How to Lodge an STP Update Event (2025)

An Update Event is a type of STP submission used to report changes to an employee’s Year-to-Date (YTD) payroll data that has already been sent to the ATO.   The  Update Event includes both active and terminated employees (terminated during the current financial year), and are created per Pay Schedule.

When is it used?

An Update Event is required when:

• • Correcting or amending already lodged Earnings, PAYG, Super etc

  • Also required to capture amendments made to payroll settings.
    Example: STP Classification corrections made to Pay Categories etc.

  • Transferring payroll data between software systems (Adding or correcting Opening Balances).

  • Last step in EOFY reconciliation prior to creating an end of year Finalisation Event. 

Creating an Update Event 

Go to Management > Reporting > Payroll > Single Touch Payroll.
Select "Create Update Event" on the top right hand side of the page. 

On the next page, select the Pay Schedule, then Create.

A list of all employees attached to that pay schedule will appear on the screen along with their year to date details: 

A few things to point out when an update event is generated:

1. You can filter your view by searching for a specific employee or by employing entity (if you have more than one employing entity set up in the business). Please note however that when the event is lodged it will lodge for ALL employees in that pay schedule; that is, the filtering does not filter the data lodged with the ATO.
2. Employees who have been employed by more than one employing entity during the financial year will have a row of data per employing entity.
3. Employees who have changed between Income Types WHM (Working Holiday Maker) and other Income Types the financial year will have a row of data per Income Type.  
4. Terminated employees will still appear in the event with the "Is Final" checkbox automatically ticked - refer to Dannielle Maher above as an example.

Can I edit any information in an Update Event?

There are only 2 items that can be edited in an update event:

1. Reportable Fringe Benefits Amount (RFBA): You can choose to report employee RFBA on an ongoing basis or at the end of the financial year.
   To add RFB amounts , select "Enter RFB amounts" from the Actions menu on the top right hand side of the page.
   
   To edit a RFB amount, again select "Enter RFB amounts" from the Actions menu, then override figure already entered.  
2. Is Final: If an employee has terminated employment and a termination pay has been processed, the "Is Final" checkbox will be ticked automatically. If the employee has not been terminated within a pay run and there will be no further payments for that employee in the financial year, you can tick the "Is Final" checkbox. This will indicate to the ATO that no further payments for this employee will be made. If an employee is reinstated and the same employee payroll ID is used, you will need to untick the "Is Final" checkbox.

Update Event Actions

You will notice there is "Actions" button on the right hand side of the the table, where you can undertake the following actions:

• Mark all as final: If no further employee payments are to be made during the financial year, the pay event can be marked as final. When an employer reports the finalisation declaration during the financial year, this replaces the employer’s obligation to provide the employee with a part year payment summary. Making this declaration will update the employee’s MyGov display to show the STP information from the employer is final for the financial year. Pre-fill information will not be available until after 30 June. When clicking on "Mark all as final", the below popup will appear. Upon clicking "Accept", the "Is Final" checkbox will be automatically ticked for all employees in the pay event. If this was selected in error you can cancel the finalisation by clicking on Actions > Mark all as not final. N.B. Employees who were previously marked as "Is Final" (because of a termination pay) will remain marked as "Is Final".
• Mark all as not final: This action will only appear if there are employees in the event marked as "Is Final". Selecting this option will remove the checkbox from those employees, thereby denoting that the employees will still be receiving payments in that financial year.
• Add Employee: This action allows you to add employees missing from the update event. You may need to create an update event to rectify the issue of having incorrectly marked all employees as "Is Final" in a previous event. In this instance, when you click on "Add Employee" you will be given the option of adding all employees previously marked as final. Alternatively, you can select employees one at a time. N.B: Employees that have been excluded because of validation issues can will only allow you to add them if the validation issue has been rectified.
• Refresh Data: This action can be used to refresh the payroll data contained in the update event. For example, if you created and finalised a pay run to fix employee payroll data and already have an update event created, you would then go back to the update event and refresh the data to ensure it up to date with actual payroll figures. 
• Enter RFB amounts: This action allows you to enter Reportable Fringe Benefit amounts.

Lodging an Update Event

To lodge an update event, click on "Lodge with ATO".

A lodgement declaration will appear in a popup that needs to be completed before the lodgement is complete. 

Tick the declaration checkbox and then click on "Lodge Update Event". The lodgement is then queued for ATO submission.

Deleting an Update Event

Update events can only be deleted if they have not yet been lodged with the ATO. To delete an update event, simply click on the "Delete Update Event" button. A confirmation popup will appear:

To confirm, click on "Delete". The event will be removed from the Single Touch Payroll reports screen.

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