Payday Filing Reconciliations / Issues

Similar to Pay Runs / payroll, reconciling Payday files is not a service that the Support Team offers. We have compiled the below information guide based on situations we have seen to help clients understand when something they are seeing is legitimate, or an error which needs correcting. 

If you are unable to successfully reconcile your payday files then the Support Team can potentially attempt this on your behalf. However, as this is not a service we specifically provide, the speed at which we can complete this type of request is dependent on both the complexity and resources available to us at the time. If you would like us to proceed on your behalf then please be aware that this is billed hourly at our standard consulting rate.

Important Note: due in part to the below reasons, the advice we have received from the IRD is for clients to pay what is shown on the IR345 - not what is displayed on their myIR site as the balance owed for the reporting period.

Possible reasons for discrepancies:

Reversal / adjustment pay packets relating to periods prior to your company going live with payday filing.

• These adjustments are not included in the Employee Information Amendment (EIA) file. You will need to file a manual IR344 form to record this information as you did before payday filing came into effect.
• If a reversal / adjustment is from a period after the payday filing migration, the adjustment amount will show up in the EIA file. Note that uploading these files to the IRD is not sufficient. Due to current limitations with IRD software you must also report these corrections to IRD by phone or email. Uploading amendment files does not mean IRD will recognise the figures, which would result in a discrepancy between assessment and what has been paid to IRD according to DataPay reports.

The summary figure in myIR is dynamic

• The dynamic summary value seen in myIR will be updated whenever adjustments are made as part of the pay run which was finalised and has had payday files submitted. So, if you are trying to reconcile with the summary figure in myIR with the Payday file or IR345 it would most likely have discrepancy (which matches with the total amount of adjustments).

myIR Display Issue

• Currently there is a known issue with the IRD site where in rare situations duplicate files are loaded. IRD is currently looking to resolve the issue, however if you are seeing figures doubled, then it's safe to suspect this is a display issue. This can be confirmed by the IRD.

Possible Issues you may encounter / useful information:

Employee Details file for Self File clients

• If you receive an error message saying that an employee is missing the Country Code, this is due to there being no email address or phone number in the file.
• To get around this you will need to edit the file and add in a Country Code for that employee. Open the file in NotePad (or similar text editor) and enter    NZL    into the 21st column (i.e. after the 20th comma). Save the changes and re upload the file.
• Note: Do not open and edit the file in Excel - this will cause formatting issues
• To prevent this from reoccurring in future pay runs you can enter an email address against the employee. DataPay does not submit phone numbers to the IRD at this stage.
• Note: the IRD has made the requirement to have either Country Code or an Email Address for each employee only applicable to Self File clients. If you have a number of employees without email addresses you may wish to consider switching to our Auto File service.

If you have employees you do not wish to Payday file for

• Any employees set up with an IRD number of 111-111-111 will be excluded from Payday Filing. This should only be used in rare situations.
• All other employees will be included and sent to the IRD - this includes any employees currently using 000-000-000 for an IRD number.

Employees with the WT Tax Code

• Payments made in DataPay with the WT tax code, or employees that have the WT tax code will appear on payday files.  If the employee receives both normal payments as well as withholding payments, they will appear on two lines, one with their normal tax code, and one with the WT tax code. On filing it will take WT payments from total amount payable.

Reconciling your Payday files with IR345 Report

Our PAYE Intermediary team provide a report for non-PAYEI clients to assist with reconciling and understanding differences seen in their Payday files. This report is included in the set of files you receive via email from us from April 2020 onward. This is only applicable to clients who are setup as "AutoFile + Email".

Attached below is a PDF to assist you in interpreting the reconciliation report.