Just moved from AccountRight or AccountEdge

Because you've been reporting your payroll information via Single Touch Payroll from your previous MYOB software, the ATO has received your year-to-date (YTD) payroll totals. But when you start reporting payroll from MYOB Essentials, the YTD totals will be sent again, which will duplicate these figures in your employees' myGov account.

To fix this, you'll need to clear each employee's YTD payroll amounts from your previous MYOB software, then send an update to the ATO.

 1. Clear employee YTD amounts

1. Open each employee's card (Card File > Cards List > Employees > click the zoom arrow to open their card).
2. Click the Payroll Details tab, then click Pay History on the left.
3. Under Show Pay History for, choose Year-to-Date.
4. Change each amount to zero ($0.00).
   
5. Click OK.
6. Repeat for each employee who's been paid this payroll year. 

2. Send an update to the ATO

The way you do this depends on your MYOB software.

3. Finalise your STP reporting

You'll need to finalise your employees' payroll information in the STP payroll reporting centre. This is to advise the ATO that your payroll reporting is ending from your old software.

You'll continue reporting via STP in MYOB Essentials once you set that up as described in the next section.

Here's how to finalise your STP reporting:

Once you've completed these tasks, you can complete you payroll setup in MYOB Essentials.

1. Set up Pay superannuation (only if you've moved from AccountRight)

The way you'll pay your employee's super contributions in MYOB Essentials is different to AccountRight. MYOB Essentials creates a contribution file for you to upload to MYOB's Super Portal. For all the details, see Set up Pay superannuation.

2. Re-enter pays

Your payroll transactions for the current payroll year were converted to MYOB Essentials as journal entries. This means you need to re-enter these as payroll transactions in MYOB Essentials. This will ensure your payroll reports, including PAYG payment summaries, are accurate for the current payroll year.

There's a couple of ways you can do this:

• Record each pay separately to replicate the pays in your previous MYOB software. Use the pay slips from your previous MYOB software as a guide. We recommend this method if you have unpaid superannuation for a specified period or you want to keep the pay separate for auditing purposes.
• Record a single "bulk" pay using details from the Payroll Activity Detail report from your previous MYOB software. For information on this report, see the Payroll reports topic in MYOB AccountRight help.

To learn about completing a pay run in MYOB Essentials, see Do a pay run.

3. Check employee leave balances

Your employees' opening and current leave balances that have been brought across from your previous MYOB software, but it's a good ideas to check they're correct.

Make sure you've re-entered your pays in MYOB Essentials as described in the previous task before proceeding.

To help check employee leave balances:

• In your previous MYOB software, run the Entitlement Balance Summary report for the current payroll year. This will show the Opening Hours and Available Hours of leave for each employee.
• In MYOB Essentials, check the Opening balance for each employee’s leave (Payroll menu > Employees > click an employee's name to open their record > Leave tab). Make sure the annual leave and personal leave balances in MYOB Essentials match the Available Hours shown in the Entitlement Balance Summary report from your previous MYOB software. You might need to change the Opening balance values in MYOB Essentials to correct any differences caused by rounding, etc.

If you need to adjust an employee's leave balance, see Managing your employees’ leave.

4. Set up Single Touch Payroll reporting

To report your payroll information to the ATO from MYOB Essentials, you'll need to set up Single Touch Payroll. It's similar to how you set it up in your previous MYOB software—and because you've done it before you'll know what to expect.

See Setting up Single Touch Payroll reporting.

5. Delete converted pay journal entries

Once you've completed the above tasks, you can delete the converted payroll journal entries. This ensures your payroll data isn't duplicated.

1. Access the journal entries in MYOB Essentials by clicking your business name then choosing General journals.
2. Use the From and To dates to locate the converted pay journals for the current payroll year. You can use the Search field to find only payroll journals, for example search for the Memo recorded in pays in your previous MYOB software.
3. To delete a journal, click the journal to open it then click Delete.

To learn about journal entries in MYOB Essentials, see General Journals.