Pay Run Dates and GL Periods

There are four dates associated with each payrun.

Pay To Date (aka "Pay Period")

This is the last day of each pay period. If "Saturday" is displayed beside the Pay To Date field (as in the example above) it means that your pay week is Sunday to Saturday and these are the days paid by each Normal Payrun.

The purpose of the Pay To Date is to uniquely identify every pay period and enable you to select which pay period you are paying. This enables the system to ensure that no pay periods are skipped or paid more than once for an employee.

When processing a Normal Payrun the payroll officer selects the Paid To Date to identify which pay period they are paying.

Only employees that have been included on a Normal Payrun for the previous pay period and have not already been included on a Normal Payrun for the selected pay period, will be available for selection.

The Pay To Date is included in the STP submission sent to the ATO so that various government departments can determine the period to which the employee payments or deductions are related.

Date Paid (aka "Pay Day")

This is the date on which you actually issued payment to the employees for that payrun.

This date determines which month the ATO will record the payrun under (i.e. the month is determined by the date on which you actually issued payment to employees and NOT by the period being paid).

For example, a payrun with a Pay To Date of 30/3 but a Date Paid of 01/4 will be placed into April by the ATO systems.

This date is entered by the payroll officer when processing the payrun.

It will default to today's date but must be overwritten by the payroll officer if they will not pay the wages from bank today.

This date is included in the STP submission sent to the ATO so that the ATO can determine which month to include the payrun in. It is therefore the most important date included in the STP submission.

If you normally process the payrun the day after the end of the pay period (i.e. when you know what overtime was worked on the last day of the pay period and whether anyone had a sick day etc) and issue payment the same day, the Date Paid will normally be the day after the Pay To Date.

Processed Date

This is the date on which you processed the payrun, regardless of what pay period was being paid or whether it was processed on the regular day or was processed late or in advance.

This date is not required for financial reporting. It serves only to provide an audit trail of when each payrun was processed (this may be useful in determining the chain of events where multiple payruns have been processed within a pay period or payruns have been processed late or with the wrong Pay To Dates etc).

This date is "today's date" and is automatically recorded by the system when you process the payrun.

This date is included in the STP submission sent to the ATO to enable them to determine the correct processing order of STP submissions (e.g. if a data communications problem delays submissions to the ATO and multiple submissions are sent simultaneously when the issue is fixed).

If you normally process the payrun the day after the end of the pay period (i.e. when you know what overtime was worked on the last day of the pay period and whether anyone had a sick day etc), the Processed Date will normally be the day after the Pay To Date.

Except for troubleshooting, you can generally ignore the Processed Date.

Super Contribution Payment Date

This is the date by which you expect to pay the superannuation contributions from the payrun to the super clearing house (currently you must do this by the 28th day of the month following the end of the financial quarter).

This date is printed on Pay Advices to alert employees as to when they may expect to see the super contributions from this payrun appear in their super funds. It is not used for any calculations or any reporting.

This date is entered by the payroll officer when processing the payrun. It is blank by default and must be entered manually by the payroll officer (as some employers choose to pay the super into the funds more frequently).

This date is not included in the STP submissions sent to the ATO. However, the ATO knows from the submissions how much super is owed to the employee and knows from submissions by the super clearing houses whether it has been paid into the funds.

The ATO

When you finalize each payrun, the details of that payrun are automatically sent to the ATO via STP reporting (Single Touch Payroll) and are typically processed by the ATO within one hour.

The details are then available in your employees' myGov accounts almost immediately and on the business portal the next day.

Included in the data sent to the ATO are the Pay To Date, the Date Paid and the Processed Date but not the Super Contribution Payment Date.

The most important of these is the Date Paid as the ATO system uses this date to determine which month to enter that STP submission into (and therefore which month it will be included under in the STP reporting on your business portal).

For this reason, it is important to use the Date Paid (and not the Pay To Date or Processed Date) when posting pay journals in Marlin GTX or selecting the payruns to include when generating Payrun Analysis or Superannuation reports to reconcile to the STP reporting shown on your business portal.

Posting the Pay Journals

Each payrun you finalize in Marlin HR will automatically send a pay journal to your Marlin GTX inbox.

This enables you to post the pay journal in just a couple of mouse-clicks, instead of having to create the journal by selecting all of the GL codes and entering all of the amounts etc.

When posting the pay journal you need to select the GL period.

This should be the same GL period as the Date Paid that you entered when processing the payrun (remembering that a payrun with a Pay To Date of 30/3 but a Date Paid of 01/4 will be placed into April by the ATO systems) so that it matches the ATO systems and so that it matches the payment date on your bank statement and enables you to match correctly on your bank reconciliation.

Superannuation Report

When it is time to pay the superannuation contributions into the super clearing house you will generate a Super Report (and a Superstream payment file if you use the file upload facility) containing the appropriate payruns.

Each payrun will display the dates that were entered when you processed those payruns.

Because the ATO uses the Date Paid to determine which month a payrun is listed under, you need to include payruns based upon their Date Paid.

Payrun Analysis Report

When you are reconciling the Payer amounts shown under the STP Reporting section on your business portal, you will need to generate a Payrun Analysis Report including those payruns.

Each payrun will display the dates that were entered when you processed those payruns.

Because the ATO uses the Date Paid to determine which month to include the payrun in, you need to do the same in order to reconcile with the ATO.

For example, the ATO will have placed the STP submission for Payrun 56 (in the pic above) into January 2024 because the Date Paid is 01/01/2024 (the Pay To Date does not matter).

So, when generating a report for the Oct-Dec quarter 2023, you should not include Payrun 56.

You would include Payrun 56 when generating a report for the Jan-Mar 2024 quarter.

Summary

When generating reports in Marlin HR for reconciliation with Marlin or the ATO, just remember to select payruns based on pay days (i.e. Date Paid), not pay periods (i.e. Pay To Date).

Do not be concerned that if a pay period falls within one month, the ATO dictates that it be posted to the following month if that is when you issued payment to the employees from your bank.

There will always be month to month variation in the wages accounts due to the fact that our calendar does not have exactly 4 weeks per month.

For a weekly pay cycle, some months will have four pay days and some will have five.