Enter YTD Balances in your Portal

Overview

Year to date (YTD) balances are employee earnings that have been recorded and paid outside of the Astute Payroll system. This can happen if you move from another payroll system partway through the financial year.

There are two methods for entering YTD Balances in your portal: either manually on the employee profile, or using the YTD Importer. 

Configure Your System for YTD Balances

With payroll data reported via STP to the ATO, you will need to ensure that you configure your system with some important details about the previous system you were using, so that the ATO can identify and allocate any earnings that have already been reported in your old system, and prevent any duplication or overreporting of earnings. 

To do this, you'll need to provide a BMS ID in your Company Management tab, and set each user that you will enter a YTD Balance for with a Previous Payroll System ID. 

Important: the BMS ID and Previous Payroll System ID are required to ensure that your STP data is reported accurately. 

Enter YTD Balances on an Employee Profile

YTD Balances can be entered manually on an employee's profile from their YTD Balances tab. If you choose to use this method, you'll need to repeat the below process for each individual user.

1. Go to Users > Employees > select employee.
2. From the left column select More to expand your list of options, then click YTD Balances. 
3. Set the Financial Year from the drop down list. This is the financial year that the earnings you enter will be recorded under. 
4. Click + Add Pay Item.
5. Select the Pay Item from the drop down list. You can select from all the Pay Items that have been configured in your portal.
   Important: the Pay Items you use to record your YTD balances should have the exact STP Report Settings as the items you used in your old system, as this is how the ATO will classify the earnings. 
6. Enter the Starting Units and Starting Total, which are the values that you are bringing in from the previous system. 
7. Click the grey Save button for that Pay Item line.

This process will need to be repeated for each pay item that you need to record a YTD balance against. Each item will be listed in a separate line on the screen and can be edited if needed. 

Once you've entered all YTD Balances for the employee, click the blue Save button in the bottom right of the screen.

Current Units and Current Total

The Current Units and Current Total fields in the YTD Balances screen is a combination of the values that you have entered as your Starting Units and Starting Total, and any earnings that have been processed through your Astute portal within the financial year.

This means that the values in these columns won't necessarily match the values in the Starting Units and Starting Total columns. 

You cannot edit the Current Units and Current Total fields from the YTD Balances report. 

Enter YTD Balances with the YTD Importer

You can import the starting year to date balances into your portal using the YTD Importer. This is intended to be used during the initial portal configuration.

1. Go to Config > Payroll > YTD Importer.
2. Select the financial year that the YTD balances fall in.
3. Download the template to fill in the current YTD starting balances, entering the relevant data and ensuring that the headers and usernames aren’t altered. 
4. Click Choose File > select the file > Upload.
5. Review the data in the validation screen, the click Confirm if the data is correct. To return to the upload screen instead, click Back.

Generally, this importer is used during the implementation process with the guidance of an Astute team member. However, it is not locked and can be used at any time. We recommend contacting [e-mail] before attempting to import any of this data yourself though.