What is workpaper preparation?
Schedules and workpapers prepared to your standard, for your review.
This is a firm-to-firm engagement: the deliverable is a workpaper file built to your practice's own standard, reviewed and signed off by your own principal or reviewing partner. That covers lead schedules referenced to the trial balance, reconciliations traced to source, roll-forward schedules for continuity accounts, and — for return-support engagements — computations reconciled to accounting-to-tax adjustments, staged for your registered agent's own review before lodgement.
The calendar is the 30 June year-end and everything that follows it. Financial statements and return-support files for a 30 June client typically need to be substantially complete well before the ATO's registered agent Lodgement Program dates, which stagger client lodgements through to May of the following year depending on prior-year lodgement history. Layer BAS quarters (28 October, 28 February, 28 April, 28 July) and the 31 March FBT year-end on top, and the July–October wrap is when the widest volume of files lands at once. We build to that stack in advance, so files are staged ahead of your review rounds rather than queued during them.
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Workpaper preparation, 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. |
Workpaper preparation in Australia
Who can lodge and advise — TASA 2009 and registered agent status
TASA 2009 s.90-10 defines a BAS or tax agent service broadly — ascertaining or advising on a client's liabilities or entitlements under a BAS provision, not just lodging it, requires registration with the Tax Practitioners Board. We prepare the reconciliation and the schedule; if a GST coding decision or BAS position needs judgment, it's flagged for your registered agent, never resolved on our own read of it.
Quality management under APES 320 / ASQM 1
APES 320 requires firms to maintain a documented quality-management system, and for assurance engagements ASQM 1 (Australia's adoption of ISQM 1) sets the same bar for engagement documentation. A workpaper file that doesn't tie out or reference cleanly is exactly what a quality-review inspection tests for — we build to that referencing depth, not a minimum that only passes on a skim.
Audit documentation windows under ASA 230
ASA 230 requires an audit file to be finalised within 60 days of the audit report date, with any later addition documented against what changed and why. We build audit-support schedules and PBC coordination to be complete ahead of that window, not patched in after the fact under archive pressure.
TPB outsourcing disclosure — the Code of Professional Conduct
The Tax Practitioners Board's Code of Professional Conduct requires a registered agent to maintain adequate quality control over outsourced or offshored work and, in many arrangements, to disclose that outsourcing to the client. That disclosure is your obligation to manage under the Code — we operate as your engaged service provider under your existing engagement and confidentiality terms, and we build the file to support your disclosure, not to sit outside it.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- Lead schedules for every trial-balance grouping, referenced to the TB total
- Reconciliations tied to source — bank feeds, debtors and creditors subledgers, asset registers — using your firm's own cross-reference legend
- A PBC (prepared-by-client) list tracked to received, outstanding, and follow-up status against your information request
- Roll-forward schedules for fixed assets, loans, and equity or retained-earnings continuity accounts
- Variance analysis against prior year or budget, flagged where it needs reviewer attention
- Cross-references running from the financial statements down through lead schedules to supporting detail
