Xero prides itself on being the world’s easiest accounting system, and what could be easier than filing your BAS return online with the click of a button? Nothing! And we agree. That’s why we’re working closely with the Australian Taxation Office and the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) facility being launched in July 2010.
The SBR enables companies like Xero to lodge your BAS return (and other standard reports) on your behalf – no more paper forms, no duplicated data entry into other systems. You get to stay in control while Xero does all the heavy lifting for you.
And the timing is great – at Xero we’re enhancing our own reporting framework to support building Annual (Final) Reports, and making Xero SBR-enabled is a natural extension to this. Expect to see the first SBR-enabled reports later in 2010.
Don’t worry New Zealand – we haven’t forgotten about you. The NZ Inland Revenue Department also has an SBR programme that is aligning itself with Australia. You’ll get a “Lodge Me!” button for your GST returns too. And in the UK we’re looking at online VAT so you won’t miss out either!
Brought to you by 
Popular this week
The Xero Australia Awards are back for FY22
by Jared Baker | 13 July 2021
Build your brand with social media
by Xero | 10 June 2021
Change the way you work with reports
by Xero | 26 July 2016
22 comments
Leave a reply
Start using Xero for free
Find out why over 2 million subscribers locally and across the world trust Xero with their numbers.
Popular this week
- The Xero Australia Awards are back for FY22 13 July 2021
- Build your brand with social media 10 June 2021
- Submit your ‘Emotional Tax Return’ claim for the chance to win 7 June 2021
- Xero and Capital One partner to help rewire the small business economy 11 May 2017
- Change the way you work with reports 26 July 2016
Related articles
Hi there,
You know we are loving Xero! But this product is still nowhere to be seen and it’s now coming up on 4 months past the suggested launch date in your blog….
What’s the story? When’s the expected launch now?
Shedding some light on this will allow me to pass on to clients and add it as a selling feature for prospective mutual clients!
Cheers,
Guy
Guys how is this coming along? Would love to have the wages slots on the BAS auto fill from wages data. That is PAYG Withheld data should hit W1, W2 etc.
@Guy/@Ben – we had planned to be ready to deliver SBR integration later this year but unfortunately this now looks unlikely. However, we are still committed to doing something as soon as we can – working hard to get through our current pipeline of work. At this stage, my best guess is Q1/Q2 next year – sorry it’s not better new and that I can’t be more specific.
@Ben – this is certainly something we are considering, no details at the moment unfortunately.
On the topic of Payroll, but be sure to check our Australian partners at http://blog.xero.com/2010/02/aussie-payroll/
Hi Guys, Any update on rolling this out?
It will be a great feature to save lots of manual paperwork!
Guys,
We are now in Q1/Q2 an update please!
We’ve continued to watch the developments here in Australia around SBR. It’s exciting to see the breadth of reports supported by SBR continuing to grow and it’s clear this is the go forward B2G reporting platform. Given the ever increasing reporting options we’ve decided to de-prioritised our initial plan of developing lodgement for the Activity Statement within Xero itself. We’re also conscious of getting through other new features that are higher on our list of requested features (overpayments, deposits, discounts, report packs to name a few).
To make progress though, our current plan is to expose the Activity Statement report through the API. This will allow a third party (we’re talking to some now) to offer the suite of SBR reporting options while accessing the data that is stored in Xero. This will enable accountants, bookkeepers and businesses to make use of a wider range of the SBR reporting options, some data for which is sourced directly from Xero while other data may be sourced from our network partners, like payroll providers for example.
We appreciate this is a change to our initial thinking but we think the end result will be more powerful and we’re really excited about what this will mean for our customers and partners. Thanks for your patience.
Hi, any update on this? would prefer not to find an add-on to do this.
Hi Daniel – no change since my last update I’m afraid.
Hi, Is this happening? The online business portal can be a real pain, this feature would be massive!
Hi, Any updates on this?
It’s great to see the appetite for this continues and we are busy working behind the scenes making this a reality. BAS lodgement is the number one priority that will enable activity statements to be lodged via our Practice Manager solution and then expanded further with Company Returns and beyond. Getting this right is critical and I look forward to being able to share more news with you in the near future.
c’mon guys, this is now years down the track. I cannot believe this is not standard functionality yet. And forcing us to buy/use another add-on? Really? I’m a potential xero user, but I would have thought xero should be more responsive in updating for industry developments like SBR than traditional software like MYOB.
http://www.sbr.gov.au/sbr-products-register/browse-products-by-agency/australian-taxation-office-ato#Xero
The ATO SBR website (link in last post) now shows that Xero software is authorised to submit activity statements via SBR functionality, as of 20 June 2013.
Has this feature been enabled in Xero? I can’t see how to do it.
Very excited if it has!
@Adam we are certainly authorised to submit business activity statements using SBR and we are supporting this via an Australian Tax module in WorkflowMax Practice Manager as announced in this blog post – http://blog.xero.com/2013/05/australian-tax-is-imminent/.
You have not missed anything and as soon as its available for everyone we will make sure you all know about it. We want to make sure its right, and we deliver the right solution. I know its frustrating but it’s coming soon.
@All an update has been posted today on the Australian tax project http://blog.xero.com/2013/07/australian-tax-activity-statements-pre-release/#more-37074
You can now submit employees TFN Declarations online from within Payroll using SBR – http://blog.xero.com/2013/08/payroll-hooks-up-to-the-ato/#more-37183
The Netherlands is closely following Australia with SBR becoming the norm, has Xero looked at applying Xero to the Dutch agencies?
Hi Guys
Don’t forget change Xero so that it picks up all, as yet, unreported tax invoices invoices in each return rather than being based upon a date range otherwise its going to be pretty useless to businesses that might choose to enter the supplier invoice date on invoices when they capture… i.e. back-date invoices.
Regards
Peter
Agree with Peter Kearney. It would be good if the BAS picked up back dated items automatically the same as it does in the NZ IRD 101
So, another year has ticked by. Announced in 2010, and here we are in 2015. (sigh)
It shouldn’t take five years to implement a report with … what is it? … XML and AusKey? I’m sure the ATO has provided an API for all their stuff.
C’mon xero! We’re not exactly building a colony on Mars!
Indeed Andrew, I agree… now 6 years since announcement.
There is a thread in the forums on this too https://community.xero.com/business/discussion/158570
Is this actually going to happen. Is a glaring gap in this product (that has only become apparent after we have finished setting the thing up and bringing in all our accounts… :-(. Very hard to believe that this seems to have been first mooted in 2010 and remains unresolved…