ISSUE 8 ?? PAYG Payment Summaries

MYOB will not let you enter pays after 30 June until you have prepared your Payment Summaries and rolled your file over to a New Payroll Year.

However you may find your first payroll run for the new year is fast approaching and you don??t have time to do this.

To overcome this problem take two (2) backups of your MYOB file and store them in a VERY safe place.   Then roll over your file to the New Payroll Year and enter your pays.

When you get the chance to produce your Payment Summaries use the backup file to do so.

Step 1 ?? Check Employee details

Ensure your Employee Cards have all the necessary information entered, including:-

• First and Last Name
• Address (including the state in capital letters)
• Tax File Number

If you have old employee cards showing on your list but are unable to delete their card, go into the profile tab and change them to labour hire status.   This will remove them from the payment summary list.   If you do not change them to labour hire, the magnetic media file will still include details of the employee??s name and tax file number, regardless that there are nil payments to that employee.

Review employment dates ?? the employment dates that appear on the payment summaries depend on the dates entered in the employee??s payroll information screen.

N.B. Ensure the employee??s correct start date has been entered.   If the employee has been terminated in the current payroll year you will also need to enter the termination date.

Step 2 ?? Reconcile gross wages

Print your Profit and Loss Statement for the year ended 30 ^th June, 2005 .   Determine the total wages for the year per your MYOB accounts.

Print the Payroll Register (Summary) for the period ??Year to date??.   Determine the total wages for the year per this report.

Your total wages figure per the Profit and Loss Statement and Payroll Register (Summary) MUST agree.

Why doesn??t it agree?   Check for any wrong postings by doing an account inquiry on your wages account.   Look for any postings that have not been entered through ??Pay Employees??.

Ensure that all amounts paid to the ATO in respect of PAYG withholding instalments have been coded to the PAYG Withholding Payable account and not to salaries.

Make sure you take into account any allowances posted to accounts other than wages.

Step 3 ?? Reconcile PAYG Withholding

Add up your total PAYG withholding payments for the year paid on your BAS statements.   Refer back to the Payroll Register (Summary) printed in Step 2.   Note the total amount of PAYG Withholding deducted per wages.   It should agree to the total PAYG withholding payments.

Step 4 ?? Printing Reports

Print the following reports and file them.   Remember once you have rolled over your file to the new year you will no longer have access to this information:

-                      Payroll Register (Summary)

-                      Payroll Activity Summary

Note these reports may look the same but they derive their information from different places

And if you track leave entitlements also print:

-                      Entitlement Balance (Detail)

Step 5 ?? Preparing PAYG Payment Summaries

In the Payroll module, click on the Print PAYG Payment Summaries button.   There are then 3 options to choose from

Option 1 ?? Plain Paper Payment Summary ?? Individual Non Business ?? see details below

Use this option if you wish to print your PAYG Summaries directly from MYOB and send a summary of these to the Australian Taxation Office on floppy disk.   Please note the ATO will only accept Payment Summaries on plain paper if you are using the MYOB Accounting Plus Version 11 or later or Premier version 5.02 or later.

Option 2 ?? Report Individual Non Business

Use this option if you wish to manually complete PAYG Payment Summaries provided by the tax office.

Option 3 ?? Labour Hire and other Specified Payments

Use this option if you have labour hire and other specified payments.

Option 1 ?? Plain Paper Payment Summary ?? Individual Non-Business

Complete Steps 1-3 which require you to enter various company information details.

Setup Payment Summary Fields (Step 4).   Highlight the Payment Summary field in the table on the left of the window.   Then tick next to the categories in the Select Payroll Categories on the right of the window.   These categories will be included within the particular Payment Summary field.

Use the Description column to enter the name of the Union or the Allowance details if necessary.

Enter Reportable Fringe Benefit .   You must enter the grossed-up taxable value of fringe benefits received for each employee.   If we have completed your fringe benefits tax return for you, the covering letter will indicate the employee??s reportable fringe benefit to be included on their payment summary.

Review Individual Payment Summaries .   Untick any employees you are certain did not receive any form of pay in the payroll year just ended.   (Check your payroll register report if you are unsure).

Print 2 copies of the Payment Summaries ?? one to keep on file for 5 years which is your legal obligation.   Alternatively photocopy them before giving them to your employees.

Save the EMPDUPE file.   Your file can be saved on PC-formatted floppy disk or CD-ROM.   It must now be sent to the Tax Office along with the Magnetic Media Form.

Note:   the EMPDUPE file contains information for all employees regardless of whether you printed a Payment Summary for them.   Hence if you don??t want a particular employee??s information sent to the ATO you will need to go to the Review Individual Payment Summaries window, click on the arrow next to the relevant employee and zero out all the figures.

Check the EMPDUPE File Totals   Add up the total tax withheld and the total Gross Payments on the Payment Summaries and compare them to those listed on the MYOB window.   If there is a discrepancy you may have missed one employee when you chose to print the Payment summaries (remember all employees that had payroll activity throughout the year are reported to the ATO ?? so the EMPDUPE totals are probably right).

Finalise the Magnetic Media Form and Send   Complete the details on the Magnetic Media form and send the file and form to the address at the bottom of the Magnetic Media form.

Forward the PAYG Payment Summaries to the individual employees retaining a copy for your records.

ISSUE 9 ?? New Features in MYOB 2005

Keeping your MYOB software up to date not only ensures that we can read your file come tax time, but also gives you the benefits of all the enhancements that MYOB have been working hard on.

The current versions of MYOB are Accounting 15, Accounting Plus 15 (if you have payroll) or Premier 9.   There have been significant enhancements and changes in these versions, some of which are listed below

·          The data files now end with a .MYO and not a .DAT extension

·          Scroll wheel support is now available

·          The accounts list window has changed, alternate lines are now shaded, the default GST codes are now shown, if the account is a linked account this will be indicated by a tick

·          Bank Reconciliation window now will now give you a warning if you try to enter a bank statement date that is after the current date.   When you tick an item to reconcile it, the line item now changes colour so that at a glance you can see what is reconciled and what is not

·          Recurring transactions.   There have been numerous changes made to recurring transactions to make the whole process easier e.g. you can now skip a period without having to create a new recurring transaction and delete the old one, there are many new options available when creating a new recurring transaction, including the ability to have regularly scheduled bills, invoices, depreciation entries and other scheduled transactions expertly managed from a single location, view your list of recurring transactions, complete with 13 frequencies, post dates and amounts, have your software notify a particular person of the transaction due dates, or authorise your software to record your recurring transactions automatically

·          Changes to the credit limit on sale function have been made so that various options can be preset and can only be overridden by use of a password and also access to the credit limit and hold for customers can be restricted by user.

·          You can now default the sales layout, printed form and invoice delivery method for each customer card.   It is important that after upgrading to the current version that the customer card has a default sales layout done or else you will not be able to see the new features available.   It is recommended that you look at using the import/export XL routine to update this in full, to make this extremely quick.

·          You can now batch email or print your invoices on a certain date or even reprint all invoices to a certain client

·          In Preferences there are new options that should be looked at and explored

·          The changes to Payroll will be discussed in a separate Newsletter

THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE

A new feature called the Company Data Auditor, this feature should and MUST be run and any issues fixed before the file is sent to us.   You can rely on the Company Data Auditor to detect issues with your company file before problems arise.   As an easy step-by step assistant, the Company Data Auditor will make certain that:

• Key accounts like inventory and receivables are reconciled
• Proper payroll tax tables are loaded
• Your file is backed up and verified
• No future dated transactions were entered by accident
• Key preferences or linked accounts remain unchanged
• Audit trail tracking system to keep track of changes

ISSUE 10      PAYROLL CHANGES IN MYOB 2005

Following on from Issue 9, changes in MYOB 2005 we explain the additions and enhancements to Payroll 2005.

• There are new Payroll Linked Accounts which allows for different accounts for cash wages, cheque wages and electronic wages
• To setup smarter ??batch?? payroll processing, you will need to make some changes to employee cards.   There is now a new Employment Classification section which enables extra reporting features especially on the payslip as per union awards
• You can now default standard wages and hour for each individual employee which can be overridden if needed at a weekly level
• You can also default their payment method
• There is now a drop list of tax tables to choose for each employee including one for a flat rate of tax if the employee has a Withholding Variation Rate from the ATO
• Annual Leave is much easier to pay with your general pay run, in the select Pay Run screen there is an option to indicate whether what periods you are paying for
• If you use Timebilling it can now be linked to payroll

Changes to running a Payroll

• When you now access the Process Payroll feature a new pop-up screen will tell you about some of the changes in more detail
• Entering the pay run selection has a couple of modifications, being you can now select to run the payroll for just weekly employees or just monthly employees, you don??t need to run the whole payroll at once
• You can also set the relevant pay period which does not have to be the current date
• You can preset the date for the payment date of the electronic wages, the review and edit paycheques screen now shows you the net amount of wages to be paid and you can review each payslip from this screen
• Employee's wages can be programmed to be automatically paid to various different accounts e.g. some to savings account, some to mortgage etc and this information is kept with EACH transaction once recorded and can be overridden for a once-off event if required
• There is a new process payments screen which allows you to authorise payment of the different payment methods at separate times, this screen also shows you the number of payments under each method

ISSUE 11      DATA INTEGRITY

The Company Data Auditor is a new feature under the Accounts command centre.   It is designed to assist you in verifying and finalising your company data file at the end of a period.  We will give you step by step information on this feature in our newsletters over the next few weeks.

The Company Data Auditor should be the first place you look when checking the integrity of your data.   From this one central location you can easily see where areas of concern with the integrity of your data may lie.   From here you can directly open up reports or Reconciliation features to fix or view the details of any problems, streamlining your end of period data reconciliation procedures.

The company Data Auditor is divided into three areas:-

• Company File Overview
• Account Reconciliation
• Data Exception Review

In the coming issues we will go through each area in detail starting with:-

Company File Overview

From the Accounts Command Centre , select Company Data Auditor.   The Company data Auditor window appears showing the Company File Overview.

This window provides you with the information that might affect the integrity of your company as a whole, such as whether the latest payroll tax tables are installed, or when your last back up was performed.   Providing this information in one central location saves you time searching for this information yourself.

This view shows an overview of the status of your company file, with information such as the date the file was last backed up.

You can perform important maintenance functions from this  window, such as backing up and verifying your data file, locking periods and loading tax tables.

Once you have reviewed your Company File Overview, click Next.   The Account Reconciliation Review appears.