Headache-free payroll compliance

MYOB PayGlobal makes short work of STP and payday filing

At its most basic, paying your staff should be simple – your team puts in the hours, you hand over the cash. Anyone who’s run a business will tell you straight away that it’s far more complex than that.

Even aside from the systems needed to record hours and pay out correctly, governments overlay complexity that needs to be factored in too – this might include award agreements and leave, superannuation funds, varying levels of taxation, and reporting.

Safe to say, navigating payroll is a complicated business.

MYOB PayGlobal was designed to take much of that administrative burden away, while also ensuring your business stays compliant. It automatically sends data down the line and ensures pay runs are calculated using correct and up-to-date information for time worked, leave and deductions. You’ll also have every aspect of payroll taken care of, including leave-loading, overtime and penalty rates.

The software scales as your team grows and is housed on one integrated platform – it doesn’t rely on third-party apps. The outcome? More confidence in your numbers, less risk of becoming non-compliant, and far fewer manual fixes.  

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Legislation Covered

MYOB PayGlobal is especially powerful when new legislation comes into force – like STP in Australia and payday filing in New Zealand. For some businesses, these compliance changes can often feel like the goal posts are changing constantly – you finally establish systems to cope with one set of rules, only to have them change on you. When the software is constantly updated to suit these changes, as it is with MYOB PayGlobal, staying compliant feels almost seamless.

That’s the experience of Invercargill City Council’s payroll operations. With approximately 500 staff to pay – some monthly, most fortnightly – the organisation requires a lot from its payroll software. The organisation’s payroll team, Noel and Fiona, say they had no trouble meeting recent payday filing changes on time, thanks to MYOB PayGlobal’s compliance functionality.

Managing Change

At the beginning of April, the New Zealand government implemented its biggest payroll compliance change since GST increased almost 20 years ago. Employers are now required to file an employee’s payroll information every payday instead of monthly.

MYOB PayGlobal already had the capability to manage payday filing – automatically generating the report and filing it directly with Inland Revenue. So, for the council team, the first step to get to payday filing was to upgrade their existing software to adopt the compliance functionality. Then it was a matter of implementing payday filing and monitoring the system for any errors – and Fiona says there were a lot fewer than expected. Those they did spot were corrected immediately.

“We’ve found the compliance upgrade good. The solutions team always comes back to us with an answer – although we might not necessarily like the answer,” Fiona jokes.

Over in Australia, it was a similar case – new single touch payroll (STP) rules were made mandatory as of July 2019. While the goal was to simplify things for employers, with any change comes the potential for errors – both with software and the humans using it.

Payroll manager at Southern Cross Electrical Engineering, Michelle Farmer, says she “feels pretty privileged” with the way MYOB has helped them handle the change.

When STP is enabled in PayGlobal, it sends a report directly to the ATO, which includes required information such as salaries and wages, PAYG withholding tax and super.

“I was at an Australian-wide PWC conference,” says Michelle, “and the thing that got me was a lot of people were saying they use STP, but they had no indication when or if ATO had received their files. When I send my files, I get an almost automatic response saying my file has been accepted. I’m thinking PayGlobal has done a really good job.”    

"When I send my files, I get an almost automatic response saying my file has been accepted. I’m thinking PayGlobal has done a really good job."

That feeling of success

See how PayGlobal was able to improve things for the Invercargill City Council and Southern Cross Electrical Engineering.

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Southern Cross is a heavy user of the system, sometimes processing a pay run every day of the week – a recipe for disaster if the changeover to STP wasn’t managed correctly.

After 12 months the transition was easier than anticipated. “At first I thought this [STP] was going to be painful but it wasn’t. I think it’s because of the way PayGlobal set it up which made things so much easier,” Michelle explains.

She says if she had to use other software, which delivered less visibility, she’d find the job hard to do.

“Other people are saying they virtually have no visibility over anything. There were some who had errors they didn’t know how to fix; no-one had got back to them and they’d been sitting there for weeks. I think it’s great we’re getting so much information, because STP is so important.”

Logical, user-friendly Toggle Section

Noel and Fiona both actively recommend MYOB PayGlobal to their peers, and the simplicity of the user interface is part of the reason why.

“PayGlobal is user-friendly, quite logical, easy to navigate your way around and figure out what to do. We have a lot of varied, complex employee agreements,” Fiona adds.

Looking down the track, Fiona says adding to the payroll team will be simple because MYOB PayGlobal will make it easy to get them up to speed.

“It’s very clear what is required,” she says.

Michelle at Southern Cross agrees.

“Where I used to work, it took 84 processes to run the payroll. With PayGlobal, it takes only four or five steps, other than making amendments – it’s an easy system to use, easy to run reports.”

Invaluable support Toggle Section

Support from MYOB was invaluable in the lead-up to the compliance change.  

“At no point did I feel like I didn’t know what was happening,” says Fiona.

She says the team did a marvellous job, considering the process was further expedited for the City Council after they were opted-in early.

Michelle’s experience echoes this. A few minor glitches were quickly resolved with the support of the MYOB PayGlobal helpdesk team.

“When I’ve raised an issue with the PayGlobal support team, they’ve been helpful and quick. They gave me the confidence to leave the issue with them to fix – and they would do it.” 

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MYOB PayGlobal’s automation is undoubtedly one of its best features – removing manual work, and the potential for errors.

Michelle currently runs STP manually each pay run but is looking forward to getting MYOB PayGlobal to do this for her automatically.

“I wanted to see how things went for the first 12 months. Soon, we’ll automate the STP files, and then all I’ll have to do is go in and check the errors – that’ll be an even better function of it,” she says.

Payroll compliance made simple

Navigating payroll doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think. As Southern Cross Electrical Engineering and Invercargill City Council can attest to, with the right software, dealing with legislative changes can actually feel seamless.

MYOB PayGlobal automatically generates and sends reporting through to the ATO or IRD, to keep companies across both sides of the Tasman compliant with new regulations.

The wrap-around support from MYOB, plus the easy user interface, complete the picture – an error-free, automatically compliant payroll system, whatever new legislation throws at you.