What is accounts receivable?
Invoices out on time, ageing watched, cash applied correctly.
Accounts receivable in an Australian business runs on the same underlying discipline as anywhere else — get invoices out on schedule, watch how long debtors take to pay, match every remittance to the tax invoice it satisfies — but it sits inside a GST framework that touches almost every part of it. A tax invoice is the document your BAS is built from, and the debtors ledger it feeds has to be clean enough that your accountant or registered BAS agent can rely on it without re-deriving the numbers themselves.
Invoicing cadence in this market usually maps to a contract, a purchase order, or a recurring billing date, same as anywhere — but the timing of the tax invoice itself matters more here, because it can determine which BAS period the GST on that sale falls into, depending on whether the business accounts for GST on a cash or accruals basis. A tax invoice issued a day late across a quarter boundary isn't just a collections annoyance; it's a GST-period question your accountant has to resolve.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Cash flow shortages that were predictable | Predictable inflows and controlled outflows |
| Revenue leakage from uninvoiced work | Aging you can act on before it is a problem |
| Duplicate or early payments | A clean audit trail on every payment |
| Supplier disputes over what was actually agreed | Working capital you can actually plan around |
What we need from you
Receivable
- Customer master data
- Sales invoices
- Payment history
- Credit terms
Payable
- Supplier master data
- Purchase orders
- Supplier invoices
- Payment terms
- Expense receipts
How it runs, step by step
- Receivable
- Invoice creation and validation
- Recurring invoice setup
- Credit notes
- Payable
- Invoice recording and coding
- Three-way matching (PO, receipt, invoice)
- Payment scheduling and due-date monitoring
- Inventory, where relevant
- SKU-level tracking
- Multi-location stock
- FIFO / weighted average costing
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Accounts receivable, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Accounts receivable in Australia
Your GST accounting basis decides which BAS period an invoice falls into
A business accounting for GST on an accruals basis reports GST on a sale in the period the tax invoice is issued, regardless of when it's paid; on a cash basis, GST is reported in the period the payment is actually received. AR work tracks the invoice-issue date against the payment-receipt date so that distinction is visible, but which basis applies to your business — and how a specific transaction should be treated under it — is a call for your accountant or registered BAS agent.
Adjustment notes have their own GST documentation requirements
A credit note that reduces GST on a taxable supply needs to function as an adjustment note under the GST Act, carrying the identifying details the ATO expects for a document of that value — the same rigour a tax invoice needs, not an informal write-off. We prepare every adjustment note with a reason code and the original tax invoice referenced; the GST treatment applied and any resulting BAS adjustment is confirmed by your accountant or agent.
Writing off a debt as bad can trigger a GST adjustment, decided by your accountant
Under Division 21 of the GST Act, a business that has remitted GST on a sale and later writes the debt off as bad may be able to claim back the GST component through a decreasing adjustment on a future BAS. AR surfaces the candidate list of stalled debtor balances for this review; whether a given balance qualifies as genuinely bad, and how the adjustment is claimed, sits with your accountant or registered BAS agent.
Doubtful-debt treatment on the debtors ledger is an accounting judgment, not an AR one
Recognising an impairment against a debtor balance under AASB 9 — deciding a balance is unlikely to be recovered even before it's formally written off — is a judgment call for your accountant. AR keeps the aged debtors data clean and flags stalled balances by how long they've run past terms, so that judgment is made on complete information rather than a stale or partially-matched ledger.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A weekly aged debtors report by customer, not a monthly snapshot
- The debtors subledger reconciled to the general ledger every close
- A cash application log matching every EFT, BPAY, and card remittance to the specific tax invoice(s) it satisfies, with a zero-tolerance policy on unexplained unapplied amounts
- An invoicing cadence tracker showing tax invoices issued against the schedule your contracts or purchase orders call for
- An adjustment note register — reason code, GST treatment, and the original tax invoice referenced — for every credit issued
- Customer statement runs on the cadence your terms call for
