Is it possible that Manager will in the near future have a fully featured payroll system that complies with the Australian Taxation Office, including ‘Single Touch Payroll’?:
https://www.ato.gov.au/about-ato/about-us/in-detail/strategic-direction/streamlined-reporting-with-single-touch-payroll/?=redirected
Would love this for NZ too. The current reporting delivers what we need but complex because of the need to pull so many reports to find the information needed. What would help us is
I don’t speak for the Developer, but noting the short time span - Jul 1 - it is unlikely that Manager will have a fully featured payroll system by that date considering the current payslip module.
Also noting the fact, that the ATO itself hasn’t yet finalised their own technical documentation which would enable the payroll service providers themselves to update their existing systems.
The suggestion would be this - engage a “payroll service provider” who would be compliant and then just enter the Payroll period summary into Manager.
As an Australian small business owner it would also help me. Less than 20 employees so needed by 1/07/2019. (Larger employers would like it by 1/07/2018).
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Single Touch Payroll and superannuation payments through the Small Business Clearing House can be notified to the Australian Taxation Office through your Business Portal. To set it up go to - https://bp.ato.gov.au/.
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Hi,
I was just wondering if there was any further work on Single Touch Payroll. Is there a way of manually submitting the information required by the ATO? The due date for single touch payroll is fast approaching and I was wondering if I would need to change accounting packages? I had a brief look at service providers but they all seem prohibitively expensive.
Single Touch Payroll can be reported to the ATO from your Business Portal.
Hi Tony,
Thanks very much for your reply. Could you elaborate a little as to the process, do you mean using your auskey logging into the ATO portal and uploading your file similar to uploading an aba file? When I look at the ATO portal the single touch payroll reports section appears to only display already lodged stp (which I haven’t done yet) should I be going to the area where you can upload a file? If so does Manager generate the required file to upload?
Thanks very much,
The ATO can help you with the procedure for using STP on the Business Portal. Manager doesn’t generate the file to upload.
Thanks for the prompt response.
Can I confirm that it is possible to continue using manager whilst being STP compliant? Will this process of logging onto the ATO business portal be required every payroll? Will like other accounting solutions manager submit the required information? Unfortunately, I am unable to see the section that you are referring to on the ATO website? Thanks for all of the help, I understand that it is not really a manager issue, but I am sure you can understand the concern that the ATO’s new policy bring me.
Thanks again
My reading of the ATO site is it does not support manual payment through them, in particular it is not one of the options listed under “How to report” https://www.ato.gov.au/business/single-touch-payroll/about-single-touch-payroll/
In contrast other software vendors have a clear strategy
Xero Single Touch Payroll | Xero Blog
Myob Single Touch Payroll (STP) made easy | Get your business ready | MYOB
Quick Books Payroll
The process described by Australian business software industry association, looks rather involved DSPANZ - About STP Products so I suspect the only viable option for businesses with more than 20 employees at 1 April 2018 is to get a third party to do it, buy specific payroll software or change their accounting package. Alternatively a business or software vendor can apply for a delayed implementation (assuming they have a plan to achieve one touch payroll).
You are correct. Pay Event Transactions can only be uploaded from STP enabled payroll software.
Hi,
Thanks for all of the assistance. Can I confirm that Manager is not STP compliant? Would Australian businesses be able to use manager in conjunction with a site such as https://singletouch.com.au/ in order to be compliant? Would Manger be able to create a suitable csv that could be uploaded to the singletouch website from which they will submit it on your behalf? If these is not the case does this render manager useless for Australians? Is there another way of lodging the required single touch payroll information? Thanks for all of the assistance, I understand that I am quite a novice in this particular area
Single Touch Payroll won’t be part of Manager. It will be a separate add-on which will integrate with Manager. It should be available before end of this year.
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Whew! This news is a great relief to me. I was starting to think I would be faced with persuading my paperwork hating tradie to learn a new software package. We actually have until 1 July 2019 to get on top of this change so I’ll relax now and keep an eye out for updates. Thanks. Mary
And just for the sake of letting off some steam, I think it’s a damn cheek for our politicians to impose a change on small businesses, which includes a significant annual expense, for the purpose of providing a government department with information it wants. Mary
I agree, well said Mary. Just more red tape and regulation.
Same in NZ ird are making it so small business will have to end up paying for MYOB or xero just to get a payroll for one or two employees. I just built my own payroll with everything in it and it works really well.
As we are now entering December, is the project to get STP module up and running still on track?
@Elfroar no work is being done on STP at the moment, mostly because it’s not mandatory until at least July 2019. However, there are other countries switching to online lodgement systems earlier than that. So I’m not particularly looking at STP right now. I’m looking into generic approach how to implement this across many countries and this will have to be complete by end of March 2019.
As for STP, don’t worry. We are based in Australia after all. And we have plenty of Australian users - we cannot afford not to have it.
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