Preparing payment summaries in AccountRight & AccountEdge

The compliance update which includes tax tables for the 2019/20 payroll year, will be available at the end of June.

It’s included as part of an AccountRight subscription or with MYOB Cover if you use AccountEdge. 

You can check if you're on the latest version or have a subscription on the MYOB website.

It’s the payment date that determines the year a pay is reported in a payment summary. If a wage is paid to an employee in June, it’s reported in your 2019 summaries. This is the case, even if it includes payment for work that will be done in July.

You can use the Payment Summary Assistant in your software to create a payment summary report (called an EMPDUPE file) that you can lodge electronically to the ATO's Business Portal. Before you can lodge, you'll need to register for an AUSkey. 

When you create the EMPDUPE file, save it to a location you can easily access. Then log into the ATO's Business Portal, go to the Lodge file page (you'll see it in menu), select Lodge > Browse and then find and select your file in the window that appears. 

See the ATO's help site for more information about the file transfer feature.

If you've using the latest version of AccountRight and you have a current subscription, you'll see a pop-up message in your software when the compliance update is available. You can update your software from this message.

If you’re using AccountEdge, you can access the compliance update via my.MYOB. You will also be notified via email about availability, and how to access your update.

If you're using AccountRight v19 and haven't seen an update message, open your company file, go to 'Help > Updates' and select  'Check for Updates'.  If you are using an earlier version of AccountRight or AccountEdge, or you don’t have a current subscription, you can check for updates from the MYOB website (available end of June). 

After lodging your payment summary annual report (EMPDUPE) via the ATO business portal, a confirmation report is generated. If your confirmation report displays a WM02 warning about "street address line 2", you can ignore this warning. It's simply advising that the second line of your business address is blank. For most addresses this is normal.

When preparing payment summaries, we recommend saving a PDF copy of the summaries and storing them should you need to reprint them later. 

If you didn't save them, you'll need to restore the back up you made before closing the payroll year and reprint them using the Prepare Payment Summaries assistant. 

In the latest version of AccountRight you also have the option to email your payment summaries directly from AccountRight.

You can email payment summaries to employees in the latest version of AccountRight.

If you're using MYOB AccountEdge or an older version of AccountRight, you'll need to save a PDF copy of your payment summaries and attached them to emails you send to your emplyees.

If you haven't submitted the EMPDUPE file to the ATO, simply run the Payment Summary Assistant again to generate updated payment summaries for your employees. 

If you’ve already submitted the EMPDUPE file to the ATO, and later realise they were set up incorrectly, or were missing information, you will need to lodge amended payment summaries with the ATO. 

If you're using the latest version of AccountRight, you can amend your payment summaries at Step 7 of the Prepare Payment Summaries assistant. Select the "Yes, these are amendments" option and provide your employee with the amended payment summary. You can then resubmit the updated file electronically to the ATO. Note that if you need to amend a payment summary from a closed payroll year, you'll first need to restore the back up you made before closing the payroll year.

If you're using an earlier version of AccountRight or AccountEdge, instead of resubmitting the changes electronically, you'll need to enter these details on the ATO's payment summary form (mark the Amending a payment summary box) and send it to your employee and the ATO.

You need to match the payroll categories in your company file (the ones you use to pay wages), with the ATO's payment summary report fields. If you have a simple payroll, you may only need to set up the gross wages fields (such as base salary, overtime and holiday pay). 

It gets trickier if you pay allowances, have salary sacrifice deductions or have had staff leave during the year. The webcast explains how to handle these in some detail. But not every business is the same. If you're not sure what categories match to each field, we recommend you contact your advisor or see the ATO guidelines.

Single Touch Payroll became mandatory 1st July 2018 for businesses with 20 or more employees, and will now be required for all other businesses (with 19 or fewer employees) from the 1st July 2019.

If your business needs to be STP compliant and you aren’t yet using an MYOB product, speak with your vendor about what options they have for your product.

For more information see our Single Touch Payroll guide.

If you've been using Single Touch Payroll reporting, your end-of-year is now a lot easier and in many cases you won't need to prepare payment summaries. Instead, you 'finalise' your Single Touch Payroll information directly from your software.

When you finalise, the status of the employee's income statement in myGov will change to Tax ready. This means they'll be able to pre-fill and lodge their tax return. Check with the ATO website on the due date for making this finalisation declaration. To learn how to finalise your STP information in your MYOB product, head over to MYOB Academy.

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