Quarterly Single Touch Reporting with PayTek

PayTek is primarily designed to be used to process and manage a payroll in real time. It calculates tax and superannuation based on the payroll transactions entered.

However if you are using Paytek to process and report payroll information to single touch retrospectively for a client it may become problematic to align the calculations with what was actually paid by the client.

One option is to enter a payrun per month so  Paytek can apply the SGL calculation rules correctly.

To help process and report payroll data to single touch retrospectively we have created a template to bypass the calculations and allow you to enter pay data for any period and report it correctly.

Below is an explanation of how the template is set up to most efficiently process a payrun. It does involve offsetting some amounts but the benefit is that you can easily reconcile all the data entered and easily add new pay items for reporting where necessary (ie allowances and lump sums)

Loading a client using the template

1. Restore the template backup into a new payroll database for the client.

2. Edit the company information and activate single touch for the client.

3. Edit the sample employee and change the information to create the first client employee.

4. Clone this employee first the rest of the employees. (Right click in the employee list to clone).

5. Add any additional pay items required (eg allowances).  Do not include them in any pay item groups as the template bypasses the super calculations.

As you can see above in the simplest case you need 3 entries to record gross wages, super guarantee and tax withheld for the employee.

1. Enter the gross wages pay item for the period

2. Enter the super guarantee pay item to be reported

3. Enter the offset super guarantee pay item (this corrects the net pay amount)

4. Edit the tax amount to agree with the amount withheld.

Behind the scenes explanation

The gross wages is a normal pay item coded to gross income on the payment summary,

The super guarantee pay item is not shown on the payment summary and is the only pay item subject to super in the superannuation pay item group

The employee belongs to a super fund that calculates 100% on the pay items included (in this case only the SGL pay item amount)

Because we are not actually paying the SGL amount to the employee we offset the amount with another pay item not shown on the payment summary.

This corrects the net pay amount to the employee.

If you have to report RESC to single touch you can enter the amount with an offset to record whatever amount the client has paid.

1. Enter the RESC amount for the period as a negative (Paytek assumes that any salary sacrifice is withheld from the employees gross income).

2. Reinstate the gross income by entering the RESC offset as a positive amount.

As  you see in the summary the gross income is the amount entered first.

Behind the scenes

The RESC pay item is coded to Gross/Reportable Super. In Paytek this is recorded as an amount withhold from the employee gross and paid to super so it reduces the gross income and reports the RESC label on the payment summary.

The RESC offset is coded to gross income and is entered as a positive amount to restore the gross income entered.

Summary

This template allows you to enter quarterly information into a payrun for reporting the single touch. The use of a superannuation fund calculating 100% against a SGL pay item only effectively bypasses the normal calculation of SGL based on the OTE of the employee.

The template is a Paytek backup of a pre-configured company file.

  1. Download the template. Create a new client file with the PayTek new company wizard using the template backup.
  2. In your new file,  update the details (ie ABN, contact details, STP login etc) with the actual client details in Setup…Options.
  3. Next edit the sample employee in the template with the details of the first actual employee. (You can then clone the employee as a template for more employees.)
  4. Set the payrun period end and payment date.

You are now ready to enter the data from the client and report it to single touch.