Overview of Australian Payroll

The Dayforce Payroll feature is available for organizations with employees in Australia to manage employee pay, their PAYG taxes, superannuation, and so forth. The following key functionality is available for Australian Payroll:

Reporting for Single Touch Payroll (STP)
Calculation of pay as you go (PAYG) withholding including Medicare and education loans
Support of net pay and third-party payments using payment files created in Australian Bankers Association (ABA) format
Calculation and deduction of employee garnishees and payment to appropriate agencies
Support for superannuation calculation
Support for salary sacrifice schemes

This functionality is available for organizations in Australia that are appropriately configured, to include, for example, configuring the organization and associated legal entities, employee taxation parameters, as well as configuring pay groups and pay calendars.

You can configure Australian pay periods to be processed for the following pay frequencies:

Supported pay frequencies for Australia
Frequency	Payroll Frequency	Calculation Frequency
Weekly	Weekly	Weekly
Fortnightly	Fortnightly	Bi-weekly
Monthly	Monthly

Single Touch Payroll

Australian payroll processing works with Single Touch Payroll, or STP, a government initiative to streamline business payroll reporting obligations. Employers can report payments such as salaries and wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding, and superannuation information directly to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) from Dayforce at the same time they pay their employees.

When a payroll administrator commits a pay run in Dayforce, several things happen simultaneously:

Dayforce creates two STP Payment Summary reports using the .csv format, namely the STP Payment Summary Report for the legal entity, and the STP Payment Summary Report by legal entity and employee. These reports are available in Payroll > Archived Reports. Payroll administrators can review and validate STP payment summary reports after the files are transmitted to the ATO.
Dayforce shows the STP Authorisation & Declaration dialog box. See the STP Authorisation & Declaration Dialog Box section for additional details.
Dayforce creates a bank file in the Australia Bankers Association (ABA) format containing net pay payment information, as well as the bank account details for each of the employees with pay events in the committed pay run. This file is available in Payroll > Archived Reports for download.

The ABA file uses the following format for Australian bank files:
‘LEGALENTITYNAME BANKCODE PPNSUFFIX PAYDATE LEGALENTITYID.aba’

where

The legal entity name is truncated to 5 characters
Bank code is truncated to 3 characters
PPNSUFFIX has 4 characters
Pay date is in DDMMMYYYY format with 9 characters
Legal Entity ID is truncated to 3 characters

Using the ATO format, banks can process employee salaries one day before the pay date using the ABA format in Dayforce. To do so, payroll administrators enter an alternate date in the Contract Pay Date column of the Pay Calendars tab in Pay Setup > Pay Group. See Configure Alternate Contract Pay Date (Australia).

Generate ABA Files for Multiple Sites

You can generate ABA files for multiple source banks in Dayforce such as when different employees in an organization contain multiple sites and each site uses a different legal entity customer funding identifier.

See Configure Multiple Bank Accounts Per Legal Entity.

STP Authorisation & Declaration Dialog Box

Dayforce displays the STP Authorisation & Declaration dialog box on payroll commit, which requires the payroll administrator to select the checkboxes for the two following declarations to complete the payroll commit process:

I declare the information transmitted in this payroll report is true and correct and I am authorised to make this declaration.
I declare that I am authorised to lodge with our approved payroll software's AUSkey on behalf of the ABNs included.

The payroll administrator must select both declarations and then click Confirm to complete the payroll commit process.

STP Reporting

STP uses the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Framework to send information each time a pay event occurs. A pay event in this context being when a regular or off-cycle pay run is committed in Dayforce.

If there are any potential problems with entries in a pay run or processing them, or if errors are encountered that prevent the pay run from being committed, the application displays warning and error messages in a Problems panel. Background job information and error messages are available to Support users to help resolve any potential problems.

The only Australian pay groups that do not use STP are ConnectedPay pay groups.

Important: Pay groups that use ConnectedPay do not use STP. If your legal entity uses ConnectedPay, do not make entries in the STP Parameters tab.

Note: For STP reporting on taxable earnings, when you create a tax and compliance rule for Australia, the amount is paid through the normal earning types as Ordinary Time Earnings (OTE) for Normal, Taxable Benefit, or Salary Sacrifice earning types. The STP file excludes the OTE amount for Memo Calc and Reimbursement earning types.

Preview STP Information

Before committing the pay run, payroll administrators can preview STP data to fix any data related errors. You can preview STP information at the pay run level and at the employee level.

Pay Run Preview: You can preview STP amounts in the STP Preview Validation sub-tab of the Preview tab in Payroll > Pay Run Management. The following preview at the pay run level shows the pay run amount, STP reporting amount, and the difference between the two. Payroll administrators can then investigate the reason for differences and make sure they are acceptable.

Individual gross pay amounts in the STP Preview Validation tab.

Employee Preview: The employee level preview provides detailed information about the data that is being sent to STP for each employee. You can access the employee level STP preview in the STP Preview tab of the Employee Preview slide-out panel in Payroll > Pay Run Management:

Viewing AUS allowance amounts in the employee STP Peview tab.

Note: To view and access the STP Preview functionality, your user role must be assigned access to the STP Preview role feature. See User Roles in the Dayforce Implementation Guide.

To enable the STP preview:

Go to System Admin > Roles and select a user role.
In the Features tab, select the STP Preview checkbox in Payroll > Pay Run Management > Preview.

Working Holiday Maker

Dayforce calculates taxes for Working Holiday Makers to withhold tax from payments to individuals working in Australia under a working holiday visa.

If an employee is classified as a Working Holiday Maker and has submitted a Tax File Number (TFN), their Year-To-Date (YTD) taxable income may elevate them into a higher tax bracket during the current pay cycle. However, they will continue to be taxed at the lower bracket rate until the next pay run.

For example, in the current pay, if the employees taxable income exceeds $45,000, tax will be calculated at 30% from the next pay.

Pay Slips

Pay slips (often referred to as earning statements in general documentation) are records of wages, earnings, deductions, and PAYG taxes for Australian employees. Pay slips include the following:

Employer’s name
Employer’s ABN (Australian Business Number)
ABN address
Employee’s name
Employee address
Date of payment
Pay period
Earnings, including gross and net pay (current and year-to-date)
Taxes, including PAYG and STSL (current and year-to-date)
Pre-tax and post-tax deductions (current and year-to-date)

The pay slip contains itemized information with details about the employee's earnings and deductions for the pay period, divided into several main sections:

Settings in the Australian pay slip section
Section	Description
Earnings	For employees paid an hourly rate, the pay slip must include: Ordinary hourly rate Number of hours worked at that rate Amount of pay at that rate For employee paid an annual salary, the pay slip must include: The rate of the annual salary on the last day in the pay period Any loadings, allowances, bonuses, incentive-based payments, penalty rates or other paid entitlements that can be itemized
Memo Information	Memo deductions, such as superannuation contributions for the employee, that must include: Name, or name and number, of the superannuation fund the contributions were paid into Amount of contributions made (or that need to be made) during the pay period
Taxes	PAYG taxes STSL (Student Loan) taxes state payroll taxes
Post-Tax Deductions	Any deductions from the employee's pay, such as: Earnings Garnishments Memo Information Taxes Post-Tax Deductions Net Pay Gross and net pay Amount and details of each deduction Name, or name and number, of the fund or account the deduction was paid into

Pay slips can be viewed by payroll administrators in Payroll in the Pay Slip tab of the Employee Preview slide-out panel and in an employee's record in the Statements > Earnings Statements screen of People. Pay slips can be viewed by employees in ESS.

For online pay slips, Dayforce displays the employee's full legal name, regardless of the selected display name format. When you preview an online employee pay slip in the Pay Slip sub-tab of the Employee Preview slide-out panel in Payroll > Pay Run Management, Dayforce displays the employee's full legal name (first name + middle initial + last name + suffix) in the Employee Name field.