With Single Touch Payroll, a submission is required to the ATO on or before payment is made to the employees for every pay. With STP, all batches must be submitted and must be submitted in the correct order. In addition, prefilling of payroll information to the ATO Portal Electronic Activity Statement commenced on 01/07/2023. For more information on these items, please see:
In accordance with this, changes were introduced to STP2 in December 2023 to help Attaché Customers comply with the new regulations. For more information, see:
Changes were also released to the STP2 in January 2024. For more information, see:
STP2 and Employee Onboarding Updates - February 2024
As of 7th February 2024, Product performance enhancements have been implemented based on feedback provided from customers, and from our support and professional services teams regarding performance issues when loading the STP batch list screen, and individual STP batches. These enhancements are detailed in the sections below.
1. Changing statuses for "Ready to submit" and "Errors detected" batches to "No longer required" for STP batches created before 01/07/2023.
To make sure all batches were submitted, as per the Single Touch Payroll 2 Updates December 2023 link above, we removed the status of Not Latest, and any existing "Not Latest" STP batches changed to the status Ready to submit. This change contributed to some unwanted side effects with the STP Batch Listing screen.
With the February updates, these issues have been addressed. All batches that are in Errors detected or Ready to submit status created before 01/07/2023 will now show as status No longer required.
Note: If you open one of these batches, the status will still show the original Status. The change has been made to make it easier to view any batches in the list that actually need to be actioned.
In Addition: Batches will still display in their original status in previous financial years if the FY in question has NOT been finalised.
2. Changes to the re-validation of STP batches relating to configuration changes to pay elements.
Configuration changes to Pay Elements i.e.: income, allowance, deduction types or employer contributions were found to be causing performance issues to the STP Batch Listing screen. Previously, after a configuration change to a pay element, ALL STP batches for that STP company would be re-validated for the correct configuration.
In the February 2024 updates, re-validation in relation to any configuration changes as per above will be performed only on UNSUBMITTED STP batches that have been created after the most recent ATO Confirmed batch.
3. Revalidation on Errors Detected batches will now occur upon selection of batch.
After revalidation on batches that are showing a status of Errors detected relating to configuration issues, opening the 'Errors detected' batch will automatically refresh the status to Ready to Submit (assuming the errors are only related to the configuration issue).
4. Employee Onboarding – a fix to Unique Superannuation Identifier (USI).
The default super fund USI displays incorrectly (missing characters) on the employee onboarding entry screen after an employee has completed the onboarding form. This issue has now been resolved.