post. I’ll keep note to put similar questions under the same initial post.

Thanks @Patch for your answers. I agree with your proposed changes to the STP worksheet. I’ll make manual changes for the moment.

Thank you!

[Patch]

Trying to clarify what should be included under STP “Pay period” W1. In particular which “ATO reporting category” listed in Manger

Executive summary

• STP W1 appears to corresponds to BAS Label W1 requirements
• BAS W1 appears to include all above “ATO reporting category” except “Exempt foreign employment income”

In Detail
“ATO reporting category” listed in Manger are

• Gross payments
• CDEP payments (Community Development Employment Projects)
• Allowance - Car
• Allowance - Transport
• Allowance - Travel
• Allowance - Meals
• Allowance - Laundry
• Allowance - Other
• Lump sum A - Termination (unused annual leave)
• Lump sum A - Redundancy (unused annual leave)
• Lump sum B (unused long service leave)
• Lump sum D (tax-free components of a genuine redundancy payment or an early retirement)
• Lump sum E (back payments relate to an earlier income year or years)
• Exempt foreign employment income

Single touch Payroll reference data
From

Single Touch Payroll employer reporting guidelines

The rules of reporting through Single Touch Payroll

…

You must report period gross salary or wages (BAS label W1) and PAYG withholding (BAS label W2) for all employee payments included in that pay event.

• These are your ‘employer-level amounts’.
• These amounts may be negative because of fixes you’ve made.
• These amounts would generally correspond to the amounts you posted to your general ledger for the pay run.

…

Allowances

Not all allowances paid to employees are separately itemised as some allowances that are non-deductible form part of the gross payments.

What is changing under STP is that where the allowance is required to be separately itemised (deductible), they will need to be categorised in one of the following categories:

• travel
• car
• meals
• laundry
• transport
• other.

Employees will be able to see their allowances in ATO online services, accessed through myGov. The ATO will pre-fill these amounts into the employee’s individual tax return once the employee’s STP information has been finalised.

BAS reference data
From

PAYG withholding - how to complete your activity statement labels

W1 – Total salary, wages and other payments

Include at W1 total gross payments from which you are usually required to withhold amounts. These payments include:

• salary, wages, allowances and leave loading paid to employees
• Commonwealth education and training payments
• employment termination payments
• payment for unused annual or long service leave
• superannuation (super) income stream
• super lump sum.
• attributed personal services income.

Include all payments subject to withholding, even if you weren’t required to withhold any amount.

Do not include :

• amounts subject to salary sacrifice arrangements
• super contributions
• departing Australia superannuation payments
• payments from which you withheld an amount because an ABN was not quoted (see W4)
• an investment distribution from which you withheld an amount for non-quotation of a tax file number
• interest, dividends or royalty payments from which you withheld an amount for a payment to a foreign resident
• payments to foreign residents for entertainment, sports, construction and casino gaming junket activities.

[Patch]

Settings → Report transformations → Single Touch Payroll Worksheet

I think the problems is line 48
{% assign period_W1_amount = grossPayments | map: 'Amount1' | sum %}

Which only includes PaySlip items with “ATO reporting category” set to “Gross payments”
Rather than any “ATO reporting category” except “Exempt foreign employment income”

and line 147

@lbc

the value of “Other allowance 1 description” is “Other” which is a hard coded value from “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet.json”.

{% if employee_otherAllowance != 0 %}{% assign employee_other_allowance_description = “Other” %}{% endif %}

Which should ideally assign the “PaySlip earing item name” but if that turns out to be to difficult hard coding in “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” would work

[Patch]

A quick and dirty fix is:
Goto Settings → Report Transformations → Single Touch Payroll Worksheet → Edit

Add a line after line 48 as shown (put cursor at the end of the line, press carriage return, paste in the line shown below)
{% assign period_W1_amount = grossPayments | map: 'Amount1' | sum %}
{% assign period_W1_amount = otherAllowance | map: 'Amount1' | sum | plus: period_W1_amount %}

And update line 147 (now line 148) from
{% if employee_otherAllowance != 0 %}{% assign employee_other_allowance_description = “Other” %}{% endif %}
to
{% if employee_otherAllowance != 0 %}{% assign employee_other_allowance_description = "JOBKEEPER-TOPUP" %}{% else %}{% assign employee_other_allowance_description = "" %}{% endif %}

Then press the update button at the bottom of the report transformation edit screen

Ensure you use a payslip item with the “ATO reporting category” and “Ordinary Time Earnings” as shown for any JobKeeper top up payments

The start / finish JobKeeper fortnight can be manually added by editing the cvs file (once only) to add an extra “Other allowance”

• Other allowance description 1 = JOBKEEPER-START-FN01
• Other allowance 1 = 0

And with values from Manager STP worksheet

• Other allowance description 2 = JOBKEEPER-TOPUP
• Other allowance 2 = year to date topup amount

Note to use 2 “Other allowances” you need to update the setting in Single touch
go to the portal website https://portal.singletouch.com.au and on the Entities->View Entities, select the Select Fields
Then change it from 1 to 2

[Patch]

Now that localisation are part of the Manager install file this procedure must be repeated every time manager is updated. Hopefully there will be a better solution at some time.

Batch update / batch create maybe a solution however with Manager v20.8.25 it appears to include the “Layout” but not the “Script”

Also, if a paysheet spans a financial year, the year to date totals include all of the prior years pay as well. This implies the start of the year to date period is based on the start of the pay period not the end of the pay period. As employees are typically paid at the end not the beginning of the pay period this is not optimal in my opinion.

[Patch]

The STP report transformation has been updated to support clickable values. A very useful update however as a result the modifications to support Jobkeeper have changed

A longer term solution is discussed in this thread
https://forum.manager.io/t/report-transformations-australia/30908?u=patch
But until that functionality is implemented an easy work around is:

Create a clone of “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet”

• Goto “Settings” → “Report Transformations” → “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet” → “View” → “Clone”

• Change the Name to something like “Single Touch Payroll Worksheet - Jobkeeper”

W1 amount includes Job keeper top up

In the “Script” section of the report transformation. Replace line 4

{% assign period_W1_amount = period | where_payslip_earnings_item: '8198caf2-1125-4f8e-9469-527583e3ea5e', 'Gross payments' %}

with these two lines

{% assign period_W1_amount = period | where_payslip_earnings_item: '8198caf2-1125-4f8e-9469-527583e3ea5e', 'Gross payments' | balance %}
{% assign period_W1_amount = period | where_payslip_earnings_item: '8198caf2-1125-4f8e-9469-527583e3ea5e', 'Allowance - Other'| balance | plus: period_W1_amount %}

The above changes results in “period_W1_amount” containing a number rather than a collection of transactions, so drill down is no longer possible for that value.

In the layout section of the report transformation, column A, row 129, delete " | balance" from the start of the text in that cell (double click on in to enable editing), ie change

{% capture csv %}{{ csv }}
{{ abn }},{{ period_W1_amount | balance }},{{ period_W2_amount | balance }},{{ 

To

{% capture csv %}{{ csv }}
{{ abn }},{{ period_W1_amount }},{{ period_W2_amount | balance }},{{ 

Note there is a new line character at the beginning of the new capture text in this cell which is not shown by Manager.

Other allowance - Description

The “Other allowance - Descripion” value is changed in the csv file from “Other” to “JOBKEEPER-TOPUP” by editing the same Layout cell (column A row 125) and replacing the string as shown below (partial string only shown)
From:
{{ employee_travelAllowance.Balance }},"Other",{{ employee_otherAllowance.Balance }},{{ employee_unionFees.Balance }}
To
{{ employee_travelAllowance.Balance }},"JOBKEEPER-TOPUP",{{ employee_otherAllowance.Balance }},{{ employee_unionFees.Balance }}

To correct the displayed user report, goto the layout, click on the row 87 label (to select the row) and choose the menu item “Insert row above”
Then edit the now blank row 87 as well as the cell column A row 88 as shown

Edit 5
Post mostly rewritten