WHAT DOES ABN BAS OFFER? > Non-BAS Agents
If you are a non-BAS Agent, you will enjoy the following benefits from ABN BAS:
ABN BAS can provide the BAS services to your clients
Technical Helpline
Professional Indemnity Insurance
Knowledge, Technical Training and Industry Awareness
Complimentary, Secure Back-Ups
1. ABN BAS can provide the BAS services to your clients
If you have chosen not to pursue BAS Agent registration in your own right, your client’s BAS services will need to be provided by their tax agent or another BAS Agent.
With ABN BAS, it is not necessary for you to relinquish control of your client to a competing bookkeeping firm. Instead, ABN BAS – as a BAS Agent in its own right – can provide BAS services to your client.
This enables you to retain the control of the client relationship. The invoice is rendered by ABN BAS to the client for whom we have provided the BAS Service and bears our Australian Business Number. This makes it explicitly clear that it is ABN BAS, and not the client’s bookkeeper, that is rendering the BAS Service and indeed charging for it. The invoice is paid by the bookkeeper on behalf of the client. The bookkeeper should then recoup this outlay from their client.
Further information on ABN BAS’s Quality Assurance Reviews & BAS Lodgement, including pricing, can be found in the ABN Fact Sheet entitled Quality Assurance Reviews & BAS Lodgement.
2. Technical Helpline
ABN BAS provides you with email-based helpline support from our qualified accountants. Whether it be some much-needed guidance on how to deal with a specific transaction, or simply a second perspective for peace-of-mind, the ABN BAS Helpline is an invaluable right-hand for all bookkeepers.
3. Professional Indemnity Insurance
Although Professional Indemnity Insurance for non-BAS Agents is not mandatory, to operate any business without adequate protection is foolhardy. ABN has, since 2001, offered its members access to what we believe is the most comprehensive PI Insurance product in the market for bookkeepers. Unlike some policies in the market, each ABN policy owner enjoys individual cover. You are not grouped or under an umbrella limit with other bookkeepers. In simple terms, this means that the actions of other bookkeepers in the insurance pool in no way diminish the cover that applies to your policy.
ABN's offering meets the specific needs of professional bookkeepers including work with off-the-shelf accounting software and training. Click here to visit our PI Insurance page for more details.
4. Knowledge, Technical Training and Industry Awareness
Membership of ABN BAS is complimentary and automatic to all Australian Bookkeepers Network (ABN) members. This means that you will enjoy existing ABN services including:
- newsletters to keep you abreast of industry changes;
- technical papers on topics of relevance to bookkeepers;
- training;
- peer networking opportunities;
- Pillars of Public Practice, containing an extensive range of short papers, practical tools and templates
5. Complimentary, Secure Back-Ups
As a value-added service, all BAS Wizard files submitted to ABN BAS will be stored on our secure server for five years, free-of-charge. This provides you with the peace of mind of knowing that there will be a reliable and secure snapshot of the reports, reconciliations and figures that underpin your client’s Activity Statements.
This is a very useful service as you may be called on to defend the BAS you have been involved in some years after the event either with the Tax Office, your client or the client’s accountant. This secure off-site storage guards against your BAS being called into question by retrospective changes made to a client’s accounting file. It also guards against loss of your own workpapers and provides an independently stored set of workpapers and trail for BAS preparation that cannot be tampered with. You may request copies of any such back-ups simply by contacting ABN BAS.
