Making corrections to your STP data
Under Payday Super, you report qualifying earnings as year-to-date (YTD) amounts through Single Touch Payroll (STP). If you make a mistake when you lodge your STP report, you can correct it – we call this correction a 'fix'. If you do not fix a mistake in your STP reporting, you may be liable for a penalty for making a false or misleading statement.
You can only fix an STP report after you've lodged it. Corrections don't include situations where you should have lodged an STP report but failed to do so on time.
If you report the wrong amount of qualifying earnings
There may be times when you identify that:
- the YTD qualifying earnings amount you reported through STP is incorrect
- super was not calculated on the correct amount of qualifying earnings as a result.
This can happen, for example, because of a payroll setup issue or a data entry mistake.
What you need to do
- Follow the STP correction steps in your payroll software to correct the YTD qualifying earnings amount, either in your next pay event or using an update event.
- Keep records as evidence for qualifying earnings amounts impacted by corrections, especially if a correction relates to an earlier payday.
An STP 'update event' is not considered a 'pay event'. That is, it does not indicate that you have made another payment of qualifying earnings. For ATO data reconciliation purposes, the exception is when qualifying earnings corrections are included in an update event with a finalisation indicator, as this is the final amount reported.
If there is no change to an employee’s qualifying earnings YTD amount, we do not consider this a pay event and no new qualifying earnings or super guarantee amounts are calculated.
Outcomes
After you fix your STP report and update the YTD qualifying earnings to the correct amount, we may recalculate your super guarantee amounts based on the updated data.
If the amount you reported was too low
We calculate qualifying earnings and expected super guarantee amounts from either:
- changes in the reported qualifying earnings YTD amounts
- an STP update event with a finalisation indicator.
If the amount you reported was too high
If your STP correction reduces the qualifying earnings YTD amount, no new qualifying earnings are calculated until there is a later increase in qualifying earnings.