Thursday, 14 Feb 2019
Running a business in Sydney is not a walk in the park. It comprises working on a variety of job functions like management, organisation development, operations, production, supply chain, etc. Besides taking charge of all these responsibilities, managing the accounts and organising the books becomes equally pertinent. That is why you require professional bookkeeper in Sydney to ensure the timely filing of tax returns and streamlining or your financial statements.
When it comes to reporting requirements, you need to be prepared to fill up the Business Activity Statement (BAS) and pay the cash you owe. It is called an activity statement because it comprises much more than merely mentioning the tax figures. If you have a seasoned bookkeeper in Parramatta by your side, you can make the complicated process more straightforward for you.
If your business is registered for GST in Sydney, you are required to report your tax obligations and entitlements using a single compliance form which is known as the BAS. It ensures that every business in Sydney reports about its GST, Pay As You Go (PAYG) income tax instalment, PAYG tax withheld, Fringe Benefits Tax instalment, and other taxes.
A business has to lodge BAS monthly if its annual turnover is in excess of $20 million, while it is quarterly for those entities whose annual turnover is less than $20 million and annual PAYG withholding is less than $25,000. Bookkeepers in Sydney keep tab of all these figures and are proficient in preparing the statement without any errors.
One thing you need to bear in mind when you are preparing BAS yourself is that it is a time-consuming task and any inaccuracy in the numbers can lead to the slapping of penalties by the ATO. If you are wondering how to do it yourself, we can be of help. Our expert bookkeepers in Randwick have listed down four simple steps for completing the process. Let us have a look.
The due dates for the quarterly reporting fall on 28th of every October, February, April and July. The monthly reporting is on the 21st of every month. Thus you need to be ready with all the updated information at this time.
Leveraging accounting software in Sydney is a smart choice to maintain accurate records for the lodging of the BAS, or you could simply ask your bookkeeper in Chatswood to do the job for you. To systematise your documents, you need to reconcile your accounts with the bank statements which means that your accounting information is in sync with the bank statements.
You must have all the receipts for all the purchases and expenses, and they must be duly recorded in the paperwork done by the bookkeeper in Sydney. You need to have receipts and invoices for both business dealings and cash transactions in Chatswood, Randwick, Parramatta or wherever you are located in Sydney.
The Australian Taxation Office sends customised BAS forms to businesses and entities in Sydney through email or by post. Before you receive this form, you must record the transactions which are missing from the books but you have the receipts and invoices for them.
You will have to get the dates for these transactions, the total amount paid or received, GST, and other details to enter this information. On the other hand, if you have a bookkeeper in Randwick, you don’t have to worry about these errors or discrepancies as they are on top of all the incomings and outgoings and keep a check on everything.
These figures must be entered in whole dollars only. Do not round off the cents to the next dollar. Make sure that every invoice is entered only once. Your bookkeeper in Parramatta will know about these details and make no errors.
Every BAS form sent out in Sydney has a unique document identifier number, bar code, and the business’s PAYG instalment rate and FBT instalment. It comes with all the information about the time of lodging the statement and the period for covering each of the obligations.
You need to enter all the data accurately and run the statement from your accounting software. If you are doing it manually, then you need to add all the figures up to determine the due amount of GST for the tax period. You need to be precise and calculate correctly to avoid any mistakes. Thus it is recommended to double check whether you have entered the exact figures or not.
Your bookkeeper in Parramatta can help you in computing and estimating the numbers. Besides GST, you need to assess your PAYG, which is gauged as the tax withheld from the salary payments of the employees. It will entail analysing the payroll and entering the PAYG and the gross wages payment made to the workers in Randwick.
The other taxes on the form include the luxury car tax, wine equalisation tax and more. Fill these fields if they are applicable to your business in Chatswood.
You must take care that the sales and expenditures you are mentioning fall in the period for which you are lodging the BAS in Sydney. After you have entered all the information in the BAS form, you need to start revising your records and fill them with the new information.
You must retain all the tax invoices and GST records for at least five years. Make sure to create copies of the essential data. You can then proceed to lodge the BAS in Chatswood either online or through a BAS agent or send it by mail to the ATO office. You must pay the amount you owe within time. It is vital to lodge BAS on time even if you cannot make the payment on time to avoid penalty.
You can follow these steps to manually prepare the BAS and lodge it. However, given the significance of this document, it is advisable to hire a professional bookkeeper in Sydney to cover this task. They have the expertise and access to online tools which make the process smooth and effortless.
