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A: The key date in the pay for STP is the Payment Available Posting date. This is what will be transmitted to the ATO as the payment date.
The STP Payroll event should be submitted on or before the Payment Available Pay date.
Q: Does the STP have to be sent and verified before we can process the pay through the bank?
A: No. You should not delay payment based on not having received a response from the ATO's STP service.
Q: What happens if a pay event is filed after the payment date? Will it be rejected by the STP service?
A: No, the record won't be rejected. There may be legitimate reasons for the late lodgement such as factors outside your control (e.g. ATO Web service down for maintenance). If it is genuinely late the ATO may flag it as a late lodgement to be followed up with you.
Q: Does the STP submission need to be acknowledged by the ATO before payment to the employees, or is the submission date being the same value sufficient?
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A: Synergetic will only send the data the ATO has asked for inclusion within STP events. As there are some updated configuration options for Pay Codes and identifying what should be included, you should review your Pay Codes before your first STP run to confirm the STP content will be correct. There is a Discourse post listing the updated Pay Code types which will be available.
Q: With superannuation reporting, what happens when we have defined benefits? Is it reported differently via stp?
A: If you have a super line for the employee with a nominal amount specified (e.g. 3%) that will be transmitted to the ATO. If you can't enter an SGC amount for employees, you can report their Ordinary Time Earnings instead. We have added a switch at the system level to allow you to report OTE in STP. It won't be on by default (so that clients who don't have complex super requirements don't have to worry about it) but you will be able to set up OTE calculations if you need to.
Q: If we have two ABNs and generate two payrolls at the same time, how do we send it through STP?
A: As is currently the case, if you operate with two ABNs you would need two finance databases/schemas. Each one would have its own identity under STP and they would not block each other.
Q: When should we update our pay codes for STP.
A: There are new Reporting Categories that will be available with STP and they will be deployed with V69. When you first upgrade to V69 you will need to review your reporting categories and make sure you are satisfied with the mapping from pay code to pay code type and reporting category.
End of Year Processes
Q: Is there is need to continue doing the payment summary process?
A: Once you are using STP there is no need to do PAYG summaries for that year. In fact, you should not supply a PAYG for anything that has been finalised through STP.
Q: Do we still need to update EMPDUPE file on to the ATO Portal?
A: Once you are using STP then there is no need to generate EMPDUPE files for that year.
Q: If there is overpayment can we do a negative pay run to adjust the pay?
A: Short answer is yes... most of the time. It is a little complex if the reversal of the overpayment is in the next financial year and would take an employee's pay go in to the negative. You can never report a negative YTD figure for an employee so if the overpayment occured in the prior year and they are going to pay it back, you will report 0 until they are back in the positives. If they will not pay it back then there is a manual rectification process with the ATO.
Upgrades and timeframe
Q: Will i need to contact synergetic for software upgrade?
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Q: If Synergetic is deferring the STP implementation, do we get an automatic deferral or do we still have to report via STP?
A: Assuming the ATO approves As part of granting Synergetic's deferral request, the ATO will provide ATO provided Synergetic with a vendor deferral code which will cover all employers using Synergetic for up to the end of the deferral window (31 Jan 2019). The ATO is able to determine which sites use Synergetic for Payroll via the PAYG submissions in prior yearyears; for sites that are newly converted to using Synergetic and the ATO are not aware of this, your site may need to contact the ATO and quote the vendor code to ensure you are covered.
Once your site has v69 installed and is ready to move to STP (ahead of July 1 or ahead of the deferral end date) you will be able to commence and do not need to wait until the deferral timeline finishes - you can commence with STP as soon as ready. Note that once you commence using STP, you will be required to continue doing so by ATO requirement.
Q: As Synergetic will be sending STP events via an
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STP Messaging gateway, is this a Synergetic responsibility and we don’t have to do anything?
A: Synergetic will be responsible for the development of the transmission and for ensuring it complies with the gateway provider and ATO requirements; clients will need to ensure that the communication can get to the appropriate external destination eg configuring firewalls if required. More details on the client system requirements will be shared as part of the final release documentation
The sending process uses the Synergetic Service Suite to process and send the STP payload to the gateway provider's API endpoint - using RESTful call via HTTPS with TLS encryption. Depending on your infrastructure design and if/how Service Suite has been used previously, you may need to verify that the STP gateway end point is able to be accessed from the relevant server (which may involve firewall or other network security considerations).
Q: We have invested in a Synergetic Pre-Prod (test) system to help us with our change management. Is there an equivalent test environment provided by the ATO?
A: The ATO has a test system for developers to test and confirm STP communications, however it is not open to employers as they only allow specific test scenarios to be used, with specific data. At this stage there's no method for employers/your test system to do test communications with your own data.
Q: Is it the Synergetic recommendation to do the 68 & 69 upgrade at the same time?
A: We are encouraging clients to upgrade to V68 before the V69 upgrade as the V68 upgrade is a more significant upgrade and that will give you time to make sure any integrations are working before taking on STP in V69.