Computer Solutions in the greater brisbane area.
Business owners should be thinking about SBR
Something small business owners should know about, is the federal governments initiative called “Standard Business Reporting”. Turns out this plan was announced by the Howard government all the way back in 2006, and like so many government ideas, it’s taken quite a while for it to move foward;
The basics of the idea is to simplify and standardise the communications businesses have with government, so that business owners don’t end up reporting the same information multiple times to multiple government entities, improve and simply the way business owners authenticate and encrypt their communications with government, and the big ticket item, moving the communication into the software businesses already use, even going so far as to make the reporting just a simple by product of natural business processes.
Pretty loft ideals. Considering how badly these types of upgrades can go, such as the Customs ICS upgrades that have been causing headaches for years (as far back as 2005 that I could quickly find via google), one could be forgiven for thinking this will turn out to be a giant headache for business owners. However, if we assume that after 4 years of planning and development it will work as intended, here’s what we can look foward to;
Business software such as MYOB will be able to put together the information for goverment forms, and even submit the data directly to the government agency. One imagines the first roll out will include such tedious things as BAS and IAS statements, as well as PAYG summaries at the end of the year (for those businesses that employ staff). What would really help small business owners would be the inclusion of reporting payroll information to Centrelink and the Child Support Agency.
MYOB (the software we use to keep the books here at Shift Computer Solutions) has not implemented SBR, despite launching new versions of MYOB only last month. SBR is being launched on 1st July, and we hope that MYOB will release a point update then to allow submissions via SBR.
Another big ticket item is simplifying the way businesses authenticate themselves when they want to transmit data to government agencies. Called AUSkey, the new system will eventually be a single sign on for ALL government agencies, but initially, will replace the complex digital certificate system currently used by the ATO. Because of this, we expect nearly all small business owners to sign up for AUSkey immediately, as the ATO represents the biggest reporting burden. Despite all these changes being in the works for years already, however, ASIC and other agencies are not expected to be on board for another two years.
One great bit of news; Provided you use AUSkey at least once a year, it will never expire. Anyone who has had ATO digital certificates expire will know how wonderful this news is!
It is unclear exactly what AUSkey really is, but from what has been published so far, it seems it will be a software solution, which you install on your computer, or a USB stick or even on your business server. We will do a follow up article after AUSkey is launched to provide more details. The ATO is saying AUSkey will be available from the 27th April, so we don’t have long to wait.
Further Reading;
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MYOB Consultant
April 21, 2010
Yes it will be interesting to see what SBR / AUSKey brings though I doubt it will be launched on time!