STP stands for Single Touch Payroll and is an initiative aimed at making the payment of superannuation and other entitlements occur at the same time that wages are paid.
Single Touch Payroll enables employers to integrate payments directly to employee’s super accounts via information that is entered at the setup and configuration stage of setting up a new employee.
Now employees have less chance of not being paid their superannuation entitlements by small AND large businesses that go into receivership or become bankrupt because they are paid at the same time as wages.
There’s lots to do when businesses engage a new worker. As an employer, you’ll be busy going through the onboarding process and showing your new employee the ropes, but there are other important things to do when you add a new member to your team.
Keeping accurate records complete with the right information is essential for businesses to maintain, and that means updating and adding data when engaging a new worker. Here are some things to keep in mind as you go through this process:
This advanced level online payroll management course will help you learn the necessary skills and enter the payroll sector as a Payroll Officer using all the modern online accounting programs.
Learn about the tasks performed by payroll officers and develop in-depth payroll knowledge and receive your payroll certification on completion.
Learn Payroll Officer tasks for hair dressing salon and cafe and restaurant industries
What does a Payroll Officer do?
Payroll Officers are responsible for processing payroll, tax calculations and deductions. This can include creating and modifying the roster and making note of days off and sick days.
They also prepare monthly, quarterly and year-end financial statements when working with the company accountant or payroll administrator. In small businesses this role may also include elements of accounts payable and other bookkeeping responsibilities.
Payroll gets advanced when you start going a little deeper into the lives of your employees.
Younger staff members under 18 are often keen and willing to learn but also get paid much less. Older workers and parents might be more flexible but may come with obligations to pay child support payments which need to be deducted from their pay.
The issue of rostering, changing shifts and sick days also fill up a lot of time for payroll officers and these tasks and the obligations around them are taught in the Advanced Payroll course case study.
Hiring and firing is a normal part of running a business and although it can be challenging you need to get these steps right. They’ve covered in the Advanced Payroll course case study.
I’ve been reviewing our Payroll courses and the practical case studies included in them and thought I’d take the opportunity to share some details about it with you.
The advanced payroll training course topic uses some typical payroll scenarios that go above and beyond the basic payroll tasks in a small business.
Payroll can get messy when it comes down to
employment awards,
deductions,
HECS repayments and
other obligations that employers have
In Australia small businesses are agents of the Australian Taxation Office. They act on behalf of the ATO to collect taxes and pay superannuation relating to their employees and these transactions are entered in their bookkeeping systems as liabilities until they are paid.
All the marketing messages I hear is how much better Xero is than MYOB but that isn’t always the case.
MYOB and QuickBooks both had more in-build inventory features than Xero but Xero has always promoted their integrations to fill gaps in their core software. I wrote about this several times:
Hairdressing salons are all about people, scheduling and gossip. They are located all over the world and are a fascinating place to watch. I had my hair cut the other day by a recently graduated hair dresser and she did a fantastic job with the cut and the conversation.
Hair dressing salons are a simple business insofar as renting a shop, putting in comfy chairs and mirrors and washing bays and then matching a customer with a hair dresser. The biggest issue is scheduling the right number of hair dressers to match the demand from customers, particularly if there are lots of drop ins.
Trim and Styles Hairdressing was using an Excel spreadsheet to manage their staff but now they’re using Xero and here’s why.
This is a tough time for accounting software firms because they’re competing head-to head for new clients at the end of the financial year. Some are offering $1/month for 6 months (like BillCue), 50% discounts, 12 month low monthly rates etc.
The competition is so fierce between accounting software companies that most of them promote what they see as the biggest difference and reason to change.
Some of these software companies are startups with nowhere near the cash of market leaders like Xero & QuickBooks and one of the US based accounting software companies wasn’t able to process $40M in payroll payments in March 2023.
Business owners who need to learn how to use MYOB and Xero like the added support that is available if they have a question that relates to their own business.
Unlike Job Seekers who choose MYOB and Xero COMPLETE training courses to learn as much as they can about these bookkeeping programs, Business owners often have questions which relate to things they want to resolve in their business.
Most of the questions students have are solved as they progress through the logical order of the courses we’ve created but sometimes things get a little weird.
A popular and well funded HR and Payroll software company, which is backed by Seek (yes, the employment site) is offering 100 to “qualified” businesses who agree to participate in a demonstration of their software.
This is an example of what companies need to do today to get in front of their prospects in business to business selling. This company is trying quickly and this tactic reminds me of the kind of marketing tactics that PayPal used to massively grow their user base. It looks like the kind of strategy that Peter Thiel writes about in his book Zero to One.
Intuit revealed the name change to their QuickBooks Payroll customers today as part of an acquisition of KeyPay owner by Employment Hero.
If all that didn’t make sense the only real change here is that KeyPay will be rebranded as Employment Hero. Employment Hero has been around since 2014 and purchased KeyPay owner, Webscale Pty Ltd in 2021.
The messy part of this from my perspective is that Intuit, who owns Tsheets is now depending on Employment Here for their payroll solution. It also means that we now have an Employment Hero training course 🙂
It’s been an interesting year for employers as they grapple with the changes to Single Touch Payroll. Even the major software companies (Xero springs to mind) have taken longer than expected to implement changes.
I was speaking with a cafe/restaurant owner in the Central Coast recently who was trying to implement Deputy (for staff roster and scheduling) with Xero and was having trouble with the STP Phase 2 component. She mentioned that the issue appeared to be with Deputy but I did some research using ChatGPT and this is what the Artificial Intelligence software told me!
Did your eyes glaze over with my last blog post about Huddles and Sprints!? It gets easier to understand with each read and is easy to relate to when you compared it to getting tasks done around the home!
Online Accounting software like Xero goes through a continuous update process because they are regularly adding new features that compete against QuickBooks Online and MYOB, but also because the software needs to keep pace with changes in regulation.
There have been regular changes to Single Touch Payroll and that means that Xero have gone through several STP 2 changes too. In this latest case Xero have changed their Payroll screens to adapt to the changing requirements of the ATO with regard to Single Touch Payroll (STP).
Xero led the way in online cloud accounting software that enables anyone to access their accounting software from anywhere. This means that small business owners, staff and their bookkeeping advisors can all access different parts of the software at anytime to perform their work. A far cry from the clunky way that MYOB AccountRight managed multiple users in an office environment a decade ago.
This amazing flexibility enables contract bookkeepers to perform credit control and end of month bank reconciliation tasks working from home, will office support staff are working on quotes, invoices and payments to suppliers. All of these transactions can add up very quickly and soon you can have hundreds of transactions. What if you had to find something, fix something that was entered incorrectly? That’s when you need an audit trail.
Xero just announced Payroll History and it’s designed to keep track of what happens with your payroll records.
The Australian government launched STP in 2016, where employers with over 9 employees must report their payroll information for each pay run to the ATO. When the ATO introduced STP Phase 2 earlier this year, some of the reporting obligations changed.
Here’s what you need to know about STP Phase 2 reporting in Xero, and how EzyLearn’s got you covered with the training.
Do you provide your employees with gym memberships or concert tickets? Or maybe you work for a company that provides you with a vehicle or accommodation? There are lots of perks that business can provide to their employees outside of salaries and wages – and these are called fringe benefits and they may apply to you if you worked at home due to COVID-19.
FBT is not as simple as handing out freebies. Employers have to pay tax on these benefits they provide, and the amount can depend on the type of fringe benefit they’re providing.
We’ve written before about how fringe benefits tax is important to consider when you engage a new worker, but let’s look more in-depth into what fringe benefits are all about, and how to ensure you comply with your liabilities:
Xero has recently announced its updated product features, and they include improvements to integrations, interfaces, and information.
We updates our Xero Training Course content regularly and every student gets 12 months course access and support – this includes access to all updated and additional course content. Here’s a rundown of recent changes Xero have made to their software.
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
