What Single-Touch Payroll (STP) reporting do I need to do for EOFY 2025/26

The article is relevant for employers that have been reporting to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) for Single Touch Payroll (STP) during this financial year, as well as for all businesses not exempt from STP reporting. For the 2025/26 financial year, STP reporting exemptions only apply to:

• WPN holders (until 1st July 2034); or

• Businesses that have been granted a deferral or special exemption from the ATO.

The article will guide you through wrapping up the 2025/2026 financial year, lodging the finalisation declaration, and getting ready for the 2026/2027 financial year. We recommend you also refer to the EOFY STP FAQ in case you have questions along the way.

Getting started

We broke this article down into the different phases of end-of-year processing

• Preparation: It will cover ‌the recommended checks and reconciliations. You should make sure all business and employee details are correct before lodging the finalisation event with the ATO.

• Lodging finalisation event: It includes sending notifications to employees and how to amend any employee earnings already lodged via a finalisation event.

Preparation

You should take these steps before lodging your finalisation event.

Review employee details

Make sure employee details are up to date. In particular, check the the employee's tax file number, email, and postal address. Having an email address on record for an employee will allow you to send a notification email directly from the platform to your employees after you have lodged the finalisation event to notify them that their Income Statement is tax ready.

Check that the employee's address is complete and correct, as unless fixed, this will trigger a validation and prevent you from lodging the finalisation event. If your business contains a combination of closely-held employees, and non closely-held employees, i.e., arm's length employees. Make note of those employees whom you classify as closely held as you will need to complete a separate finalisation event for those being reported quarterly. Also, keep note if you have any foreign employees, as you will need to report the Foreign Tax Paid via the finalisation event.

A quick way to audit this information is to generate an Employee Details Report and select the following display columns to retrieve the information:

• Postal address.

• Email.

• Tax file number.

• Single-touch payroll.

Make sure you also include employees terminated in this financial year when generating the report, as you may also include them in the finalisation event.

Warning

If you need to update any of the employee details, please log in to Wojo Pay, navigate to the employee’s record, and make the change. Remember that the source of truth for your employee data is the Wojo Payplatform which automatically syncs to the Payroll classic platform.

In exceptional circumstances where an alternative option for the aforementioned is required, you can complete the changes individually in the Payroll classic platform. Otherwise, you can update in bulk by exporting the employee file, changing the spreadsheet, and then importing the updated file. However, the default and best practise for your organisation is to use the source of truth wherever possible.

Review FBT settings

Is your business exempt from Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) under section 57A of the FBTAA 1986? If so, make sure you have configured this via the ATO Settings page. By default, we select the No option, but it is important to review the setup. It will help make sure you report correctly any reportable fringe benefits amounts in the finalisation event and the employee's Income Statement.

For businesses with multiple employing entities set up, please note that you must configure the FBT settings for each employing entity. We can do this via clicking through to the relevant employing entity via the Employing Entities submenu within Payroll Settings on your Wojo Pay platform.

If a business is exempt from FBT under section 57A of the Act, the employee's whole RFBT amount is reported as tax-free. If the business is not exempt from FBT under section 57A of the Act, the employee's whole RFBT amount is reported as taxable.

Before 16th July 2021, there were an additional two sub-settings which separated out the type of organisation and the entitlement of employees to a separate cap for salary-packaged entertainment benefits. We have removed these options as they do not impact the reporting of RFB amounts for employees via STP or payment summaries and are redundant. As a result, the following will also occur:

• Any existing lodged STP events that did not have RFB amounts reported will only have one RFB column called RFBA displayed in the event.

• If any existing lodged STP events have RFB amounts reported in the RFBA–Entertainment or RFBA–Other column, the applicable RFB column will remain in the event as will the amounts previously reported. Previously entered RFB amounts are maintained despite this change.

•  As per new STP events created, there will only be one column for RFBA.

Review pay categories

Review your pay categories and make sure you applied the correct classification. As part of STP Phase 2, the ATO has new regulations around the disaggregation of gross income, so it is important to make sure that your pay categories are classified appropriately as per ATO requirements.

PAYG Exempt pay categories:

You normally categorise a pay category set to be PAYG exempt as something other than Default in the Payment Classification field in the pay category settings, for example, Allowance or Lump Sum as two possibilities. You would do this because it is considered PAYG-Exempt earnings tax-free for a particular reason.

If you select the Default option in the Payment Classification field for PAYG Exempt earnings, then your STP finalisation reconciliation will show a variance equal to the amount paid using this pay category. The reason for this is because earnings will not appear in the Taxable Earnings total in the payroll Year to Date (YTD) section. However, they will appear in the Payroll Gross Earnings total in the STP YTD section. Information about how to fix this is in our EOFY Reconciliation article.

Review deduction categories

For any Union or Professional Association Fees or Workplace Giving deductions, be sure to audit the Classification field so the itemised deduction amounts appear separately in the Income Statement. As part of STP Phase 2, they have introduced several new classifications to categorise the deduction types, so it is important to make sure your deduction categories are correct. There have also been two Salary Sacrifice classifications introduced as part of STP Phase 2:

• Salary sacrifice (superannuation):

  • It refers to an effective salary sacrifice arrangement:

    • Entered before they performed the work.

    • Where you paid contributions to a complying superannuation fund.

    • Whereby the sacrificed salary is permanently foregone.

• Salary sacrifice (other employee benefits):

  • It refers to an effective salary sacrifice arrangement:

    • Entered before they performed the work.

    • For benefits other than for superannuation.

    • Where the sacrificed salary is permanently foregone.

  • Examples include:

    • Novated lease.

    • Gym membership.

    • Workplace giving donations.

    • Car.

    • Property (goods, land, buildings, shares and bonds).

    • Expense payments (loans, school fees, childcare costs and home phone costs) and.

    • Work-related items, such as portable electronic devices and equipment.

If they have made salary sacrifice arrangements where you pay the contributions to a super fund, we strongly recommend using the platform default deduction category for Salary Sacrifice Super. Alternatively, if the salary sacrifice arrangements are for benefits aside from superannuation, please make sure to use the Salary sacrifice (other employee benefits) classification.

Check opening balances

If you have migrated to this payroll platform from another platform during the financial year, it is important you have correctly set up the opening balances. If you created your business in the previous financial year but did not start processing pay runs until this financial year, it may be necessary to review the Initial Financial Year setting. You will find this on the Opening Balances page in the Payroll Settings module where you can make sure the configuration of the correct financial year.

If there are any opening balances for deductions that should be reported as Reportable Employer Super Contributions (RESC) on the Income Statement, be sure to select the Include on payment summary as RESC tick box alongside the deduction category in the employee's Opening Balances screen. If you are using the platform Salary Sacrifice Super deduction category, we will select the tick box by default 

Audit salary sacrifice super/RESC

We suggest you audit all RESC amounts processed in pay runs to make sure you have correctly assigned them as paid to a super fund. The ramifications of any other allocation, i.e., other than to the super fund will cause employee amounts not being reported correctly on their Income Statement and the employee being stuck with a tax liability. To audit RESC amounts, follow these steps:

• Generate a Deductions Report using the date range Financial Year and filter the report by selecting the relevant RESC deduction category.

• Generate a Super Contributions Report using the date range Financial Year and filter the Contribution Type to Salary Sacrifice. 

• Compare the total $ amounts between both reports. Do they match? If yes, then all is well. If the amounts do not match, review each employee to identify where the difference lies.

• Once you identify the differences, you will need to fix them. 

• Once making any corrections, generate the Super Contributions Report again and make sure the total amount matches the Deductions Report.

On 4th November 2020, we changed the RESC deduction category to help users avoid incorrectly allocating RESC deductions to anything other than a super fund. If, however, you made payments before these changes or you made deductions using a custom category, you will need to unlock the pay run and change the category used. If you cannot unlock or edit the pay run, please contact Support by submitting a request.

Finalise Pay Runs

Make sure that you finalise all pay runs with a date paid by 30th June, including any adjustment pay runs you have to create. If you lodge your finalisation event and then have to process adjustment pays, you will be required to lodge an amended finalisation event, so we strongly suggest you hold off on launching the finalisation process until you are 100% confident you have processed all pays for the financial year.

Important

The date the pay run is paid determines which financial year that pay run applies to. The finalisation event for the 2025/26 financial year will only include earnings, etc. from pay runs paid within that financial year. For example:

• Pay run period ending 29th June 2026, paid 30th June 2026; we will include in the 2025/26 financial year.

• Pay run period ending 29th June 2026, paid 1st July 2026; we will not include in the 2025/26 financial year. Instead this will be included in the 26/27 financial year.

If you want to include every day worked within the financial year, you might have to split a pay run. For example, a weekly pay run for a period ending 2nd July 2026, paid 3rd July 2026. Create a pay run as normal and set the pay period ending 30th June 2026, making sure you stipulate the date paid to be 30th June.

You will then need to adjust the employee's hours to reflect the hours worked for the 26th to 30th June and then complete the pay run. Then create another pay run for the period ending 2nd July 2026 and adjust the employee's hours to reflect the hours worked for the 1st and 2nd. Then complete the pay run using the normal date paid, being 3rd July 2026. 

Lodging your finalisation event 

Before lodging your finalisation event, reconcile your financial year data. Refer to the End of Year Reconciliation article for instructions on how to do this process.

Lodging your finalisation event instructions

Once you have completed the steps above, you will be ready to create the end-of financial year finalisation event. There are two ways to create a finalisation event. They are:

• Using the STP EOFY Wizard; or

• Via an update event.

Either option can fulfil your end-of-year processing obligations. However, we have specifically built the STP EOFY Wizard to simplify the process. The STP EOFY Wizard provides more functionality over an update event, including:

• Send notification emails from the platform once the finalisation event is successfully lodged:

• The option for processing an event encompassing all pay schedules, as opposed to creating an event for each pay schedule. It restricted this functionality to businesses with less than 2000 active employees; and>

• Access the amended finalisation event wizard if further finalisation events are required.

You need to make a finalisation declaration by 14th July, however; it is important that you finalise your employees' data by 14th July if you can, and let your employees know when you have by sending notifications, so they can lodge their income tax returns.

Important

Employees will only be available via the employee's myGov account.

Finalising Closely Held Employees

From 1st July 2021, businesses were required to report closely held employees (payees) via STP. It will include closely held payees reported quarterly in a separate finalisation event at the end of the financial year. Closely held employees reported on a per pay run basis are automatically included in the standard finalisation event for arm's length employees.

Preparation for FY 2025/2026

There are several considerations for the new financial year.

Tax table updates (information only)

The tax tables for the new financial year are automatically loaded. Please note that any pay runs with a date paid of 1/7/2026 or later will apply the FY2026/2027 tax tables automatically. 

Processing super

If you want super contributions to be included in the 2025/26 financial year for tax reasons, the contributions need to reach the super funds by 30th June 2026. To meet this deadline and if you are using our automated super payments functionality, i.e. Beam, your super batch will need to be successfully uploaded/paid by 3.30pm AEST on 23rd June 2026. 

If you have pay runs scheduled for payment between 23rd and 30th June, you can always create these pay runs in advance by the 23rd June, using the usual period end and paid dates, finalise the pay run and then create your super batch for the period up to 30th June 2026.

It will allow you to include the super amounts before the deadline without the need of paying employees in advance. i.e., you will not need to upload the ABA file to the bank until the actual scheduled paid date of the pay run. If you are using another clearing house to process super payments, make sure you liaise directly with the clearing house to confirm their deadlines.

Award Updates

For customers using our pre-built modern awards, it will publish updated versions of these award packages by the effective increase date. 

ATO vehicle allowance rates update

The ATO-approved vehicle allowance rates for 2025-26 are 88c per kilometre. Please refer to the ATO website for further information, however, this may be subject to change. If your business has set its own vehicle allowance rates, you will need to make sure you are not paying less than the ATO-approved rate.