Some Background
To support the annual Payment Summary process, in addition to having a Financial Year, MYOB® also has a Payroll Year.

A Payroll transaction can only be entered when the Payment Date is in the current Payroll Year.

The current Payroll Year can be found under Setup, General Payroll Information.
The current Financial Year can be found under Setup, Company Information.

Everytime payroll is processed, in addition to recording the transaction in the various accounts such as Dr Wages and Cr Bank Account for Profit and Loss purposes, MYOB® keeps a cummulative total for each employee in a Payroll History table. The Payroll History table tracks gross, PAYG, allowances etc for the purpose of generating the Payment Summaries at the end of the year, as well as YTD amounts for payslips.

End of Year
Around 30 June can be a very busy time for employers. Payment Summaries are to be provided to all employees by 14 July and the annual PAYG report is to be sent to the ATO by 14 Aug. However the employees also need to be paid, usually in the first week of July. This means tax tables need to be updated and because payroll can only be processed for the current Payroll Year, in order to process payroll in July, you must start a new Payroll Year. MYOB's 2017 End of Payroll Year Guide can be accessed here.

Starting a New Payroll Year
To start a new payroll year, select from the menu bar, File, Start a New Year, then Start a New Payroll Year. There are several reminders to ensure you have a backup copy. Why? This is because when you Start a New Payroll Year, all of the Payroll History table is cleared to zero for each employee. This is to ensure the Payment Summary for the new Payroll Year will be correct.

MYOB® was designed so that after the last payroll for the financial year has been processed, the employer would immediately do a bank reconciliation to 30 June, reconcile PAYG to BAS/IAS, run the Payment Summary process to generate both the Payment Summaries and the Annual PAYG report, and then Start a New Payroll Year. All this before the first payroll for the new financial year - for some employers this is a little unrealistic.

Many employers need to process payroll in July well before they have had a chance to check everything, reconcile payroll and complete the Payment Summary process. They therefore create a backup, Start a New Payroll Year and load new tax tables, to enable them to process July payroll. They use the backup file to later finalise the payroll for the financial year just ended and generate the Payment Summaries and Annual PAYG Report (EMPDUPE file).

Adjustments to Payroll
While reconciling your bank account, checking your BAS/IAS, or generating Payment Summaries, you may find that there was an error in payroll. This can create a real problem.

Example 1
You have rolled forward to the 2014 Payroll Year in order to process payroll. Before doing so you created a backup of your .myo file that you called Payroll2013.myo. While doing a bank reconciliation to 30 June 2013 in your current company file, you find a payroll transaction for one employee was processed twice. This error will not only affect the profit and loss statement and the Balance Sheet, it will also mean the Payroll History in your Payroll2013.myo file will be incorrect.

It is important that all adjustments are made in both the current company file as well as the one you intend to use to generate the Payment Summaries (Payroll2013.myo). In your current company file, you would simply delete or reverse the duplicated payroll transaction. This will fix the Wages account, the Bank Account and the PAYG Withholding Account. It will not affect the Payroll History for this employee, as the adjustment relates to a prior Payroll Year.

In your Payroll2013.myo file, you would also need to delete or reverse the duplicated payroll transaction. In this file the Payroll Year is still set to 2013, so the deleted transaction will adjust the employee's cummulative totals for Payment Summary purposes in the Payroll History table.

Example 2
You have rolled forward to the 2014 Payroll Year in order to process payroll. Before doing so you created a backup of your .myo file that you called Payroll2013.myo. While preparing to generate Payment Summaries using Payroll2013.myo, you find an employee was underpaid $200 as her hours were incorrectly entered. This error will not only affect the profit and loss statement and the Balance Sheet, it will also mean the Payroll History in this file will be incorrect.

As per earlier example, it is important that both the Payroll2013.myo file and the current company file are updated. In your Payroll2013.myo file, you could either delete/reverse the original payroll transaction and re-enter using correct figures, or process an additional payroll transaction for the $200 underpaid. (If you process an additional transaction however, you will need to manually recalculate the PAYG applicable). Once processed, the Payroll History table will be updated and the Payment Summary generated will be correct.

In your current company file, you would need to process a transaction what will correct the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet accounts for the 2013 Financial Year without affecting the Payroll History for the 2014 Payroll Year. This adjusting transaction cannot be processed using Payroll. You can either use a Spend Money or a General Journal transaction.

Can the Start a New Payroll Year Process Be Reversed?
The short answer is YES. The process however is not simple.

You would be surprised how many times someone is looking for a way to go back to the earlier Payroll Year. Either they did not make a backup before rolling over, or they need to change a payroll transaction for the previous Payroll Year.

We at FGHTables can change your Payroll Year back, as well as re-construct the Payroll History table of the prior year. Send us your file via email or contact us for uploading instructions if its too big to email. We will change the payroll Year back and send the file back to you, enabling you to generate (or re-generate Payment Summaries). There is a fee for this service.

Amended Records
If you need to provide amended Payment Summaries or lodge an amended Annual PAYG Report, you will soon find neither of these functions are supported by MYOB®. The guys at www.namich.com.au have a product called EMPDUPE Maker which can generate amended Payment Summaries and allow you to lodge an amended Annual PAYG Report electronically. Their product can also upgrade non-compliant Payment Summaries and EMPDUPE files to compliant. See their website for further information.