What Is EI Prepopulation And How Do I Use It?

EI Prepopulation lets Lightning Payroll ask Inland Revenue for a pre-filled Employment Information draft before you submit payday filing. Inland Revenue returns their version of what the employment data should look like, which you can review and then use as the basis for your filing.

This feature is available in the desktop app only.

What you need before starting

• Your company must be set up as a New Zealand company in Lightning Payroll.
• Your employer IRD number must be saved in your company settings.
• You need an active Inland Revenue OAuth connection. If you have not connected yet, see How Do I Connect Lightning Payroll To Inland Revenue For Payday Filing?

Opening the wizard

From the Pays area, open the pay run action menu and select Prepopulate EI Draft. The wizard opens to the first page.

Page 1 ÔÇö Returns Prepop Start

This page collects the details Lightning Payroll will send to Inland Revenue.

1. Check the Employer IRD Number shown at the top. This is read from your company settings and cannot be edited here.
2. The Account Type is pre-set to EMP and cannot be changed.
3. If you are filing on behalf of another employer as an intermediary, tick Submit As Intermediary and enter your own IRD number in the Intermediary IRD Number field that appears.
4. Set the Pay Day Date, Period Start, and Period End to match the pay period you want Inland Revenue to prepopulate.
5. Choose the correct Pay Frequency from the dropdown.
6. In the employee list, select the employees to include. Each employee must have an IRD number recorded ÔÇö employees without one are shown with a Missing IRD note.
7. If you have not connected to Inland Revenue yet, click Connect to IRD. Your browser will open for you to sign in to myIR. Once the browser confirms the token was saved, return to Lightning Payroll and click Check for token.
8. Once connected, click Next (or the run button) to request the prepopulated draft from Inland Revenue.

Page 2 ÔÇö Review Prepopulated Draft

After the request completes, the second page shows what Inland Revenue returned.

• Validation / status messages ÔÇö any warnings or errors returned by Inland Revenue.
• Employees returned from IRD ÔÇö the list of employees included in the response, with their IRD numbers, tax codes, and employment dates.
• Full response (JSON) ÔÇö the raw Inland Revenue response for reference.
• Prepopulated EI draft (raw) ÔÇö the draft Employment Information payload returned by Inland Revenue.

From this page you can:

• Click Print Prepop Report to generate a printable summary of the prepopulated data, including totals, employee details, and any validation messages.
• Click Use this draft to File to carry this draft forward into the standard Employment Information filing flow.

If prepopulation does not complete

• Check that at least one selected employee has an IRD number. Employees without an IRD number cannot be included.
• Make sure the IRD connection is active ÔÇö click Check for token and reconnect via Connect to IRD if needed.
• Confirm that the Pay Day Date, Period Start, Period End, and Pay Frequency fields are all filled in before proceeding.

For help connecting to Inland Revenue, see How Do I Connect Lightning Payroll To Inland Revenue For Payday Filing?. To submit Employment Information after reviewing the prepopulated draft, see How Do I Use The Payday Filing Mailbox And Retrieve A Return?