If you don't measure it you can't manage it. This is why payroll reports form an important aspect of business ownership. To manage your costs, you need a clear view of your labour expenses, which helps clear the way for profit margin and overhead costs. Payroll reports also provide you with documentation for tax purposes and for legal cover if an employee raises an issue with their pay.
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Payroll
Payroll Reports: What They Are and How They Work
What Are Payroll Reports?
Payroll reports are documents, whether digital or hard copy, that calculate employee wages, taxes withheld, deductions, and any other relevant information. You can use a payroll report to highlight normal hours, overtime, attendance, rate of pay, holiday time, and sick days. Also, there are templates to follow for time-specific payroll reports.
Weekly Payroll Reports
Though you can produce reports as often as you like, it can be more work than necessary depending on the size of your business. Typically, you should produce payroll reports when you issue pay cheques. A small business may want to limit the amount of paperwork they produce, but they can also benefit from strict control over expenses and productivity.
Many businesses opt to produce internal weekly payroll reports to keep a tight grip on their labour expenses which is typically the greatest business cost. However, many businesses will only produce a weekly payroll report if they issue weekly payments to employees.
For example, if an employer releases cheques every Friday afternoon for the previous week's work, your payroll report would cover this pay period. If the pay period runs from Sunday through Saturday and you pay on Friday, you would be providing a check on Friday 18 March, but you are paying for the period of 6 March to 12 March. So, your payroll report would cover the period of 6 to the 12 March.
There are also fortnightly reports if you pay every two weeks. This payroll system often results in three pay periods of two months, which means you distribute 26 cheques per employee per financial year.
Monthly Payroll Reports
If you follow a monthly payroll system, your data is generated for the month. However, it generally takes a week to process three weeks of one month and a week of another. You can also run the report to review the entire month. A monthly schedule means you issue twelve cheques per employee per financial year and 12 payroll reports throughout the year.
Payroll Quarterly Reports
You may not pay your employees quarterly, but a quarterly payroll report can give you a snapshot of your spending for the last quarter.
Annual Payroll Reports
Annual payroll reports need to be submitted to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and issued to your employees as well. Your employees need the information on these reports to file their individual tax returns.
Types of Payroll Reports
Pay run audit
If you want a full accounting of earnings, bank payments, deductions, leave, and super payments for your employees over each pay period, then a pay run audit report can provide it all at a glance.
Employee details audit
With an employee details audit report, you have an audit log of the changes made within the system to employee profiles. It shows you who made the changes and when to ensure everything is running smoothly.
Live view
This report shows real-time employee clocking activity. Managers can access it anytime and anywhere. It's a helpful tool to keep track of your employees and to locate inconsistencies with timesheets when they occur.
Single Touch Payroll (STP) Report
Introduced in 2018, STP was mandatory for Australian businesses with more than 20 employees in 2019, with smaller businesses given more leeway to transfer to the new system. All businesses are now required to use STP.
STP improves the ATO's ability to ensure employees are paid properly and tax reporting is accurate. STP reduces the reporting burden for businesses by automatically sending payroll information to government agencies every time an employer pays their staff through STP-enabled software.
If you use STP, you only need to complete the relevant information on your end, and the cloud payroll software will do the rest. You need to report your payroll reports to the ATO each time you pay your employees and again with an annual statement.
QuickBooks Payroll powered by Employment Hero is an ATO-certified payroll reporting system, and it will make business ownership simple. It is effortless, providing you with the tools to manage employees, time and attending, payroll, and ATO submissions.
You can filter by date, payroll schedule or location. You can even automate recurring reports to make life simpler. QuickBooks provides live data of employee clocking details to give you a snapshot of your employees at any moment of the day.
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