Behind on your BAS is the ordinary way this starts.

A bookkeeper handles the day to day record: entering transactions, reconciling bank accounts, running payroll, and preparing and lodging activity statements. An accountant works at a higher level, preparing income tax returns and financial statements and giving tax advice, usually built on the numbers a bookkeeper has already kept current. Plenty of small businesses use both, with the bookkeeper keeping the file accurate through the year so the accountant's work at tax time is short.

Yes, and it is a large share of the work here. Catch-up bookkeeping brings outstanding transactions up to date one period at a time, so overdue activity statements can be lodged and the file is reliable from that point on. How long it takes depends on how far behind the file is and how much source material survives, meaning bank statements, receipts and invoices, so it is scoped after the file has been looked at rather than quoted blind.

Yes. Those two cover most small Brisbane businesses, so they are the platforms used here. If you are already on one, access can usually be added without changing anything about how you work day to day. If you are not set up on either yet, a new file can be configured from scratch as part of getting started.

Once the setup is done, very little. Most of it is forwarding receipts and invoices as they arrive and answering the occasional question about what a payment was for. The reconciling, categorising and reporting happens on this end, on the schedule agreed when you start, which is the point of handing it over.

Access to your bank feed or statements, copies of anything not captured automatically, and a quick answer when a transaction needs clarifying. Nothing else. You are not expected to do the data entry, sort the receipts into order, or learn the software.

Yes. Preparing or lodging an activity statement for a fee in Australia requires registration with the Tax Practitioners Board, and the registration number for this business is printed in the footer of this page. That number can be checked on the public TPB register, and it is worth checking for any agent you are considering, not just this one.

It gets worked through. A missed deadline is common and it is fixable: the priority is getting the outstanding period reconciled and lodged so any penalty or interest stops growing. A registered agent can also lodge a request for remission where a penalty has already been applied, though the outcome of that request is the ATO's decision and nobody can promise it in advance.

Yes, and it saves you being the messenger. Reconciled books and reports can be shared with your accountant directly, and it is normal to liaise with them at tax time or whenever they need to know how something was recorded during the year. Keeping the books and the tax return in step is the whole reason the two roles work together.

An activity statement reports GST, PAYG withholding and PAYG instalments to the ATO, usually every quarter, and is prepared by a bookkeeper or a registered BAS agent. A tax return reports income and deductions for the full financial year and is lodged by a registered tax agent or accountant, usually once a year. Most small businesses need both, on different schedules.

Yes. Pay runs are processed and each one is reported to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll, which every employer has to do regardless of how many staff they have. That includes the end of year STP finalisation, which is what makes your employees' income statements correct and ready for their own returns.

On the actual work: the volume of transactions, how many bank accounts and platforms are involved, whether payroll is in scope, and whether the file needs catch-up work before ongoing bookkeeping can start. A written quote is given free after a short look at the current setup, so the number reflects what is in front of it instead of a flat guess.

Same method, one period at a time, oldest first. Each quarter has to be reconciled before the statement for it can be prepared, so being behind on three quarters is not a different problem from being behind on one, it is the same problem three times. What changes is the amount of catch-up work before everything is current.