This is insane.

Our pay day is Tuesday and I typically work in a voluntary capacity on Wednesdays. Almost every payrun is finalised after the pay date.

This means that:

1) I'll have to create and submit an update event for every pay run (more work)

2) I'll have a lot for pay runs that show the STP not submitted.

or finalise the pay run a week before the pay date.

From the wording, Intuit have discussed and implemented this "best practice" (not a requirement) with the ATO then expect us poor users to suck it up, or go argue individually with the ATO.

At the very least, you now need to add an option in the Update Event to be able to flag pay runs a Submitted to the ATO. But please undo this "best practice" devised by people who don't work in the real world.