Empdupe rejected by ATO when my Legal Address country is USA

Legacy KB ID: 3619

Question

Why doesn’t QuickBooks allow me to select a US State when my Legal Address country is the United States?  My Empdupe file is then rejected by the ATO with the error:

ERROR 4 Payee State or Territory field must be either: ACT, NSW, VIC, QLD, NT, SA, WA, TAS or OTH, but we found:

Payee State or Territory
[Position 189-191] = ' '

Answer

When you select United States for your country in your Legal Address, QuickBooks offers you the Australian States for the State field.  Leaving the State field blank will then generate an error when the Empdupe file is uploaded to the ATO through its ECI portal as a code of OTH is expected for the State field and numbers in the Postcode field.  QuickBooks does not offer OTH as an option with the Australian States.   

 

Solution

You must modify the Empdupe file before submitting it to the ATO.

We suggest the following preliminary steps:

1.    In your Legal Address enter USA as your country and choose the State as ACT and the Postcode as 9999;

2.    You can include the US State code in the City field;

3.    Save your Empdupe file to an easily accessible folder.  By default QuickBooks saves the Empdupe file in:

a.    Windows 7 & Vista:  C:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks 20xx-xx\<version> 20xx-xx\<QBi file>\Export Files\Empdupe Files\;

b.    Windows XP:  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ Intuit\QuickBooks 20xx-xx\<version> 20xx-xx\<QBi file>\Export Files\Empdupe.

 

To modify the Empdupe file:

1.    Browse to the folder containing your Empdupe file and double left click it;

2.    Choose Notepad to open the file;

3.    Set your cursor at the start of the first line of the file;

4.    Click on Edit then Replace;

5.    In the Find what: field, enter ACT;

6.    In the Replace with: field, enter OTH and click on Find Next;

7.    Check that the string found is ACT followed by ‘9999us’ then click on Replace;

8.    Check each instance of ACT found and where followed by ‘9999us’ click on Replace.

9.    When finished, close the search box and click the red X to close the file.  Save changes as you exit.

 

Your Empdupe file should now be accepted by the ATO. 

 

How did we do?

Processing an Eligible Termination Payment (ETP) in QuickBooks 2011/12 and earlier

Super Details missing in a newly created Employee

Related Articles

What is the Supplier Number refered to when making an empdupe file?
My company’s legal name is long and doesn’t fit in the Legal name field. What can I do?
Why is my ABA file being rejected from ANZ after being exported from Reckon Accounts Business/Hosted
Powered by HelpDocs (opens in a new tab)

Powered by HelpDocs (opens in a new tab)