Support

The ATO has announced updated information regarding the 2020 withholding tax tables.

"The Federal Budget did not result in any changes to tax rates or income thresholds for 2019-20 income year. Changes announced to the low and middle income tax offset were only in respect of the amount of that offset, and that is claimable when individuals lodge their income tax return.

The HELP/SSL/TSL tax tables will be renamed ‘Study and training support loans tax tables’. They will incorporate HELP, VSL, SFSS, SSL, ABSTUDY SSL and TSL. There will no longer be separate SFSS tax tables. These changes arise from the passing of the Sustainability and VSL Separation Bills in 2018. You will need to refer to the applicable ‘Study and training support loans tax table’ wherever any existing tax tables refer to HELP/SSL/TSL or SFSS tax tables.

Therefore, only Schedule 8 – Statement of formulas for calculating study and training support loans components (NAT 3539) and study and training support loans weekly, fortnightly and monthly tax tables will be updated for the 2019–20 year."

Lightning Payroll version 2020.1.1 or higher already contains these Study and training support loans tax tables. Please ensure your version is up to date so that these changes can apply.

In line with what is mentioned in the ATO's advice above there are no standard tax table changes to be applied to Lightning Payroll in this new financial year.

AUSkeys are now a thing of the past. The ABR and ATO are decommissioning AUSkeys on March 28th 2020. M2M Credentials, otherwise known as Machine Credentials are the new way to identify yourself digitally with the ATO and within Lightning Payroll. These are fully handled by the ATO now, and not given by the Australian Business Register.

For instructions on getting your Machine Credential please see our FAQ on the topic.

Regarding the newly announced JobKeeper payments from the government, we here at Lightning Payroll, like you, are still waiting to hear the finalisation of the legislation. This means at this stage we do not know how to advise how these payments will be processed.

As soon as this information becomes available to us, we will be updating our support information here to advise our users how to input the JobKeeper payments into Lightning Payroll. We will also immediately update the Latest News section on the home screen of your Lightning Payroll program. 

One thing we are certain of so far is that you need to register your interest to be involved in the JobKeeper program with the Federal Government by clicking here. 

Due to the current Coronavirus pandemic the Lightning Payroll support team will be working from home. Our support quality and hours remain unchanged.

Please see here for Fair Work Australia information on workplace laws and leave, with regards to the current situation.

Jobkeeper Payment

For more information on how the payment will work along with eligibility criteria, please click here to view the Federal Government's Business information page.

For information on how to register your interest, please see the How to Apply section in the link above.

• A powerful new retrospective pay editing tool has been added for quick bulk-editing of department % allocations and some allowance/deduction settings.
• Names for system leave types such as 'Holiday' and 'Sick' can now be customised under the Settings screen.
• Automatically set protected earnings amount for child support deductions.
• New Net Balancing Report for tracking amounts from A - Z under Reports >> Pay.
• Warning added for outdated operating systems to be unsupported later in 2019.
• Option for many reports and widgets to display time durations in decimal or days, hours, minutes and seconds.
• New leave forecasting approximation report.
• Customisable decimal precision in several reports.
• Super fund deposits now have an option to collect pay super by pay processed date.
• Improved Single Touch Payroll warnings and error messaging.
• Calendar tool button has been moved to the lower toolbar for more vertical window space.
• New Direct Entry Report has been added. This shows what banking files have been created and when.
• New Emails Sent Report has been added. This shows metadata about what emails have been sent and when.
• Confirmation warning has been added to the leave balance calculators to help prevent accidental leave adjustments.
• Payslips will now retain past employee and company information which has been changed.
• Other minor bug fixes and improvements.