COVID-19 wage subsidy (JobKeeper) payments

We'll start by creating the liability account to keep track of the JobKeeper payments you make and receive.

1. Go to the Accounting menu and choose Chart of accounts. The Accounts page appears.
2. Click Create account. The Create account page appears.
3. Select Detail account.
4. Choose the Account type. We suggest Other liability.
5. Select Liabilities or Other Current Liabilities as the Parent Header.
6. Enter a 4-digit Account number after the dash which suits your accounts list.
7. Enter an Account Name, like "JobKeeper payments", to help you and your employees identify the JobKeeper payments.
8. (Optional) Enter the account's Opening balance.
9. Choose the Tax Code that you'll use most often with transactions posted to this account. If unsure, check with an accounting advisor.
10. (Optional) Enter Notes about this account.

11. Choose the relevant Classification for statements of cash flows for your business. See Statement of cash flow report for more information
    Here's our example:

    

12. Once you're done, click Save.

Now that you've created a liability account, the next step is to create a new wage pay item so you can make JobKeeper payments to your employees.

This wage pay item will be used to pay an employee their regular income amount. Superannuation will be calculated on the amount paid using this wage pay item.

1. Go to the Payroll menu and select Pay items. The Pay items page appears.
2. Click the Wages and salary tab.
3. Click Create wage pay item. The Create wage pay item page appears.
4. Enter a Name for the pay item, like "JobKeeper payments".
5. Choose Allowance - other as the ATO reporting category. Learn more about assigning ATO reporting categories for Single Touch Payroll.
6. For the Pay basis, select Salary regardless of whether your employees are salaried or hourly based.
7. Select the option to Override employees' wage expense account.
8. In the accounts field, choose the liability account we created earlier.
   Here's our example:
   
9. Under the Employees using this pay item, choose the employees who will be paid the JobKeeper payments.
10. Click Save.  

This task is only applicable if:

• you have employees who earn less than the JobKeeper payment, and
• you won't be paying superannuation on their top-up payments (the amount above the employee's regular income).

If you'll be paying superannuation on top-up amounts, you can skip this task and use the wage pay item created in the previous task.

As per the government's information, you must pay super on an employee's regular pay amount, but you can choose whether to pay super on top-up amounts.

Take a look at these examples:

If you have employees earning less than $1500 a fortnight and you want to exclude super from their top-up payments, here's what you need to do:

Pay your employees

Start doing a pay run as you normally would. Need a refresher?

To enter the JobKeeper payments, click the arrow to open an employee's pay details.

Here are some examples:

After entering the JobKeeper amount and adjusting the employee's normal amount, complete the rest of the pay run as normal.

The JobKeeper payments from the government will be deposited into your nominated bank account. Here's how to record those payments.

If you use bank feeds

The deposits from the government will automatically appear in your bank feed transactions.

• If you've already recorded a Receive Money transaction for the deposit (as described below), you can match the bank feed transaction to it.
• If you haven't recorded a Receive Money transaction for the deposit, you can do so straight from the Manage bank feeds page (Banking > Manage bank feeds). When creating the Receive Money transaction, allocate the deposit to the liability account we set up earlier (the steps below will show you what this means).

For details about how to work with bank feed transactions, see Managing your bank feeds.

If you don't use bank feeds, you'll need to manually enter a Receive Money transaction.