Hi ShowTime, 

Thank you for reaching out and welcome to our community!

There are a few options when changing payroll systems during the financial year:

Option 1

You have been reporting STP from QuickBooks Online/KeyPay, want to migrate YTD figures, and uses the original/previous BMS ID to report STP going forward. The process here will be:

• Change the BMS ID in this payroll system to that of the previous payroll system's BMS ID;
• Copy over the employees' payroll ID used in the previous payroll system to the STP Payroll ID field in this system. If you do not have access to the employees' payroll ID, you can ask the employee to access their MyGov account and follow these steps:
  1. Click on "employment"
  2. Click on "income statements"
  3. Click on the dropdown arrow
  4. Retrieve the "employee number" from there; 
• Import YTD figures into this payroll system using the opening balances feature;
• Lodge an update event to report the YTD totals imported. Alternatively, you can just wait to lodge your first pay event as this will include the imported YTD totals for the employees within that pay run.

Option 2

You have been reporting STP from QuickBooks Online/KeyPay and wants to migrate YTD figures using the new BMS ID -

• Import YTD figures (for both active and terminated employees) from your old payroll into the new payroll software using the opening balances feature (NB. nothing to do with STP but Leave balances can also be transferred this way if you like)
• zero out the employee YTD values from the old BMS ID (previous payroll software) and then report this via an update event in the old system where you also tick the box "Mark as final" for each employee (this will notify the ATO that there will be no further payments for these employees from the old BMS ID)
• You can do an update event to report the YTD totals imported OR just continue to create/lodge pay events as normal as the first pay event will include (and update) the YTD totals anyway.  NB. if there are any employees in your payroll account that have been terminated in the current financial year you will definitely need to lodge an update event to lodge their YTD data, because they won't show up in any "current" pay events you lodge using this payroll system.

Option 3

You have been reporting STP from QuickBooks Online/KeyPay, and do not want to migrate YTD figures, but wants to use the new BMS ID -

• Use the ‘Mark as final’ option for all employees when lodging the last pay event in the previous system using the original BMS ID (this will notify the ATO that there will be no further payments for these employees from the old BMS ID)
• Do NOT import YTD earnings to the new system (you may need to import YTD figures for leave balances)
• There is no need for an update event in the new system, you can just start reporting STP from the first pay run (which will be the next consecutive pay period after the last one that was reported in the old system)

Thank you and please let us know if you require any additional assistance.