QuickBooks Single Touch Payroll (STP) Software (Setup Guide)

Single Touch Payroll, often known as STP, is a government program to simplify your company’s payroll reporting requirements.

Simply put, STP mandates that businesses (or their registered agents) send payments including salary, wages, PAYG withholding, and superannuation data to the ATO straight from their payroll system. Every pay run that has been finalized must be reported afterward by the employee’s payment date, at the latest.

What is Single Touch Payroll (STP)?

A government program called Single Touch Payroll which is also known as STP seeks to simplify the payroll reporting requirements for businesses.

STP mandates that businesses transmit payments such salary, wages, PAYG withholding, and superannuation data directly to the ATO from their payroll system. By no later than the employee’s pay date following the completion of each pay run, this must be reported.

The option to lodge a pay event to the ATO is available for each pay run that you complete in QuickBooks Payroll. Year-to-Date information regarding the salary of your employees is contained in a pay event.

You won’t need to submit payment summaries to the ATO separately because you will have already filed all employee earnings for the whole fiscal year.

QuickBooks Single Touch Payroll (STP) Guide

Turning on STP

Prior to moving on and lodging pay events, you must first make sure that all settings are complete. We advise you to finish each of the tasks listed below in turn.

• Activate STP
• Add the user who will be approving the pay events if necessary.

Creating and Lodging of Events

The ATO accepts two different sorts of events for filing:

• Pay Event
• Update Event

In Single Touch Payroll’s Reports tab (under the Reports heading), you may find a summary of all events.

Pay Event

In order to avoid penalties, you must file a pay event with the ATO on or before the day the wage expenditure payment is issued if you establish a pay run for an employee who is subject to withholding.

An employee’s year-to-date (YTD) gross payments, tax deducted, allowances, deductions, and superannuation liabilities information are reported for each employee in a pay event.

Any employee who has been paid during the financial year, regardless of whether they were paid during the most recent pay cycle, should be included in the pay event since it is monitored throughout the whole financial year.

Update Event

How about:

• You changed previous pay runs over the financial year; do you now need to provide the ATO with the most recent data?
• Have you just migrated your payroll data from another program, and are you wanting to change the specifics of a pay event that you previously reported to the ATO?

Warning for Validation

A Warnings tab could appear on the screen once a pay/update event is created. This suggests there are difficulties with validation.

Before reporting the incident, it must be fixed if the warning applies to a professional environment. If the warning relates to a particular employee, that individual will not be included in the lodgment until the problem has been resolved.

Notification for Dashboard

You may exit the screen once you’ve submitted a client authority request and/or filed an event with the ATO. Up until the lodgment has been successfully submitted, your payroll dashboard will notify you on its status.

To further detail the status of each pay run event, the Pay Runs tab now offers icon indicators, as shown below:

• Pay Run has been successfully filed with the ATO.
• Pay Run has been successfully sent to the ATO, although it has several mistakes.
• Pay Run lodgment with the ATO has been unsuccessful.

Failed Managing or Failed of Lodgment

You must choose one of the choices listed below if a pay event has failed or only partially succeeded:

• By Submitting an ad hoc pay run or update event, resolve this within 14 days of the issue being discovered.
• Fix this on the Employee’s subsequent pay event (extra time will be granted to the subsequent regular pay cycle, such as monthly).

End of Process of Year and Finalization of Lodging Events

You will be required to file a Finalization Event at the conclusion of the fiscal year. In order for the employees to file their individual tax return, this totals up all amounts received to them throughout the course of the year. Find out how to file a finalization event.

Important Notes

• Employee tax filing declarations must still be filed, even with STP. The procedure is quite simple if you have authorized electronic lodgment. Under ATO Reporting on the Reports tab is a section called Tax File Declaration.
• You won’t need to give employees payment summaries or submit a payment summary yearly report to the ATO if you have been reporting STP the entire financial year.
• According to the ATO, advisors who lodge STP reports on customers’ behalf are seen as offering a payroll service and must be registered with the Tax Practitioner Board (TPB) as an agent as a result. Visit the ATO website’s page titled Registered agents offering a payroll service for further details.
• Holders of WPN are not required to lodge at STP events. For the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 fiscal years, you are free from STP reporting if you have a WPN because you are registered for PAYG withholding and are not entitled to an ABN. On the other hand, as of July 1, 2023, you must begin reporting these payments via STP. Only a registered tax/BAS agent may enable WPN holders to begin reporting through STP sooner.

How to Set up QuickBooks Single Touch Payroll (STP)

Follow the following steps for setting up Single Touch Payroll (STP) in QuickBooks Online:

Step 1: Setting up ATO Supplier

You must first configure QuickBooks Online’s ATO (Australian Taxation Office) settings. So as to do this follow the following:

• Pick Payroll from the menu on the left.
• Decide on the Payroll Settings tab.
• Select ATO Settings under Business Settings.

From this point on, the procedures change a little depending on whether you’re setting up as the employer, a registered Tax/BAS Agent, or an intermediary for several employing businesses.

Lodging of Reports To ATO as Employers

The following information must be filled out if you chose to act as the employer:

• Branch Number
• Name
• Address Line 1
• Address Line
• Suburb
• Australian Business Number (ABN)
• Contact Name
• Signatory Name (only necessary if you want the name on the payment summaries to differ from what you selected in the area labelled “Contact Name” above)
• Callback Number
• Fax Number
• According to section 57A of the FBTAA 1986, is this employer exempt from FBT? (If you choose Yes, you will need to choose which exemption the company qualifies for from a dropdown list that will appear. This setting is essential because it will be used to decide which FBT amounts are exempt and taxable when pay data is submitted to the ATO.

Lodging of Report to ATO as Registered Tax/ BAS Agent

Point to be Remember: According to the ATO, users who submit STP reports on behalf of clients are deemed to be offering payroll services and must be registered with the Tax Practitioner Board (TPB) as agents as a result. Visit the ATO website’s page titled Registered agents offering a payroll service for further details.

The TAX/BAS Agent Details part and the Business Details section make up this setting. The fields for the business details that must be filled out are the same as those for the Employer details above.

The extra information that must be filled out relates especially to the TAX/BAS Agent:

• ABN
• Tax Agent Number
• Contact Number
• Contact Email
• Contact Name

Each and every TAX/BAS Agent field must be filled out. If you don’t fill out these fields, you won’t be able to save the ATO Supplier Settings.

Lodging of Report to ATO as Intermediary for Employ Multiple Entry

The Intermediary Details section (a) and the Business Details section (b) make up this configuration. The fields for “As the Employer” information that must be filled out are the same as those for “Business Details.” The following are the extra fields that must be filled in about the Intermediary:

• Name
• Phone Number
• Email
• ABN

To function as the Intermediary, you can pick one of the employing entities or another company. All of the intermediary fields must be filled out. If you don’t fill out these fields, you won’t be able to save the ATO Supplier Settings.

Step 2: Setting of Electronic Lodgment and STP

By enabling electronic lodgment, you can submit employee tax file declarations and STP lodgments to the ATO online. STP cannot be enabled unless electronic lodgment is enabled.

Your STP lodgment will fail if the ensuing stages are not correctly performed.

• Pick Payroll from the menu on the left.
• Decide on the Payroll Settings tab.
• Select for ATO Settings.
• You should click the Electronic Lodgment & STP tab.
• Verify your company information by following the directions on the screen.
• Give your Software Provider and ID to the ATO when you call at 1300 852 232. Alternately, update your information in the Access Manager.
• Select Complete after marking the acknowledgment message.

Information Required by ATO during Call

• Proof of ownership documentation (such as a person’s Tax File Number (TFN), date of birth, address, or a recent ATO notice)
• If you are a registered tax agent, you can use your registered agent number (RAN), or your Australian business number (ABN).
• Your software provider’s name (Employment Hero) or ABN (70 154 693 955)
• Your particular software ID

Important Note: It should be noted that if a registered agent or intermediary files STP events on the company’s behalf, the ATO connection MUST be made against the registered agent’s or intermediary’s record and NOT the company’s record. In light of the second criterion made above, the ABN mentioned will therefore be that of the registered agent or intermediary.

Updating of Details by a Access Manager

If you are an approved employee of the company or an eligible associate, log in to Access Manager using my Gov credentials and then follow these steps:

• Choose My hosted SBR software services from the menu on the left.
• Select Let the ATO know about your hosted service.
• On the list, look for Employment Hero.
• Select Employment Hero’s ABN link.
• After entering the software ID, choose Next.
• After reading the Notification statement, choose Save.

How to Set up STP as An Employer – Video Guide

We hope that the above article will help you with the working of QuickBooks Single Touch Payroll Software. In any situation if you face any issue then you can contact us, we had team of expert for this. Our Dancing Numbers expert team will help you in resolving the issue, so that you can work easily and properly.

Accounting Professionals, CPA, Enterprises, Owners

Looking for a professional expert to get the right assistance for your problems? Here, we have a team of professional and experienced team members to fix your technical, functional, data transfer, installation, update, upgrade, or data migrations errors. We are here at Dancing Numbers available to assist you with all your queries. To fix these queries you can get in touch with us via a toll-free number
+1-800-596-0806 or chat with experts.

Frequently Asked Questions