End of Financial Year Preparation – Key Dates to Know

tax preparationHere we go again…another financial year end. Here are some important dates to help you manage your way through the minefield of payroll and financial year end.
 

During May

Your accountant should have a look at your financial data, to help with any tax planning strategies for year end.

If you are using MYOB AccountRight Live, MYOB Essentials, Xero or Quickbooks Online (QBO), your accountant can be given access to your data, to have a look at your online file with no disruption to your day to day operations.

If you are using Classic or desktop version of software like MYOB (version 19 or earlier), then you need to do a backup and send the file to your accountant.
 

The Last Week of June

You should pay superannuation liability if you want to claim that payment as an expense in the 2015-2016 financial year.

Use your MYOB/Xero/QBO superannuation reports and look at the balance in your superannuation liability account to determine how much should be paid. Keep in mind too, that the ATO has concessional contributions caps for maximum allowable for the 2015-2016, including salary sacrifice and employer contributions. You should check your accounting software payroll super reports to see if any employee is likely to exceed the concessional contributions caps for the year, before you make your final superannuation payment for the financial year.
 

Last Week of June

If you carry stock, you should perform a stock take.

Use your Accounting Software – Count Stock feature to enter the stock take – variances should be coded to a Cost of Sales account. Before carrying out your stock take, run your Inventory Reconciliation report and check that it is balanced. Run the same report after the stock take. File these reports.
 

On 30th June

Take a backup of your file at close of business. This is often useful if your business has an accounting audit later in the year.
 

By 14th July

Your employees should be provided with their Payment Summaries.

After following the MYOB End of Payroll Year guide, use the MYOB Print Payment Summary tool to prepare the payment summaries and the empdupe file for electronic submission to the ATO.

Don’t submit the empdupe file yet.

Employees have a month to come back to query their Payment Summaries with you.
 

By 21st July

Businesses on monthly IAS or BAS reporting must submit and pay their final IAS and/or BAS report for the year.
 

By 28th July

Businesses on quarterly BAS reporting must submit and pay their PAYG and GST obligations for the final quarter of 2016. Extensions to this date are allowed if:

  • You have rung the ATO and been allowed an extension for extenuating circumstances
  • You submit your return via the ATO portal – this gives a 2 week extension
  • You have your BAS submitted by a BAS agent via their ATO portals – this gives a 4 week extension

The 28th July is also the final payment date for businesses that haven’t previously paid their final superannuation liability for 2016.
 

15th August

This is the final date to submit your PAYG withholding payment summary annual report or upload your empdupe files to the ATO.
 

29th August

This is the final date to submit your Taxable Payments Annual Report for the building and construction industry with ATO. Follow the MYOB/Xero/QBO End of Financial Year Guides to finish off your 2016 financial year.
 

Take-Away

So for users of Cloud Accounting software like – AccountRight Live, MYOB Essentials, Xero and QBO – the end of year process will be easier, as external accountants will be able to “self-serve” by logging into the live data, checking the end of year process and extracting the information that they require and entering their end of year adjustments.

For those users still on Classic desktop versions of their software will still require taking backups and sending a copy of the data to their accountants…and remembering to lock their file so that figures that the accountants are working on are consistent with the data that is still in the file for that period.