How Do I Process Single Touch Payroll?

Since July 2019 the ATO have require that employers align ATO reporting with their pay schedule and submit employee YTD figures using the Single Touch Payroll (STP) reporting standard each time pays are made to employees; Lightning Payroll therefore implemented STP at that time. In late 2021, the ability to do Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 reporting was added into Lightning Payroll, meaning all users were compliant with the updated reporting standards, which were compulsory as of January 1, 2022.

The only thing you need to do to be able to send STP in Lightning Payroll desktop is get an ATO machine credential; please see our FAQ on machine credentials here. For web/online or mobile users, registration of your SSID in the ATO Access Manager website is required instead of the machine credentials desktop users require. Read more about sending STP from the web/mobile versions of the program here.

Read the ATO's Single Touch Factsheet

To process Single Touch Payroll in Lightning Payroll simply complete your pays as usual then click Single Touch >> Submit Payroll to ATO. You should always report your pays in chronological order of the processed date; Single Touch Payroll uses only the processed date of your pay runs to determine what to report - pay run dates are irrelevant to STP. Each pay run should have a New event sent for it first, and this will be the event type that Lightning Payroll automatically suggests when submitting. You are only able to have one New event per processed date, which is another reason you should always have accurate processed dates on your pay runs. You then simply click Next, and press Submit to the ATO. You can also view and/or print/save the reports available on this page if you wish.

To check for Single Touch Payroll response messages from the ATO click Single Touch >> Single Touch Mailbox.

This video tutorial demonstrates how to submit Single Touch Payroll information to the ATO.