What was broken
A well-established handicrafts manufacturer had built a strong domestic distribution network and wanted to begin exporting to Europe and the Middle East. However, the company lacked the regulatory registrations, export documentation, and compliance processes necessary to participate in international trade.
What we did
CapEasy prepared a comprehensive export readiness roadmap covering the required export registrations, trade-body membership certification, indirect-tax compliance for exports, documentation requirements, banking formalities, and ongoing regulatory obligations. We also advised management on establishing internal systems for export compliance and documentation.
Where it landed
The company successfully completed its first export shipments within months and established long-term relationships with overseas distributors while maintaining full regulatory compliance.
Australia has its own version of the export readiness gap
The engagement’s failure pattern — strong domestic operations, zero export infrastructure — is not an India-specific problem. An Australian maker moving from selling into Australian retail or B2B channels to shipping a first container overseas hits the same gap: no export documentation trail, no process for handling a foreign-currency invoice, and no answer ready for the first question a registered BAS or tax agent asks, which is whether the export sale was actually GST-free.
The roadmap that gets built for that gap is not a shipping checklist. It is an accounting and documentation system: what evidence a GST-free export sale needs, how a foreign-currency transaction gets recorded and revalued, and what a grant program wants to see in the file before it will reimburse a marketing dollar spent chasing an overseas buyer.
The 60-day rule that decides whether an export sale is GST-free
Exported goods are GST-free under Australian tax law only if they leave Australia within 60 days of whichever happens first: the supplier receiving payment, or the supplier issuing the invoice for the goods (the final instalment, if paid in instalments). Miss that window and the sale reverts to being a taxable supply unless an extension is requested and granted — extensions are not automatic. New boats sold for private recreational use get a 12-month window instead of 60 days; every other exported good runs on the 60-day clock.
That single date — payment or invoice, whichever is first — is the fact a bookkeeping system has to capture at the transaction level, not reconstruct later from shipping paperwork. A ledger that codes an export sale GST-free without a shipping date sitting behind it inside the 60-day window is making a claim it cannot yet support if the ATO asks. The discipline is the same one the CapEasy engagement built for IEC and RCMC evidence: the record exists at the time of the transaction, not assembled retroactively when a regulator or a diligence process asks for it.
Multi-currency books: the ledger has to carry two numbers, not one
An export invoice in euros or dirhams creates a foreign-currency receivable that sits on the books at the exchange rate on the day it was raised, and it does not stay at that rate — it gets revalued as the rate moves and produces a realised gain or loss the day it is actually paid. A ledger that records only the AUD figure the bank statement eventually shows loses the audit trail entirely: nobody can reconcile the invoice to the payment, or explain why the two amounts differ, without both currencies sitting in the transaction.
This is the same reconciliation discipline the engagement applied to GST compliance for exports generally — every transaction explained, not plugged. For an exporter, that means the chart of accounts carries a foreign-exchange gain/loss line from the first invoice, not bolted on after the accountant asks why the bank reconciliation will not tie out.
EMDG: name the program honestly, including when it is closed
The Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) program is Austrade’s reimbursement grant for export marketing and promotional activity and export training, run across four categories — Tier 1 (businesses ready to export), Tier 2 (expanding within existing export markets), Tier 3 (expanding into new markets), and a category for representative bodies supporting SME exporters. As of this writing, Round 4 is closed to applications and Austrade’s own program page states there are currently no EMDG rounds open — the next round’s timing has not been confirmed, so an exporter should check the live status before planning around the grant rather than assuming a window exists.
Nothing about that closed status changes what the grant asks for when a round does open: expenditure has to be documented, incurred inside the eligible period, and matched to the marketing or training activity it funded — an invoice trail an export readiness system should already be producing, not one built retroactively for a grant application. Getting the books right first means the grant, whenever the next round opens, is a paperwork exercise rather than a reconstruction project.
What to take from it
- An export sale is GST-free only if the goods leave Australia within 60 days of payment or invoice, whichever is first — capture that date at the transaction, not from the shipping file weeks later.
- Extensions to the 60-day export window exist but are not guaranteed; the default assumption in the ledger should be the 60-day clock, not the exception.
- A foreign-currency invoice needs both currencies on the books from day one — the AUD figure alone cannot explain the realised gain or loss when payment lands at a different rate.
- EMDG is currently closed to new applications with no confirmed reopening date — check the live status before building a plan around it, and keep the expenditure trail running regardless.
- Export readiness is a documentation system, not a shipping checklist — the registrations, the GST evidence and the currency ledger all get built before the first container, not reconciled after it.