EOFY Single Touch Payroll (STP) Finalisation

This guide will assist you through the EOFY Single Touch Payroll (STP) finalisation process.

As you prepare for the new financial year, it is essential to complete and review your Single Touch Payroll (STP) data. Additionally, it's important to make sure that your STP data is finalised so that your employees are marked as 'Tax Ready'.

Before finalising your STP data make sure you:

1. Review and update any data.
2. Process your employee's final pay as normal.
3. Review and reconcile your employee's STP data.

  Please note: This year, the deadline for finalisation is July 14th, which falls on a Sunday, so make sure to plan ahead!

In this article, we will cover:

• Key steps before EOFY STP Finalisation
• STP EOFY Finalisation process
• After completing your STP Finalisation

  To see this process in action, be sure to check out the On-Demand EOFY Masterclass.

  Check out the Your EOFY Timeline 2024 article! This article will step you through what you need to do to finalise the current financial year and prepare for the upcoming financial year.

Before Finalising

Key steps before STP Finalisation

Before processing your STP Finalisation you must ensure the following steps have been completed: 

1. Review and update any data i.e. ensure all relevant employees have been terminated & archived in their Employee Profile and check that all Allowances and Pay Items, Deductions and Leave Entitlements have the correct STP reporting category applied.
2. Process your final pay as normal.
3. Check your STP submissions and clear any backlogs.
4. Complete your reconciliation. If you have not yet reconciled for the current financial year, please refer to the EOFY Reconciliation Guide.

Once you have processed your final pay and have reconciled for the current financial year, navigate to Payroll > Single Touch Payroll > STP Finalisation.

Here you will see a list of your employees that have been paid for the financial year including any employees that were terminated & archived ready in the Pending tab for finalisation.

  If you are yet to complete the above, please refer to Your EOFY Timeline 2024 article to get yourself ready for the EOFY STP Finalisation step.

STP Finalisation Process

Check STP submissions and clear backlog

Before you can complete your STP finalisation, please make sure that all Single Touch Payroll (STP) submissions have been properly submitted and cleared.

Employees who have unsubmitted STP submissions will be displayed as "Blocked" and must be submitted before finalising.

  For instructions on how to submit your STP submissions to clear your backlog, please see our STP Submissions help guide here. 

STP EOFY Finalisation

Once you have processed your final pay, reconciliation, and submitted all outstanding STP submissions for the financial year, you can complete your EOFY STP finalisation. 

To complete your EOFY STP finalisation:

1. Navigate to Payroll > Single Touch Payroll > Finalise 2023/24. 
   
   
2. You'll now see each step to be completed in the following tabs: 

1. Pending 2. Complete

In Pending, you will see a list of all employees paid during the financial year, this includes all Approved, Terminated & Archived people that were paid.

To process your Pending employees to the Complete stage: 

1. Select all employees or filter and finalise your employees per Office Code.
2. You will see the progress bar at the bottom of the page confirming how many employees you have selected. You can also adjust your page view to see more employees if needed.
3. Apply any Fringe Benefits if required. Please see the Apply Fringe Benefits section below for steps on how to apply Fringe Benefits to your employees. 
4. Once you have selected the employees you wish to finalise, select Finalise > tick your ATO declaration > Lodge to ATO. 
   
   

   

5. You will remain in the Pending tab however, you will see a 'Finalisations lodged to ATO' message with the number of employees you finalised, these employees will move from Pending to Complete. Select Complete to see your finalised employees. 
   

               

Apply Fringe Benefits (optional)

  Warning: Please ensure any Fringe Benefits amounts are imported prior to finalising STP.

If your business provides Fringe Benefits to employees at the end of each financial year, you have the option to add Fringe Benefits directly to the employee/s within the Pending tab of the STP Finalisation page. Alternatively, you have the option to import Fringe Benefits using a CSV file. 

  For instructions on how to apply Fringe Benefits to your employees, please see our Fringe Benefits help guide here. 

In Complete, you will see all of the employees that you have finalised. Here you can inform your employees that their pay is finalised. Refer to the 'Notifying employees of finalised EOFY payments section' below for steps on how to inform your employees that their EOFY year data has been finalised.

  Please note: The ATO may require up to 72 hours to finalise their process before the 'Tax ready' status is updated in MyGov. When you first finalise your data the status will display as 'Waiting for ATO's response', once received and processed on the ATO's end it will show as 'Completed'.

            

  Tip: If you come across an STP error, please get in touch with us at [e-mail]. This error probably occurred in the backend while sending data to the ATO and can be easily resolved by foundU. foundU will also be notified and may reach out for more details to fix the error.

Key reminders when finalising:

• Through the process of reconciling you may create an STP submission that will need to be submitted. For example, when you create an adjustment to a payslip. When this occurs the employee that was previously in the Review step will be moved back to Pending. This ensures that you have fully reconciled the data for this employee by re-finalising the employee.
• A new STP submission can also occur if you make a change to an employee even if you have completed finalisation. In both scenarios, you'll need to submit the newly created STP submission and re-finalise the employee.

After completing your STP Finalisation

Notifying employees of finalised EOFY payments

You can send an email to all employees informing them that their end-of-financial-year (EOFY) data has been finalised and is ready for review. This email should include details on how to access and review their EOFY data, how long the ATO will take to finalise their data and any additional steps they need to take.

To notify your employees of their EOFY data being finalised: 

1. In the Complete tab, select the down arrow next to Notify employees.
2. Choose how to notify employees from the following options:
   • Unnotified employees - Only email employees who have not yet been notified.
   • All finalised employees - Email all employees whether they have been previously notified or not. 
   • Review email content - Review and edit email content. This is a shortcut to the Employee STP finalised template.
     
     
3. Once you select your notification preference, a message will show the number of emails sent, along with a green email icon next to the employee in the Complete tab.
   
   

   

  Tip: If an employee has not received the email notifying them that their EOFY data has been finalised for any reason, you can notify them again at any time.

View previous EOFY STP Finalisation data

In addition to the current financial year's data, you have the option to access and review the data from previous financial years.

To view previous financial years: 

1. Navigate to Payroll > Single Touch Payroll > STP Finalisation.
2. Select the down arrow next to the current financial year. 
   
   
3. Choose the relevant financial year to view previously finalised data. 

  Please note: If you do not have any data for that financial year you will see a 'No employees have been finalised' message for that financial year.