AU Tax - Automatically create income tax return
It would be wonderful if at this time of the year income tax returns could automatically be created for the new year, where the prior year is completed and with rollover from the prior completed year.
Having to manually create hundreds of income tax returns is terribly inefficient.
Thanks for your engagement in this idea, everyone.
The team have considered and thought about this in practicality. Tbh we do not have intentions to develop auto-creation of client income tax returns in Xero Tax - In the way Xero tax is designed, bulk rollover would potentially create 000's of returns at once, all appearing in Draft, and as a result would cause lots of noise for users.
It'd also create trouble and confusion in understanding where a client has come back, and what returns are being worked on vs those not started. And for clients that don't come back, you'd be left with an excess of returns in draft, requiring admin to delete.
That said there is a flow that could better accommodate this, and exists today - we provide a 'not started' state as well as recommending clients use the ITCRPT report to manage this workflow.
- The client would download ITCRPT (This in turn updates the tax return due date and provides status)
- You could then create a Not started report (Field selected would be Not started = Yes, along with any other criteria you choose)
This way you could track the 'not started returns over the year and understand which clients have been in. You could also make use of the report to contact clients to come in, and at the end of the year make plans to remove those that don't come in from your client list with the ATO.
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Nick Wilkinson commented
As an implementation partner for Xero practices, I get asked about this for NZ XPM accounts also.
The ability to either auto roll-over or bulk generate draft income tax returns would save a huge amount of time and also allow to report fully in the report builder tax return modules. Also, the ability for admins to bulk delete returns would supplement this process where not required (currently singular return deletion available only).
Currently two separate reports are required (client returns not started & tax returns in progress) to see where the full tax workflow is at.
Common questions I get:
1 - Why I have to report in two separate reports to see all my tax returns (leads to Excel pivots and complexity)?
2 - Why I have to generate every single tax return when XPM has clients with signed authorities and tax returns expected (i.e. the rollover or bulk generation should be limited to certain fields, certainly not for all clients).Note:
- Job States allow filtering in tax return reports to see where job is at (i.e. practices aren't confused by tax return status as the job status is there to support this anyhow).Hope this helps add to the discussion as it is a nice win for practices if this can be surfaced on the roadmap.
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Sam Gray commented
Tbh, don't think Xero should be using tbh in its replies on product ideas. Auto AS can already create 000's of AS at once in draft for decent size practices, yet Xero does it, because it makes sense to.
It's not Xero's place to advise us what is best practice for our own workflow. If we say we would rather the noise and we know that our churn is low and our team will know what to work on and when, but we're saving them from doing a meaningless step in the process, then build the software, don't tell us we shouldn't.
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Sam Gray commented
Would be hugely beneficial and helpful
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Brooke Mayfield commented
would save time for larger firms who are lodging 2000+ returns
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Isabella Mavromanolakis commented
Very critical.
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Emme Murphy commented
Import a Return lodgement list from the ATO which then creates returns for all clients in XPM that are on that lodgement list.