Before you start
This can only be authorised by the ATO and we cannot provide any information on whether an employer can defer STP reporting. Refer here to access the ATO's information on deferrals.
If a deferral has been granted, the following information is for you
If a deferral has been granted, the employer will start reporting during the financial year rather than on the first pay after 1 July. In this instance, you will need to report your employees' year-to-date (YTD) data, via an update event, before you submit your first pay event, the reason for this is twofold:
Firstly, an update event includes ALL employees (ie. active and terminated) and is a summary of their YTD data. A pay event, on the other hand, will only include employees who had a payment processed in the pay run and so will exclude previously terminated employees and employees not paid in the pay run/period you are lodging.
Second, all events must be lodged with the ATO in chronological order. The update event must be lodged first to record the initial YTD data and then you can commence lodging pay events (after pay run finalisation).
So, in summary, the process here is:
- Create an update event to report the employees' YTD data.
- Once the update event has been lodged successfully, process the first pay run after your deferral has ceased and lodge that pay event.
- Lodge a pay event for each pay run thereafter.