Create and lodge a pay event

What is a pay event?

Whenever you create a pay run to an employee that is subject to withholding, they are require to lode a pay event with the ATO on or before the date the payment is made.

A pay event reports an employee's year-to-date (YTD) gross payments, tax withheld, allowances, deductions, and superannuation liability information for each employee. As it is tracked throughout the financial year the pay event should include any employee that has been paid in the financial year regardless of whether or not they were paid in the most recent pay cycle.

Put simply, once a pay run is finalised, a pay event should be lodged with the ATO.

Additional information

What is Single Touch Payroll?

Pay run - Setup and Processing [Video]

 Create a pay event

In order to create a pay event, you may first process a pay run, after enabling Single Touch Payroll (STP) you'll see you now have the option to either lodge a pay event immediately or at later date.

Lodge Pay Run manually at a later date

If you select this option, the pay run will be completed without a pay event being sent to the ATO.

When you are ready to lodge the pay event:

1. Select Employees in the left hand menu.
2. Select the Pay Runs tab.
3. Select the appropriate pay run.
4. Select Lodge Pay Run with ATO.

You will now be taken to the Pay Event lodgement page.

Lodge Pay Run now

By selecting this option, you will be taken immediately to the Pay Event judgement page.

Pay Event lodgement page

A list of all employees with payment details attached to that pay run will appear on the screen along with their year-to-date details.

Note: When an update event is generated:

1. While you can filter your view by searching for a specific employee or by employing entity (if you have more than one employing entity set up in the business) when the event is lodged it will lodge for all employees in that pay schedule.
2. Employees who have been employed by more than one employing during the financial year will have a row data per employing entity.
3. Employees who have changed between a working holiday maker (Type: H) and a non-working holiday maker (Type: S) during the financial year will have a row of data per tax change.
4. Terminated employees who have received an employment termination payment (ETP) will still appear in the event with the Is Final checkbox automatically ticked.

Can I edit any information contained in a Pay Event?

There are only 2 items that can be edited in a pay event:

Reportable Fringe Benefits Amount (RFBA)

To edit an employee RFBA:

1. Select the pencil icon under the RFBA column for the specific employee.
2. Enter the gross RFBA amount and select on the green tick icon.

Is Final

If an employee has terminated employment and a termination pay has been processed, the Is Final checkbox will be ticked automatically. If the employee has not been terminated within a pay run and there will be no further payments for that employee in the financial year, you can tick the Is Final checkbox. This will indicate to the ATO that no further payments for this employee will be made. If an employee is reinstated.

Pay event Actions button overview

Under the Actions button on the right hand side, you'll find a number of options:

• Excel: Select this option to generate an excel report of the data contained in the update event.
• Mark all as final: After you have completed your final pay run for the financial year, the pay event can be marked as final. By completing the finalisation declaration, you will replace the need to provide the employee with a part year payment summary. Making this declaration will update the employee's myGov display to show the STP information from the employer is final for the financial year.
• Mark all as not final: This action will only appear if there are employees in the event marked as Is Final. This action will only appear if there are employees in the event marked as Is Final. Selecting this option will remove the checkbox from those employees, thereby denoting that the employees will still be receiving payments in that financial year.
• Add Employee: This action allows you to add employees missing from the update event. You may need to create an update event to rectify the issue of having incorrectly marked all employees as Is Final in a previous event. In this instance, when you click on Add Employee you will be given the option of adding all employees previously marked as final.
• Request Client Authority: This option will only appear to businesses that are using Tax/BAS Agents to submit STP information to the ATO (Based on your ATO Settings). A Client Authority may be required if: there is no Standing Authority or this event does not cover a standard pay cycle and so the employer must provide a declaration to the agent approving the lodgement. When selecting Request Client Authority, you will need to fill in the following information.
  • User: When you select the User field, a dropdown list of full access users and users with STP Pay Event Approver permission will appear. You can select one or more of these users to request client authority from however only one person is required to approve the event lodgement.
  • Notes: You can enter any notes here that you want the Client Authority to read when they are sent the request notification email.

  Note: When you select Submit Request a notification email will be sent to the assigned Client Authority and the lodgement status will change from Created to Waiting on client authority.

• Refresh Data: Refreshes the payroll data in your update event to include the most recent pay run information.

Client Authority required to action a Pay Event

An assigned client authority will be notified that they are required to action a pay event via email. The email will include a link to the update event:

The authoriser will see the same information as the user who made the request but can only perform the following actions:

• Approve lodgement
• Reject lodgement
• Export an excel report of the update event

If the authoriser rejects the lodgement, they will need to add a reason for the rejection, once this is done you will be notified by email. If you sent a request to more than one client authority, there is still the opportunity that another client authority approves the lodgement. However, if you have not, you will need to send another client authority request.

Note: You cannot send the request again to the same client authority who rejected the lodgement.

When the authoriser approves the lodgement, they will be required to complete a declaration that will appear in the form of a popup,
The client authority will need to tick the checkbox and then select Approve Update Event. Once this is done, you will be notified by email. The lodgement status will change from Waiting on client authority to Client Authorised and you can now start the lodgement process.

Lodging a Pay Event

The steps to lodging a pay event are different depending on your ATO Settings: