Paying the S34 Closedown Payment

Step 1: Identify your employees

There are two groups of employees who may need to be paid 8% of their gross earnings as at the nominated closedown date i.e. receive a S34 Closedown Payment.

Custom Report CUSTOM20868 can be used to identify the employees who may require this payment. Before running the report, open the pay run containing the nominated closedown date and execute the pay packets. If you do not have access to this report, please contact the Support Team to request access.

Employees who have been employed for less than 12 months

Employees who have been employed for less than 12 months (as at the nominated closedown date).

If a company has nominated an annual closedown date (company anniversary date) after an employee receives their initial closedown payment, they will just receive a regular entitlement on the company anniversary date going forward.

Employees who have been employed for more than 12 months, with no entitlement balance

Employees who have been employed for more than 12 months, but do not have an entitlement balance at the nominated closedown date (company anniversary date). This should only occur if the employee is not yet using the company anniversary date.

These employees require careful treatment. See Closedown periods for existing employees for more information.

Step 2: Adding the S34 Closedown Payment to a pay packet

Add the S34 Closedown Payment component to their pay packet, spanning from the start of the pay period (Start Date) to the day before the Company Annual Leave Anniversary Date (End Date).

In the example below, the start of the pay period is 24 November 2020. The Company Annual Leave Anniversary Date is 1 December 2020, so the End Date is set to the day before on 30 November 2020.

The value of the closedown payment is automatically calculated.

If you haven’t added the S34 Closedown Payment component for the valid dates, the closedown payment will not be calculated, and you’ll receive a pay packet warning about this.

Once the S34 Closedown Payment has been applied, the employee will receive 8% of their gross earnings as at the Company Annual Leave Anniversary Date, less the value of any annual leave taken in advance. Accordingly, they will have a zero current balance on their Leave Summary screen at the end of the period.

Adding the S34 Closedown Payment to multiple pay packets

If you are adding the S34 Closedown Payment for multiple employees, you may wish to do this via a
timesheet:

1. Create a custom timesheet with S34 Closedown Payment.

2. When you fill in the timesheet, enter a 1 under S34 Closedown Payment, and the dates as explained above.

If you tick the three boxes highlighted in red above, they will auto-fill the column for the rest of the employees.

When S34 Closedown Payment has already been paid and more payments need to be included

If a S34 Closedown Payment has already been paid and more payments need to be included in the closedown calculation, a reversal and adjustment is required. The extra payments should be added to the adjustment pay packet to have the closedown payment recalculated.

You should not have multiple Closedown Payments for an employee for the same pay period.