A big year for practice management software.
As accountants, bookkeepers, tax agents and payroll specialists will know, standard business reporting (SBR) is a standard approach to online or digital record keeping and lodgment that is built into accounting software.
SBR acts as an electronic postbox in that the information to government only has to be provided once and will then be distributed through the SBR portal to the various government agencies requiring it.
SBR extracts information that has been recorded in business/accounting software and prefills this into the relevant government report. The report can then be checked for accuracy and submitted directly and securely to government without the need to log into a separate portal.
Compared to other ways of lodging government reports, SBR can reduce preparation and submission time to a matter of seconds. The ATO has started to refer to SBR as “practitioner lodgment service” (PLS), although this is basically an improved version of SBR. (Anecdotally, some even refer to this as “SBR2”.)
Software providers have been progressively transitioning to match the requirements of the new PLS service, although the incumbent “electronic lodgment service” (ELS) will remain available for 2015-16 year returns until March 31, 2017. By then, the ATO says all software providers will need to have transitioned their clients to PLS.
The expectation for this Tax Time from many software providers is that practitioners are still going to use ELS. Ian Rundle, tax software manager at Sage HandiSoft, says he expects this to be a common scenario. “ELS is still there and for many/most this will still be their preferred method and also the fallback option for those that lodge via SBR,” he says.
Rundle says Sage has been actively engaging in trialling the latest software offerings. “Once the product is ready, we get a client to lodge real returns to the live gateways,” Rundle says. “The ATO tracks them through their systems to ensure all is well, which is a process they call ‘product verification testing’.”
“We continue to be in regular conversations with the ATO regarding the performance of the SBR system and believe they are well prepared for the increase in volume during Tax Time 2016,” he adds.
Rundle says Sage has “received whitelisting” for the following 2015-16 forms and their sub-schedules:
Individual (IITR)Partnership (PTR)Trust (TRT)Company (CTR)Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSFAR)
Sage’s latest software, HandiTax 2016, will have the same forms registered, and is being released progressively in the lead up to June 30. Rundle points out that users currently running Sage HandiSoft will have received release notes that SBR is going online from July 1.
“Feedback from clients has been positive, with some jumping in and lodging immediately,” Rundle says. “Others have been testing the process with more caution.” Sage has found that so far the lodgment numbers have been small, but expects numbers to ramp up in the coming weeks.
#[practice management], [sbr], [tax time]
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