Before the First Pay Run

When Megabus provides you with a new Marlin HR system for your business it will be licensed with a digital certificate containing your business details, ready for you to start entering your employees and customising the setup to best suit your particular business, preferences and employees.

Marlin HR is under constant development to maintain compliance with all relevant legislation and enable you to meet your ongoing payroll and reporting obligations.

In addition, we provide you with free 24/7 access to Marlin Inform, a knowledgebase containing explanations and instructions on how to set up and use most areas of Marlin HR.

Our Support team is available to assist you with Marlin HR related queries and training can also be organised upon request.

Please understand that as an employer, it is your responsibility to ensure that you pay and tax your employees correctly per the relevant legislation, awards and employee agreements, and that you comply with all payroll processing and reporting obligations to which employers are subject.

As with any tool, correct outcomes from Marlin HR rely upon diligent preparation and usage by the user.

It is therefore crucial that, before processing any payruns, you perform all steps listed below to ensure that Marlin HR is configured appropriately for your particular business and employees.

During system handover and training our installations team may have entered a few employees with you as examples, or helped perform some customisations based on information you provided.

However, it is crucial that you work your way through all checks below before processing the first payrun, to ensure correct outcomes and correct reporting to the ATO.

Thankfully, aside from entering your employees, most of these checks should be very quick to complete. Remember to click on Hint beside a field to display information on the purpose and selections for that field.

Refresh GL Accounts

If you also use Marlin, you will need to run a refresh to bring all GL account codes from Marlin into Marlin HR so they may be selected on various transaction types.

This in turn enables payruns to send pay journals to Marlin that post amounts to the appropriate accounts and include them in your P&L report and balance sheet.

From the menu, select System > General Ledger Accounts.

Click on the Refresh icon (green arrows on white page) and respond YES to the confirmation prompt.

Refresh Suppliers

If you also use Marlin and prefer pay journals to post certain amounts (eg. Deductions, Tax, Superannuation) to supplier accounts in Marlin rather than liability accounts, you wilI need to run a refresh to bring all supplier account codes from Marlin into Marlin HR.

From the menu, select System > Suppliers.

Click on the Refresh icon (green arrows on white page) and respond YES to the confirmation prompt

Departments

If you would like to produce Marlin HR reports by Department, you can create multiple departments and apply the appropriate one to each employee in Employee Maintenance.

From the menu, select System > Departments.

Create additional Departments if necessary. To automatically select a department as the default department (to be automatically applied to new employees entered into the system), click on that department and then on the icon (red pin on white page).

In Employee Maintenance, select the appropriate Department on each employee.

Company Details and ABN

These details are included in every STP reporting submission to the ATO and are therefore critical. If the ABN is incorrect, all submissions to the ATO will be rejected and you will not be compliant with legislation.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Company Details tab.

Check that the ABN is correct. If not, contact Support immediately and do not process a payrun.

Payroll Contact Details

These details are printed on employee Pay Advices so employees may contact you with any queries.

They may also be used by Megabus to contact you with important information.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Company Details tab.

Check that the correct details are entered, especially Email Address.

Bank Details

These details are included in the bank files generated by payruns. Uploading them to your online banking for payment will fail if these details are incorrect.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Banking Details tab.
Carefully check all details on this page are correct.

Tick the checkboxes if you would like the Bank files and Super payment files to be automatically emailed to the Payroll Contact (see previous step) when generated.

You must tick these if your Marlin HR system is hosted on a Megabus server, otherwise it is optional.

Payrun Options

These settings determine the days to be paid in each pay cycle and the Pay To date of the first payrun of each pay cycle.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Payrun Options tab.
You should select the last day of the period to be paid by each payrun (e.g. for a Weekly pay cycle, select Wednesday if your pay week is Thursday to Wednesday and you normally process the payrun and issue payment on Thursday).

If you also have employees that you will pay Fortnightly or Monthly, set these up in the same way.

Employee Defaults

The selections you make here will automatically be added to each new employee you enter into Marlin HR, saving you from having to add them manually.

Keep in mind that the default selections may not be appropriate for all new employees (eg. leave entitlements may not be appropriate for Casual employees) so you will still need to review each employee and sometimes remove or change the default selections from them.

So, to maximize potential time savings from defaults, be sure to choose only those options that apply to the majority of your new employees.

Alternatively, you may choose to select no defaults and to manually add the correct selections for each employee as you enter them.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Employee Defaults tab.

Select the options that you want automatically added to each new employee you enter into Marlin HR.

Superannuation Guarantee Rate

This is where you apply the currently legislated superannuation guarantee rate.

It is automatically applied to all employees that are ticked in Employee Maintenance as being entitled to the superannuation guarantee (new employees are ticked by default).

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Employee Defaults tab.

Select the currently legislated Superannuation Guarantee Rate.

Accounting Options

This is where you select the current tax year and the default GL accounts to use.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the Accounting Options tab.

Select the Start Date and End Date for the current tax year (Marlin HR will automatically update this for future years).

Select the Bank GL account to post wages to.

Select the GL accounts to use (Creditors Control, Superannuation, Salaries & Wages) if no overrides are entered on specific payment types.

ATO Options

This is where you select ATO related settings.

From the menu, select System > Options and select the ATO Options tab.

Ensure your Branch Code is 001 (unless the ATO has directed you in writing to use a different branch code because you have multiple branch codes under the one ABN).

Enter the name of the person that will normally process the payruns in the Payer Declarer's Name field (this will save you having to key it in when you finalise every payrun but can be overwritten if somebody else processes a payrun).

Check Earnings Types

Each payrun will automatically submit an STP submission (Single Touch Reporting) to the ATO and must include the correct reporting codes to be accepted.

Each type of payment must be set up in Marlin HR with the correct ATO codes.

From the menu, select System > Earnings.

The list of Earnings types displays the selected codes on each one, or open each earnings type to view the reporting codes available for selection (click on Hint beside each field to display an explanation of the selections).

Check Allowances Types

Each payrun will automatically submit an STP submission (Single Touch Reporting) to the ATO and must include the correct reporting codes to be accepted. Each type of allowance payment must be set up in Marlin HR with the correct ATO codes.

From the menu, select System > Allowances.

The list of Allowance types displays the selected codes on each one, or open each allowance type to view the reporting codes available for selection (click on Hint beside each field to display an explanation of the selections).

Check Deductions Types

Each payrun will automatically submit an STP submission (Single Touch Reporting) to the ATO and must include the correct reporting codes to be accepted.

Each type of deduction must be set up in Marlin HR with the correct ATO codes.

From the menu, select System > Deductions.

The list of Deduction types displays the selected codes on each one, or open each deduction type to view the reporting codes available for selection (click on Hint beside each field to display an explanation of the selections).

Check Leave Types

For each accruable leave type (i.e. Annual Leave, Personal Leave, Long Service Leave) you need to tell the system how many hours by default employees are entitled to accrue each year, whether the balance at the end of the tax year should be carried over to the next tax year, whether the balance is shown on employee pay advices, and whether you would like to accrue the unpaid leave balances to Marlin so that the value may be shown as a liability on the balance sheet.

From the menu, select System > Leave Types.

The list of leave types displays the selected values for each one, or open each one to see more detail and click on Hint beside each field display an explanation.

Check Tax Scales

You must be sure to select the correct Tax Scales for the current tax year so that employees are taxed correctly.

Click on Payrun on the favourites bar below the menu (or select Payrun > Payrun Processing from the menu).

The currently applied tax scale is shown in blue writing near the top of screen (e.g. "Budget2023" is for the 2023-24 tax year).

Superannuation Funds

It is better to add the superannuation funds used by your employees before you enter the employees themselves.

This is so that you do not have to stop in the middle of entering an employee and go and create a superannuation fund.

From the menu, select System > Superannuation Funds and add each fund used by your employees.

If you will create SuperStream payment files to upload to a super clearing house, you will need to enter the USI (Unique Super Identifier) for regular funds (i.e. APRA regulated fund) or ABN and banking details for an SMSF (Self Managed Super Fund).

You can then tick the checkbox to include that fund in the SuperStream payment files you generate for payment.

Enter Employees (and Recurring Earnings/Allowances/Deductions)

You will need to enter all of your employees into Marlin HR. The details for each employee are split over 4 tabs (Personal, General, Pay Details, and Entitlements) and all tabs must be completed before including the employee on a payrun.

Click on the Employee Mnt button on the favourites bar below the menu (or select Main > Employee Maintenance from the menu).

Click on the Add icon (green +) to add a new employee
Enter the information on the first 4 tabs (mandatory fields are highlighted in blue).

Click on Hint beside a field for an explanation of the purpose and options for that field.

Be sure to select the correct Tax Scale for each employee so that you withhold the correct amount of tax from each pay.

Enter Opening Balances (if any)

For a greenfield business there will be no balances to bring into your new Marlin HR system, everything will start from zero.

If you acquired an existing business and its employees, you will need to enter opening leave balances if they were part of the purchase and not paid out by the previous owner.

There will be no opening balances for payments, tax, super etc as these amounts were reported by the previous owner under their own ABN.

If you are an existing business and are changing from another payroll system to Marlin HR, there will be opening leave balances to enter but likely no other balances as these amounts were reported to the ATO and finalized by your previous payroll software.

Finalize the amounts sent from the old software and start afresh in the new software.

Ensure that you have first entered all of the employees and entered their leave entitlements.

From the menu, select Tools > Opening Balances Entry.

You can enter on each employee, click on the Leave Entitlements tab and enter the opening balance for each leave type that you have added to the employee in Employee Maintenance.

In the unlikely event that you also need to enter opening balances for Earnings, Allowances and Deductions, click on those tabs and enter them.

System Check (STP readiness)

Once you have finished setting up the system and entering the employees, you can run a test to ensure that you haven't missed adding any STP reporting codes onto employees, earnings types, allowance types or deduction types.

From the menu select Tools > System Check.

The system will automatically run a check and report details of any missing STP reporting codes.

Note that it cannot determine whether you have selected inappropriate codes.

Payrun Screen

Once you have finished setting up the system and entering the employees, check to confirm that all employees are showing on the payrun screen ready for payment and that they all have a Pay Qty of '1'.

Click on the Payrun button on the favourites bar below the menu (or select Payrun > Payrun Processing from the menu bar).

Select the Pay To Date of the first pay period that you will pay and ensure that all employees appear in the list below with a checkbox to include them on the pay and '1' in the Pay Qty column.

If any employees are missing, do not have a checkbox or have a value other than '1' in the Pay Qty column, it is most likely that you have entered an incorrect Joined Date or Paid To Date for them in Employee Maintenance.

System Backup before Payrun

If you have completed all of the setup steps and checks above, we strongly recommend performing a backup of the system before you process the first payrun.

That way, if processing the first payrun highlights a problem, we can restore the system back to what it was before you ran the payrun and you will not need to repeat the steps above.

From the menu, select Tools > Backup.

Click on the Run a backup icon (green circle with white arrow).

Leave '$: Data' selected in the Type field and click on the Start button.