Payroll, PAYG and Superannuation transactions.
Budgets GetReal does not currently contain a payroll module. A payroll interface is under review for future release.
However, Budgets GetReal can help you by:
- Reconciling all payments to employees , employee superannuation, tax and other payments.
- Provide most of the information for a Group certificate.
- Quickly pay PAYG.
- Allow you easily see tax and superannuation amounts outstanding.
- Handle payments to multiple super funds.
- Handle reimbursements and other expenses paid to employees i.e. all payments to or on behalf of an employee.
- You can simply use it in conjunction with manual bookkeeping.
As an employer, you are required to keep detailed employee records for up to seven years, depending on the jurisdiction, and provide pay slips recording various details.
A manual system or a simple computerized payroll system may serve your needs. Most such payroll systems don’t have integrated accounting , but may have import facilities to an accounting program.
The following procedures will assist small businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
Setting up for Payroll, PAYG tax and Superannuation type transactions.
The basis of the Budgets Get Real system is importing and categorising your bank transactions.
Whilst your bank account will show the net pay paid to an employee every week or fortnight, you also have to account for the your tax and superannuation liabilities associated with that pay transaction.
Your accounts have to be setup to assist you making this easy, whilst tracking your future liabilities for cash flow purposes.
Use of other liability accounts.
Amounts that your business will have to pay in the future are best setup as Other Liability accounts.
PAYG TAX.
When you pay your employee, that is only the net salary with money still owing to the tax department.
Go to Set & Maintain> Accounts> Liabilities.
Under the create accounts section there are three types of liability accounts. You need Other Liabilities and create an account PAYG Withholding payable account. If you are paying GST, set up the Business Code as N-T.
Whilst you will remit only one combined amount to the tax office, at intervals of one month or quarterly, you will need to have all the separate tax details searchable for each individual employee.
The simplest way to do this is to setup a Name for each employee you have. e.g. Employee Kath M, Employee Mike R etc.
SUPERANNUATION.
In countries such as Australia, you are also obligated to pay superannuation on behalf of any employees.
This is also in addition to the net salary payable to the employee. For administrative simplicity, it is easiest for all payments to be into one fund, such as an industry fund. However, you have to have the flexibility to cater for multiple funds.
In paying your monthly or quarterly payment to the superannuation fund, you will have to designate how much is payable in respect of each individual employee.
You therefore need to create a further Other Liabilities account called Superannuation Payable with a Business Code of PAY, if GST is applicable.
You will also need a Superannuation expense category setup under the Expenses account of your business e.g. Business AB.
A sample salary transaction for Employee Kath M is shown.
It is already an obligation to provide the details of superannuation, as well as Gross salary as well as Tax withheld on each pay slip. If you record the superannuation amount also at this time, in Budgets GetReal you will save time when paying money to the superannuation fund.
For details of all information required for Pay Slips in Australia, go to www.workplaceauthority.gov.au
There are also separate state authorities, which may be relevant for state awards.
Searching Employee Related Transactions.
Setting up each employee with a separate Name account allows you to search for all transactions relevant to that employee.
From the Main menu bar> Transactions> Search > One Name will reveal all salary, tax and superannuation transactions for a given employee for a time period.
For Superannuation
You can Search for Superannuation Payable and then Group by Name to show relevant transactions for each employee or super fund involved.
The Screen below shows just one employee and super fund but the same system can cater for multiple employees and different fund
For PAYG Tax
For PAYG Tax the system is simpler since, there is only a single tax office.
You can similarly search for PAYG Withholding Payable and then Group by Name to show tax payable in respect of each employee.
On the Budgets Get Real Accounts Screen by scrolling down to Other Liabilities, you can see how much Tax and Superannuation you have to pay.
When you pay the Tax Office or the Super fund, the amount paid is automatically debited from the Other Liabilities Account.
