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Single Touch Payroll integration

From 1st July 2019, all employers in Australia will be required to report payroll electronically using the ATO's Single Touch Payroll (STP) platform.
 
By installing the Single Touch Payroll integration plug-in, you can lodge STP reports in ContactsLaw as an additional process within the Payroll activity.
 
In order to lodge payroll events, you will need an M2M credential generated via the ATO's Relationship Authorisation Manager (RAM) and an Internet connection.

Pre-requisites

The integration features make certain assumptions about the data being reported, and care should be taken to ensure that the following requirements are met:

  • The practice contact must have an ABN and a mailing address.
  • The practice must not have multiple branches with the same ABN.
  • No payroll event may contain more than 100 payees.
  • The registered business name and trading name (if different) for the practice must be present and accurate.
  • The member lodging the payroll event must have a telephone number.
  • Every payee must have a mailing address. The first non-inherited address will be included with the STP report.
  • The Gross, Withheld and Super figures for each payee must represent the sum total for the given pay period and must not be adjusted by separate accounting journals.

If any of the above are not met, you cannot use the STP integration functionality. 

New employees

Prior to an employee's first pay, you must ensure that the tax information in their payroll profile has been completed, including the date on which they signed the TFN declaration and answers to all questions that could affect the member's tax treatment code. The complete declaration will be included in the STP report.

You are expected to update this information whenever the member's circumstances change.

Termination

An employee's final pay must be recorded as a termination payment in ContactsLaw. The payment must be recorded on or after the termination date only. This allows ContactsLaw to indicate to the ATO that no further payments will be made to the employee.

Lodgement process 

By checking the "Lodge with Single Touch Payroll (STP)" box prior to finalisation of a payroll record, or by subsequently clicking the Lodge button, you begin the lodgement process:
  1. You will be prompted to select your M2M credential and enter the password. This information is not retained by ContactsLaw and is used only for the purpose of signing the STP messages. If your credential is not at the default location (such as when the credential is installed on a USB drive), you must browse to the location containing the "ato.M2M.keystore.xml" file.
  2. You must complete a declaration which is sent to the ATO as part of the report. By doing so, you declare that the information is correct and that you are authorised to submit it. You also agree to the SBR Channel terms of use.
  3. After you click the Submit button, the STP report will be sent to the ATO. If there are problems with your Internet connection or the service is unavailable, an error message will be displayed and you must try again later. The Standard Business Reporting (SBR) platform imposes a mandatory time delay of 60 seconds during which ContactsLaw must be kept open. In rare situations, further delays of up to 30 minutes may occur. You can minimise the progress dialog during this time and continue working elsewhere in the application.
  4. When a response is returned by the ATO, a status message will appear. If there were any problems with the lodgement, they will be listed here along with further instructions; otherwise, you can click OK and the successful lodgement will be recorded on the payroll record.
​Important: If you cancel lodgement (or close ContactsLaw before lodgement completes) after the initial message has been sent to the ATO, you will not be able to determine whether the process was successful or not. You should always wait for a definitive response.
 

Final indicator

When signing the declaration during lodgement, you have the opportunity to check or uncheck the "final" indicator. This is used to indicate that you are lodging the final pay event for all all members included in the run. This in turn sets the "tax-ready" status on the individual's income statement and enables them to prepare their tax return. ContactsLaw is usually able to detect the final regular pay event for a given financial year, however you should always review this decision before proceeding. If the indicator is set incorrectly, you will need to re-lodge.

Note that members not included in the pay run need to be finalised separately, except members for whom a termination payment was recorded (the final indicator is set implicitly and cannot be overridden when lodging termination payments).

Re-lodgement

If you attempt to lodge a payroll event which was previously lodged successfully, you can choose whether to use a SUBMIT ("full file replacement") or an UPDATE event. Generally speaking, you should use an UPDATE event whenever possible. You should only re-lodge if the original payroll event contained information which was incorrect.

Audit logging

To comply with ATO requirements, ContactsLaw performs mandatory audit logging of all STP-related interactions. No confidential information is logged; only the transmission events and whether they were successful or not. These logs can only be accessed by a System Administrator member.

See also