PR STP Process Form

Single Touch Payroll (STP) in Vista helps you align your payroll processes with your Australian Taxation Office reporting obligations. Use this form to guide your file creation process.

According to ATO rules, you should generate and lodge your STP e-file each pay date, even for out-of-cycle pay dates.

Successful STP processing begins with the required setup. See Single Touch Payroll (STP): Setup for requirements to get started. Complete the setup before you process your first STP submission.

Begin all submissions in the PR STP Process form. During the normal course of processing, you are presented three submission type options to choose from. Use the information below to identify the type of submission you need to lodge.

Note: Vista's (STP) solution uses your payroll data to create e-files suitable for lodging, but does not deliver the e-files to the ATO. This means you must send your e-files to the ATO separately through an authorised third party sending service provider (SSP), such as Ozedi. You can learn more about Ozedi here

STP Phase 2

STP Phase 2 is an expansion of STP introduced by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). With STP Phase 2, reporting includes additional information, such as the income stream type and income stream country (home country designations for working holiday makers); separate reporting for primary payments, allowances, lump sum payments, termination payments, and other components (such as paid leave, bonuses, etc.); and additional information about employee PAYG withholding (for example, the tax treatment code used to identify the factors influencing the amount being withheld from employee payments).

Things that will not change include:
  • reporting due dates
  • required types of payments
  • tax obligations
  • end-of-year finalisation requirements
  • the way you lodge submissions

The display-only STP Phase field (above the form tabs) indicates the STP Phase level (1 or 2) for the currently selected submission. When you first create a submission, the STP Phase is blank. Once you generate submission data (initiated by clicking the Generate Submission Data button), the system populates this field based on the Submission Data Format option you selected in PR STP Generate Data. For more information, see Submission Data Format.

Note: For submissions that existed prior to installation of STP Phase 2, if the submission Status is greater than 0-Submission Initiated, the STP Phase value will be set to 1 during installation. For submissions with a Status equal to 0-Submission Initiated, the STP Phase value will be left blank.

Regular Pay Event

Over time this submission type will comprise the large majority of submissions lodged by your company because it is required on or before each pay date. Use the steps in Single Touch Payroll (STP): Pay Event under these circumstances:

  • If you are about to lodge or already lodged your company's first STP submission on or before your company's first pay date that was on or after 1 July 2018.

  • If you lodged your company's first STP submission anytime after your company's first pay date that was on or after 1 July 2018 AND already lodged a 'Late-Start' submission.

Full File Replacement

If you discover that a recent 'Pay Event' e-file that you lodged with the ATO was defective, you may create and lodge a replacement e-file using the Full File Replacement submission option.

Only previous 'Pay Event' e-files are eligible to be replaced; 'Fix YTD' e-files and 'Full File Replacement' e-files themselves are not eligible to be replaced.

A previous 'Pay Event' e-file may be replaced only if no employee in the e-file has already been included in a more recent 'Pay Event' or 'Fix YTD' e-file lodged with the ATO. Use the instructions found in Single Touch Payroll (STP): Full File Replacement.

Fix YTD, including Finalisation

The 'Fix YTD' submission type is used for any of the following purposes:

  • to adjust or correct employee YTD amounts at any point in the tax year based on current values in employee payroll accumulations. See the instructions found in Single Touch Payroll (STP): Fix YTD.

  • to finalise one or more terminated or inactive employees during the year (see Finalisation section below).

  • to finalise at year-end all employees that were paid at any point during the tax year (see Finalisation section below).

Note: Submissions of type 'Fix YTD' contain only employee YTD amounts. Employer-level amount values are always omitted (reported as 0.00) in any submission of this type.

Finalisation

If you want to indicate to the ATO that one or more employees will not receive any further earnings from your company during the current tax year, lodge a finalisation using the steps provided in Single Touch Payroll (STP): Finalisation. Possible uses include but are not limited to mid-year terminations and end-of-year company-wide processing. Typically you will use a 'Fix YTD' submission for finalisation purposes.