Closing a Business

When you sell or close down the business you are required to send an STP submission to the ATO that contains all year-to-date amounts for all employees marked as "final" so that the ATO system will change each employee's data to a status of TAX READY in their myGov accounts on 1st July, thereby enabling your employees to complete their online tax returns.

Performing the procedure detailed below in Marlin HR will send all required information to the ATO and we recommend that you do so when closing the store (i.e. do not wait for the end of the financial year).

This will ensure that:

• You will still have access to your Marlin HR system.
• Your Marlin HR digital certificate will still be valid (once it expires you cannot make changes or run payruns etc).
• Megalink will still be active (this is the data communications program that automatically sends the STP submissions from Marlin HR to the ATO).

If you sell the business, any employees that continue on with the new owner will have two Income Statements in their myGov account at the end of the financial year, one from you and one from the new employer.

Procedure

Even though some of your employees may be retained by a new owner who may also use Marlin HR, it will be a new Marlin HR dataset that contains no employee history (i.e. any information pertaining to payruns processed by your company will be removed).

If the new owner takes on the accrued leave balances of those employees, they will be entered as opening balances in the new owner's system.

Essentially, the finalisation process consists of two main parts:

• Performing Termination Payruns for current employees (to pay out unused leave where applicable and to send required "final" information to the ATO).
• Performing an EOY close-off (to send required "final" information to the ATO for other employees you have paid during the current financial year but have not included on a Termination Pay - eg. Casuals that have not worked for you recently).

The "Termination Date" you enter on Termination Payruns will be the employee's last day of paid work. For some employees this will be the store's last day of trading, for any employees finishing earlier it will be their last day of work.

The "Termination Reason" selected should be "Voluntary". Employees that finish on the same day can be included on a single Termination Pay.

Employees finishing earlier than the business closure date (IF ANY)

Include these employees on the regular Normal payruns for all pay periods where they have worked up to the end of the pay period (this will bring their payments and leave entitlements up to date for all full periods worked).

Include these employees on a Termination Payrun and enter their last day worked as the Termination Date (Include them even if there are no outstanding hours/payments or unused leave payouts so that the required termination information is reported to the ATO).

All employees finishing on the same day can be included on a single Termination Pay.

Before initialising the Termination Pay, select the Options button for each employee and tick the checkboxes to pay out unused A/L and LSL if appropriate (do not create leave entries to payout unused leave) and select "Voluntary" as the Termination Reason.

Once initialised, enter any hours worked since the last full pay period and any outstanding payments.

If there are any OTE hours entered (eg. Standard Hours) and you are paying out unused leave, the system will automatically calculate pro rate leave accruals on these hours and add it to the unused leave payout.

Employees finishing on the business closure date (MANDATORY)

Include these employees on the regular Normal payruns for all pay periods where they have worked up to the end of the pay period (this will bring their payments and leave entitlements up to date for all full periods worked).

Include these employees on a Termination Payrun and enter the last day worked as the Termination Date.

Include them even if there are no outstanding hours/payments or unused leave payouts so that the required termination information is reported to the ATO.

All employees finishing on the same day can be included on a single Termination Pay.

Before initialising the Termination Pay, select the Options button for each employee and tick the checkboxes to pay out unused A/L and LSL if appropriate (do not create leave entries to payout unused leave) and select "Voluntary" as the Termination Reason.

Once initialised, enter any hours worked since the last full pay period and any outstanding payments.

If there are any OTE hours entered (eg. Standard Hours) and you are paying out unused leave, the system will automatically calculate pro rate leave accruals on these hours and add it to the unused leave payout.

Perform EOFY Close-off (MANDATORY)

Steps 1 & 2 above will send all of the required data to the ATO for the employees you selected.

However, there may be employees paid earlier in the tax year that are not Terminated and are not entitled to any unused leave payouts (eg. Casuals).

The EOFY close-off process will report their "final" information to the ATO so that these employees can perform their tax returns at 30th June.

Once all adjustments/payments /payruns have been completed, select Periodic > End Of Year Close-Off and follow the onscreen prompts (also see EOY Close-off Guide).