Key STP Concepts
With the introduction of STP, we have introduced a number of new records and terminology you will need to be familiar with.
Branch
Infinet Cloud Payroll supports multiple PAYG Branches per business (subsidiary/company). This means that at a minimum, you will have the default (1 / 001) branch for each subsidiary/company in your account and you will need to run the STP Setup Assistant for each Branch you are required to report via STP for. If you have registered multiple PAYG Branches with the ATO, then you will also need to create these additional branches and run the STP Setup Assistant separately for them.
Pay Event
Each STP submission to the ATO is named a (STP) Pay Event. A Pay Event always includes one or more Pay Event Employees. Pay Events can be one of two types:
- Submit Pay Event: automatically created upon completion of a Pay Run. Includes Pay Run info including total PAYG withheld plus Employees from the Pay Run and their YTD financials.
- Update Pay Event: can be manually created for specific employees at any time. Used for fixing, updating Employee YTD info, finalising employees for a year, etc.
Pay Event Employee
Each employee included in a Pay Event is considered a (STP) Pay Event Employee. The system creates these as seperate records for you to review information including YTD Financial values that are sent with each STP Submission.
STP Submission
Reporting via STP - the submission of a Pay Event and its Pay Event Employee child records - is automatically handled by the system. The submission of STP Reports is managed through a queue based system that runs in the background. Thus, submissions are scheduled for a specific day (typically the Pay Date) and approximate time (as configured in the STP Setup Assistant). You can always check on the status of a submission by going to the relevant STP Pay Event record. The system will also send you email notifications upon success or a failure.
Please note that once a submission as happened, it may take the ATO anywhere from 30 minutes to a day to process it. Again, the system handles this process in the background allowing you to continue working as per normal.
ebMS Request
Each time the system communicates with the ATO it does this via an ebMS Request. The ebMS Queue is the part that handles sending and receiving of these requests. These a low-level system concepts and records that you will likely not need to deal with.
Employer Obligations
The ATO has provided extensive documentation on Single Touch Payroll for businesses/employers. At a minimum, we recommend you've read the Single Touch Payroll employer reporting guidelines PDF available from the Report through Single Touch Payroll section of the ATO's site. As an employer, it is your responsibility to ensure that you're familiar with and full-fill your STP reporting obligations.