End of year Payroll guide

Completing your end of year Payroll reconciliation prior to preparing any reports will save you lots of heartache if errors are found later. We have put together this End of year Payroll guide to reconciling your payroll.

Part A.  Reconcile Payroll accounts

1. Complete all payruns up to 30 June in your accounting software. Once you have completed the final pay run, check that your total earnings, superannuation and PAYG accounts reconcile. In Xero, select the Payroll Activity summary report for this financial year.
2. Take note of the balances for the payroll accounts and compare to the General Ledger report for the same Financial year. The total earnings, total superannuation and total tax amounts need to match.
3. If you use more than 1 wage account, you will need to add these up

If you find any discrepancies, you will need to review your payroll and correct these. A common problem if the General Ledger is higher than whats showing in Payroll means payments have been reconciled to the wrong wages account. Once corrected, re-run the reports and check the balances.

Part B.  Check each employees specific pay components have been recorded correctly

1. Select Payroll activities detail report for this financial year
2. Review the information for each employee. Correct any errors.

Part C.  Run the end of year Payroll payment summaries

1. To do this go Payroll > Employees and select Payment Summaries
2. Check the organisation details
3. Enter the signatory (usually the business owner or payroll administrator)

Once finished, select all employees and Publish. This locks the end of year payroll accounts and publishes the payment summaries so your employees will have access to them.

Part D.  Send the payroll information to the ATO

1. Xero allows you to directly send the payment summaries using your AUSkey.
2. Payroll > Employee > Payment Summaries > Select all
3. Click Send to ATO > submit directly to ATO using Xero. (If you’re not using Xero, you will need to login using your AUSkey and submit the file)
4. Browse to locate and open your AUSkey  and select Authorise to file.

Alternatively you can create an EMPDUPE file and send this to the ATO

 

Most accounting software will automatically update the tax tables for the new financial year.

 

Need help finalising your accounts for the end of the year? Shellys Bookkeeping is available to help you.