We are very pleased to announce the release of our new feature, the Activity Statement Summary.
This report provides a summary of all activity statement lodgements with the ATO for each financial year since 2001, the start of GST reporting.
This is particularly useful where a new client may have had statements lodged by a variety of methods – via GovReports, by their own business portal, by another registered agent or directly from SBR enabled software. You can now see all lodgements from within GovReports, regardless of who lodged and how the statements were originally lodged.
Access the report through My Lodgements > Activity Statement Summary > select client name and year.
Alternatively, go to My Clients > Select client > Overflow menu in the client dashboard > Activity Statement Summary. The client name is already selected; choose the financial year required.
View the year’s summary on screen or export to Excel. If you need to collate several years – worth of data, you will need to export each year separately then merge the data as needed.
What’s in the Report?
The summary shows amounts lodged for all fields on the activity statement, for each month or quarter lodged, as well as a total for the year for each section. The final summary section shows the total payable for the activity statement.
The report is divided into sections for GST, PAYGI, PAYGW, FBT, FTC and WET. All activity statements will show the GST summary section and include other sections as relevant for each client’s registrations and lodgements.
PAYGI fields show the original instalment amount or rate and if any variations have been lodged, the reason code and the final amount lodged. Similarly, FBT fields show the instalment amount and any variations.
If a BAS has been revised, the last BAS lodged will show on the GovReports activity statement summary report. If you need to see the original activity statement lodged outside of GovReports, to My Lodgements > BAS Historic Lodgement. Enter the date range required then select the client name to show the lodgement history for that entity. From there you can print the activity statement for review.
Integrated Client Account Report in GovReports
Remember that you can also run the integrated client account report from GovReports.
If you are reconciling lodgements and payments, run the report for the same period as your activity statement summary, then export to Excel so you can easily reconcile payments to lodgements.
One of the common errors in reconciling BAS accounts in software is that payments to the ATO can be easily allocated to an incorrect account. Using this report in conjunction with the Activity Statement Summary report makes it easy to check that payments have been correctly allocated in your accounts to the relevant general ledger account for PAYGW, PAYGI, GST and other liability accounts.
To access the integrated client account detail in GovReports, go to the client dashboard ATO Services menu > ATO Accounts > Synchronise Accounts. This shows the balance payable at the time of synchronisation on screen.
To see the detail of the account, select View and then select the period From and To dates. Export to PDF or Excel.
Tips for Using the Activity Statement Summary Report
- When taking on a new client, run the report for prior years as far back as you may need to reconcile and/or review.
- Run the report for each year after the June BAS has been lodged as a record of the year’s lodgements.
- Tax agents can see at a glance if PAYGI amounts or rates have been varied in prior BAS.
- Provide to staff as a quick overview of patterns or trends for activity statement amounts and lodgement dates. This can be useful if trying to assess a new client for late lodgement patterns or occasional aberrations. It may also show usual seasonal trends for activity statement amounts.
Let us know your feedback about using the new report.
