Aurora Accounts

QBO Payroll Pricing Changes April 2021

Aurora Accounts — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:12:28 +0000

You may have recently received an email directly from QBO notifying you that QuickBooks payroll will no longer be included free in your QuickBooks subscription.

We wanted to let you know that this change in QuickBooks payroll pricing will take effect from 1 April 2021.

Below is a small infographic to outline the changes coming…

Free payroll inclusions are ending
QuickBooks are no longer supporting free QuickBooks Payroll powered by KeyPay in your QuickBooks plans. Starting 1 April, you will need to pay an additional cost of $5.00/month for every employee you pay each month.

When does the new payroll pricing take effect?

The new payroll pricing takes effect from 1 April 2021. There are no changes to how you currently use payroll.

Why is this change happening?

QBO advise this change will allow them to continue to invest in new features that will mean less admin for you and those who may process payroll for you.

How many pay runs are included in fees for each employee paid?

There are unlimited pay runs per employee paid each month.

How will the change in billing work?

Your QuickBooks bill for unique employees paid per month will be paid retrospectively based on how many employees you paid in the last month, while the Advanced Payroll monthly fee will be billed in advance for the next month ahead.

For Standard Payroll, on any given bill you will be charged for the number of unique employees paid in the last month.

For Advanced Payroll, on any given bill you will be charged for the subscription monthly fee for the next month and also charged for the number of unique employees paid in the last month.

What is QuickBooks Payroll Advanced?
QuickBooks Payroll Advanced plan offers more flexibility and functionality to help you keep up with more complex payroll demands. To access Advanced payroll functions you will need to pay an additional cost of $10.00/month, this is per subscription fee not a per employee fee.
You will have access to all Standard Payroll functions plus additional functions only available with a Payroll Advanced subscription.

Will I still receive KeyPay bills?

If you previously received KeyPay bills, soon you’ll receive one bill every month that includes both your QuickBooks subscription fee and your payroll usage fees. No more KeyPay bills or KeyPay payments—just one simple bill from QuickBooks.

I’m on a discounted QuickBooks subscription, will my payroll pricing change?

The payroll pricing of all existing QuickBooks subscriptions are affected by the 1 April payroll price changes. In all existing QuickBooks subscriptions, whether discounted or not, the payroll pricing is subject to change.

You can upgrade or downgrade your QuickBooks Online subscriptions at any time. Simply visit the Billing and Subscription section of your account to view or change your plan.

QuickBooks value promise
QuickBooks are confident they still provide outstanding value accounting and payroll tools in Australia. Here are offerings by their closest competitors if you’d like to compare solutions: Xero | MYOB

All pricing is in AUD and includes GST

What this means is that the April 2021 invoice for your QuickBooks Subscription will reflect the new pricing taking effect from 1 April 2021

If you have any questions about QuickBooks’ price increase please don’t hesitate to contact me on 0404 609 474.

Or form more information directly from QuickBooks regarding the 1 April 2021 pricing changes please click here to [find out more]

The post QBO Payroll Pricing Changes April 2021 appeared first on Aurora Accounts.

Fixing Single Touch Payroll (STP) Validation Errors

Aurora Accounts — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 14:20:33 +0000

What to do when the ATO says there is a problem

The ATO Validates your STP file and data submission at a number of levels.

Some of the tests include:

File header information

Is the file in the right format?
Was the file submitted through an approved secure channel?
Did a valid person authorise the file?

Employer information

W1 & W2 fields
the dates

Employee records

YTD values
Super information

Data validation

The ATO will eventually be conducting evaluation of the numbers, and begin to raise queries when the numbers don’t look right.

In the coming months, the validation checks that the ATO performs will return validation reports about any files which are outrightly rejected, or where the file is accepted but some of the data is incorrect – i.e., maybe one of the employees’ TFNs is not valid.

The ATO will provide a validation report to your software if your software has a direct, secure and authorised communication channel to the ATO. If that channel is not acceptable, then the ATO will provide that validation report to the employer. If the software channel is acceptable, the software company should be providing you with that report in a form that enables you to fix any errors.

When the error has been fixed in your payroll system (the ‘source of truth’) you are not required to resubmit the file. The Single Touch Payroll design does not allow for a file to be resubmitted (see below about ‘Full File Replacements’). You fix your system, and the information will be fixed in the next file submitted for that employee.

Alternatively, if the error is to an employee’s information that will appear on their myGov record, you could submit an ‘Update’ file to the ATO (if your software has that function).

A Full File Replacement can be used in cases where the very last file is to be fully replaced. Note that it is only the very last file that was submitted by each BMS (Business Management System / Payroll software) that can be replaced.

An employee’s information can be fixed in the next pay run, or as mentioned by an ‘Update event’. The Employer information for W1 or W2 that was wrong can be fixed at the time of preparing and lodging the next BAS.

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ATO Data Matching

Aurora Accounts — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 13:52:14 +0000

Your ATO known income information is shared.

The objective – determining:

incorrect personal financial assistance payments;
tax evasion.

The ATO conducts matching exercises within ATO systems to detect cases where:

individuals are receiving more than one payment simultaneously;
a lesser entitlement or no entitlement exists;
a greater entitlement exists;
income details of assistance agency payments are understated in tax returns.

Data Matching Agency

The ATO provides income information derived from tax returns to the Data-Matching Agency (DMA) – a separate agency within Centrelink – to determine the eligibility criteria for benefits, and to help detect fraud within the welfare system.

Agencies request specific data; where the ATO have then identified the client from data provided, the following data is returned to the DMA:

personal identity
declared income
date of most recent taxation assessment
amount of the spouse tax offset
surname and any other name details of the spouse where a spouse offset has been claimed
surname and any other name details
an indicator if the TFN is compromised

Centrelink

Weekly – TFN declarations are notified to Centrelink, to ensure benefits are not paid after employment has commenced. Around 12% of these are found to be Centrelink clients.

Daily – income details for the purpose of administering family assistance entitlements and payment reconciliation and immediate recovery of outstanding debts to the Commonwealth.

Child Support Registrar

The Child Support Registrar has access to taxpayer income details (employment and investment income) via electronic transfer and direct access, for the purpose of assessing the amount of individuals’ child support payments, and for garnishee action where appropriate.

Department of Home Affairs

Address information for individuals who have been classified as ‘illegal non-citizens’ are provided to assist in locating them.

Payment Matching

Credit and Debit Cards

The ATO obtains data from banks and financial institutions to identify the total credit and debit card payments received by Australian businesses. This is detailed in the credit and debit cards data-matching protocol. From 1 July 2017, these institutions automatically report this information each year.

Specialised Payment Systems/Gateways

The ATO obtains data on electronic payments made through specialised payment systems to Australian businesses. This data is analysed in conjunction with data collected through their credit and debit card data-matching program.

This is matched to disclosed income and expenditure to determine correct GST and income tax.

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