Answer
Note: The most important part of Single Touch Payroll (STP) is reporting accurate year-to-date (YTD) employee amounts, which are included in all New and Update events. For PAYG and activity statement lodgements, we recommend running a Group Tax or Pay Summary report in Lightning Payroll and lodging the correct W1 and W2 totals from those reports. Do not blindly trust the ATO pre-filled figures on your BAS; these pre-fills are just a starting point and are editable during lodgement.
If you're unsure whether to use an Adjust event, it's best to avoid it. Adjust events are considered an advanced feature and are only necessary when you understand exactly how your STP submissions have impacted the ATO’s pre-fill figures and wish to fine-tune them. Lodging an Adjust event is not required to submit accurate PAYG or BAS statements. Simply using your own reports is often the safest and simplest option.
The ATO's Adjust event feature is now available for Single Touch submissions, alongside the existing New and Update event options. This feature enables you to correct discrepancies in your W1 (total gross) and W2 (total tax) figures following amendments to a pay run that result in different amounts. Correcting these figures with an Adjust event ensures accurate display of W1 and W2 data on your ATO portal and, importantly, accurate pre-filling of your BAS amounts.
Before utilising an Adjust event, we recommend generating a Group Tax report based on the processed date. This report provides precise totals of pay and tax amounts from your Lightning Payroll data for the specified period. To create this report, navigate to Reports > Group Tax, select the relevant period, tick Use Processed Date?, select the employees, and click OK. The totals in this report help to identify any discrepancies in your W1 and W2 figures, as recorded by the ATO.
To view the figures submitted to the ATO via Single Touch submissions, go to Pays > Single Touch > Single Touch Mailbox, and adjust the dates to match those used for the Group Tax report to see submissions for that period. The submission totals, displayed below the table, include New and Adjust events (Update event amounts are not included), and are utilised by the ATO for pre-filling the Online Services for Business amounts.
If there is a difference between the figures in your Group Tax report and those in your Single Touch Mailbox, you may wish to submit an Adjust event to correct your pre-fill figures (please note: these figures can also be manually updated on the ATO website when paying BAS, if you prefer). Cross referencing of these figures can also be done through the ATOs portal. For detailed guidance on potential discrepancies, please read more here.
To calculate the adjustment amount, subtract the gross and tax totals in your Group Tax report from the figures in your Single Touch Mailbox for the same period; this is the value that you need to submit through an Adjust event. In our example above, there is a $2,307.69 ($56,773.39 - $54,465.70) difference in the W1 figure and a $614 ($14,427.00 - $13,813.00) difference in the W2 figure, thus, these are the amounts we will be sending in the Adjust event, as positive values. (Please note: if you are instead reporting an adjustment of less value than previously reported, you would need to enter amounts as a negative dollar value, eg. -$500.00.)
To send this through Single Touch, go to Pays > Single Touch > Submit Payroll to ATO, then select Adjust incorrect pay/new event parent totals. Here, you can enter the amounts that you are needing to add or subtract; if your reports in Lightning Payroll show increased figures compared to the ATO (STP mailbox), you will need to enter a positive value to increase the figures on their end. Conversely, decreased figures compared to the ATO will require a negative value to rectify.
After submitting the Adjust event, please allow up to 72 hours for these adjustments to reflect on the ATO portal, or in your BAS pre-filling (though this is likely to process instantly).