How to prepare for Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 - Reckon Web

What you need to do

What you need to do

To get started, go through our easy-to-follow ready checklist. We will step you through the information you will need to add, review or edit to get your business in-line with the ATO’s guidelines. If you need guidance with any of the selections, we have provided links to the specific ATO page.

You do not have to complete the checklist all at once, you can begin to make changes, save and come back to continue it at any time. Plus, changes to the checklist do not interfere with the current ATO submissions using the STP1 format.

Complete the checklist

We have divided the required changes into sections.

Employee

The first section allows you to ensure your employees have the new reporting fields required for STP Phase 2. Reporting this information each pay run eliminates the need to submit tax file declarations to the ATO as a separate process.

Learn more about preparing your employees here.

Earnings

The ATO requires a breakdown or disaggregation of the gross amount paid to your employees. This means separately reporting bonuses and commissions and director’s fees. A list of your variable pay items are displayed for you to select which reporting category they belong to.

Learn more about preparing your employees here.

Allowances

In this section you will need to update each of your Allowance pay items. The ATO have updated the category’s and where you use the category, Other, a second sub type is required.

Learn more about preparing your employees here.

Leave

Any Leave you pay to your employees need to be reported separate from Gross, for STP Phase 2. Leave that you have classified as Other Leave will require a sub category.

Learn more about preparing your employees here.

The Checklist will display a yellow exclamation mark indicating that action is required within the section and once you complete the section it will show a green tick.

Check other items

As mentioned, all leave must be reported separate to Gross in STP Phase 2. We have created an additional section where all Earnings and Allowances are displayed for you to check that there are no Earning or Allowance pay items configured to pay leave.

If you are paying Leave using Earnings or Allowance type pay items, you will need to disable or delete those payroll items and re-create them as a leave type item before you switch to STP Phase 2.

Accessing the STP Phase 2 Ready Checklist

Go to Reckon Payroll from your web browser. Enter your user email and password then click on the Log in button. Enter your MFA code to log in into your account.
Click on the Let's go link in the Prepare for STP Phase 2! banner or

Click STP Phase 2 Ready Checklist under Compliance on the top navigation menu.

Switching to STP Phase 2

STP Phase 2 is now available. Once the validation against employees and pay items is complete, indicated by the green tick in the STP Phase 2 Ready checklist, the Switch to STP Phase 2 button is enabled.

Once selected, a notice is displayed reminding the user that once selected to switch, there is no option to revert back to report via STP Phase 1.

Any reference to optional fields labeled as STP 2 is removed. For example, prior to the switch users would see Income stream code labelled as STP Phase 2 income stream code and now it is displayed as Income stream code.

Once the switch has been made, the STP version can be checked under Settings / Single Touch Payroll.

This can be done at anytime throughout the financial year. There is no need to wait for the end of financial year.

Need more help?

Ask the Reckon Community at: https://community.reckon.com/categories/payrollapp

Or Log a Support Ticket: https://www.reckon.com/au/support/

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