My BAS prefill balances from my STP submissions are incorrect - What do I do?

KB ID: STP001

Question

I have just submitted the same payrun to the ATO twice, or missed a payrun before creating a new one.

What must I do to handle the duplication on the ATO portal? Or is it okay to just submit the next chronological payrun?

Answer

As of 2018, STP contains two figures when a user sends an STP submission: Employer Data and Employee Data.
  • Employer Data includes a total gross and total PAYG for the pay run itself and is not a YTD balance. This is the data that the ATO has now started using to pre-fill the W1 and W2 fields in the BAS.
  • Employee Data includes the Year to Date (YTD) breakdown of the employee’s pays which is used for completing their Income Statement.

Previously, one could miss a submission and then submit the next pay when it occurs, and the employee YTD balances would update & be correct.

As of STP Phase 2, the ATO will pre-fill W1 and W2 using employer data (total gross & PAYG). Employee Data is not reported as YTD values.

Instead, it is a total of that specific pay run, meaning it will impact pre-fill balances in the event that a user sends through the same submission multiple times, misses a submission, or a submission results in an error.

Workaround

An update event doesn't have any employer component in the submission so it only adjusts employee data. This means when you send an Update Event to reflect changes to employee balances it adjusts employee data only - this is why it only shows that an entry has been received in the ATO Portal but doesn't show any detail.

If the ATO's pre-fill balances for BAS are incorrect, we recommend manually editing the W1 & W2 fields in the ATO portal to correct the balances to what they should be.

The W1 & W2 fields in the ATO Portal are editable and can be manually corrected if they're showing incorrect pre-fill balances.

The ATO has created a short guide on checking and modifying pre-fill data. You can review this here: https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/hiring-and-paying-your-workers/single-touch-payroll/ato-payg-withholding-pre-fill-for-activity-statements .
Please note: As this is not in the confines of Reckon, we cannot advise directly on best practices. In this case, if you are having difficulties, we recommend reaching out to your accountant or bookkeeper to assist.

Need an accountant or bookkeeper? You can reach out to our friendly professional and accredited consultants and bookkeepers here: https://partnersearch.reckon.com/

Need further assistance? You can reach out to us on the Reckon Community here: https://community.reckon.com/

How did we do?

Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 Overview

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