Topic: Australian BAS Report

Has anyone done anymore work on creating a report that can be used to assist with submitting an Australian Business Activity Statement (BAS)?

I would be happy to pay for a module or report that could handle this.

Re: Australian BAS Report

I was thinking about trying to create a generic tax report for FA that would create an Australian BAS, as well as an NZ GST or UK VAT report, and have the options of creating a journal to balance off the GST/VAT accounts and create a payment to the tax office. Please have a look at kwikpay.co.nz/download/bas.docx and let me know what you think.

Thanks

Re: Australian BAS Report

@AlastairR

For your info, I've been working on a way to enter 0-VAT transaction and it should be available in FA soon. So the 0-VAT problem (and box 7) should be sorted. I was thinking also doing a generic VAT report for the UK. It seems that once you have all the tax type configured, what you need for a generic VAT report is only to be able to specify a list of box (with a name) and which tax types to include in that box (net and/or tax amount) (the same amount can be in different box).

I was planning to work on it (in a couple of month) but it would be brilliant if someone could do it beforehand ;-)

/Elax

4 (edited by AlastairR 05/10/2013 04:00:47 am)

Re: Australian BAS Report

@Elax
I've made changes to FA for my own use to handle zero rate GST for NZ/Aus.

/reporting/rep107.php, line 158:  if ($tax_item['amount'] == 0 && $tax_item['rate'] != 0)
/sales/includes/db/sales/sales_invoice_db.inc, line 144 : if ($taxitem['Net'] != 0 || ($taxitem['rate'] == 0 && $taxitem['Value'] != 0)) {

I hope it is of use to you.

Re: Australian BAS Report

@AlastairR

Can we change that in the core without side-effects??

/Joe

Re: Australian BAS Report

I believe so, but you'd have to apply the same logic to the purchases as well. I don't use the purchases application so I had not looked at applying it there.  What I was trying to do was to make any sale linked to a zero tax rate to show in the tax reports so I could see the total of sales for which zero rate applied.

Re: Australian BAS Report

@elax

Have you considered this change in your edition, or did you solve it in another way?

Joe

Re: Australian BAS Report

@Joe

I think so. Normally, everything Item related should work because you can create a 0% VAT type and assign it to an item.
This 0% VAT type will appears in the tax report with the correct net amount.
itronic patch should allow also to 'tweak' the tax amount calculated on invoice.
The problem only occurs for payment or deposit. In my version you can enter the net amount corresponding to a 0% VAT transaction, so everything should work fine. This net amount will then show up in the tax report on the corresponding tax type.

/Elax

Re: Australian BAS Report

blackbird wrote:

Has anyone done anymore work on creating a report that can be used to assist with submitting an Australian Business Activity Statement (BAS)?

I would be happy to pay for a module or report that could handle this.

It's neither a "report" in the FrontAccounting sense nor a module in any sense of the word, but...

What I have done for for sales and tax reporting is create a small script to read data directly from the database and fill in the appropriate values in an XML file, which can then be sent to the tax office. Using the same data, it also creates a CSV file with a journal entry to balance the VAT accounts, which can be processed by the "Import Multiple Journal Entries" plugin. (Since I already use that to automatically import sales data from a web server via a daily cron job.)

Depending on your setup and requirements, you might be able to do something similar. The "programming" involved is quite trivial.

Having said that, I would not want to be seen to discourage AlastairR or elax from their work on a more generic module. Keep it up.

Re: Australian BAS Report

I fiddled around with GnuCash for a couple of years but eventually found it too deficient (no inventory, no credit note, etc.) AND it somehow ate my database (I know, I know, I should have backed up). Looked at TurboCash (too buggy according to former Australian support consultant), SQL Ledger and LedgerSMB (too difficult technically to install and setup for this liddle black duck), and AdminSoft (probably okay but has a scary, amateurish GUI).

Finally, Nirvana! FrontAccounting is professional, has a great GUI, and is way overcapable for my tiny hobby retail and service business. Would really love the ability to select a zero percent GST category that appears on invoices, reports, etc., and from that a BAS report.

In GnuCash I had these Liability accounts:

  • GST Receipts (from sales)

  • GST Paid (from purchases)

  • GST Adjustments

  • GST Liability

GST Receipts was posted automatically from invoices, and GST Paid from bills received. GST Adjustments was a journal transaction. GST Liability was posted by clearing the first three, and then itself cleared when payment was made to the Australian Taxation Office.

In FrontAccounting I have to use some dummy accounts to allow 0% tax "rates" to be selected from GST Exempt, GST No Tax (not reported), and GST Input Taxed. The BAS form requires you to report both GST taxed and untaxed sales and purchases, so I hope someone can come up with a lovely one-click way of generating the required report. And not doubt that fundamental processing is similar for Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand GST sales tax; and UK and European VAT.

In Sandpit Co. I may even experiment with modifications of AlastairR's tweaks, but that won't cut it for purchases. So can some angel with skills and experience way beyond mine please, please, please develop a GST/BAS module!

Regards,
Hedley

P.S. Having worked at MYOB as in the final 6 years of my career as a technical writer of user documentation, I know enough of coding and bookkeeping in general to be a danger to humanity, but nought about SQL, MySQL, and PHP in particular.

Re: Australian BAS Report

Just noticed that another person has asked for a UK VAT Cash Reporting fix for the VAT 100 form. Australia allows monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting, and both accrual and cash reporting. Could all this be taken into account in a BAS module, please? @Joe, could you perhaps get the parties who are working on solutions to VAT and GST to collaborate? The two systems are so similar that it must be possible to produce a single solution, with only the reports having to be custom.

Re: Australian BAS Report

Regarding the built-in Tax Report, FA is supporting all the tax types, including 0% tax on the report. The outputs and inputs are also given as well all the sales/purchases transactions in the selected period.

In the Company Setup you can set how many months shouldbe included in the report and in which months the report should end.
These info will be used as default date selectors when doing the Tax Report.

Due to that almost all countries has its own way of tax reporting, you will have to create a custome report to support your needs.
But you have all the information that is needed in the built-in report.

/Joe