Small businesses in Australia now have access to reporting capability that organisations and governments across the globe aspire to. Standard Business Reporting, or SBR as it is better known particularly in accounting circles, is the reporting technology designed in Australia to reduce the red tape burden on businesses.
Quite simply, before SBR, financial and other types of information sent to government agencies has taken time to be processed causing businesses to have to wait, sometime months, for a response. This has now changed.
By creating a standard for how business information is compiled and sent to government agencies, the speed and processing time of key forms can be vastly improved. This new reporting framework, SBR, is a system of tagging data at the business end in a way the government agencies can quickly read and assess.
To make this happen, the Australian Government’s SBR team has worked with software developers to encourage their involvement in developing SBR-enabled applications for reporting on a range of government requirements, such as BAS.
Software developers are able to use the reporting framework prepared by the government to develop applications for submitting key government forms that integrate with the business’ financial management software. For example, Reckon has just released the Reckon GovConnect Activity Statement lodgement application with the newly released QuickBooks software, that will make it quick and easy for users to submit BAS.
So now it is possible to use an application that reads the financial data from within your accounting software and delivers it to the relevant government agency. In other words, an SBR-enabled application translates your information into a language the government agency systems instantly understand and analyse; meaning you get immediate validation and quick responses.
I urge you to try out an SBR-enabled application. I expect that once Australian businesses of all sizes experience the faster processing time and more effective reporting they’ll embrace this change, just as countries throughout the world are expected to.
