SBR estimated to save business $800 million a year
- 01 July, 2010 00:01
- Comments 4
SBR program director, Paul Madden
A new era has begun with the commencement of the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) program, a standardised approach to financial reporting across government agencies that could save businesses up to $800 million a year.
Three years in development, SBR takes in several government agencies, including ASIC, APRA, the ATO, state and territory revenue offices and ABS. SBR program director, Paul Madden, said the idea is to harmonise the information reporting requirement.
“SBR is all about reducing the reporting burden for business,” he said.
The program, led by the Australian Treasury, is nothing if not complex; Madden co-ordinates the work of teams across 12 government agencies. Its scope takes in about 87 different forms, including business activity statements (BAS), payment summaries (PAYG), tax file number declarations (TFN) and State Revenue Office Payroll tax. It has the potential to change the business process for more than 240 financial software developers and 2.1 million businesses. It will reduce the number of questions that require financial answers from about 9600 to less than 2840.
SBR uses Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an open specification which Madden said allows the capture of definitions and meta data.
“The technology also allows you to map those definitions to the data within the business systems,” he said.
It means the taxonomy can be mapped to business accounting and financial information.
“The real benefit comes with being able to take the taxonomy and impose it inside business software systems so [forms] can be prefilled directly,” Madden told CIO.
The system has big implications for businesses because it has the potential to stop double handling of data and it adopts existing standards. Adoption of SBR is voluntary, but Madden says even CIOs who run their own payroll and accounting systems will be able to implement SBR systems, thanks to a software developer kit (SDK).
Businesses will also have a single sign on to access online services under another key component of the SBR program — AUSkey. More than 51,000 AUSkeys have already been issued to businesses.
“If a large SME with a national business was able to report to each of those agencies, the last thing they would want is to have passwords,” Madden said. “They can use AusKey to report to any one of those agencies.”
More information on the program is available from the SBR and AUSkey websites.
Several vendors have been involved in the program. Fujitsu supplied and supported its Interstage XWand software, a custom technology to produce XBRL enabled financial applications in a deal worth about $4 million over an initial 2 year period.
IBM will provide ongoing application maintenance for the SBR Core Services system, under a 12-month agreement worth $2.7 million. The application was developed in Java by a team in Canberra. According to IBM, the solution is built on IBM Data Power custom hardware. It has no specific operating system.
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Comments
Ben
The SBR announcements are significant. Our company Hunter Media Solutions manages the only SBR enabled accounting software supported by Treasury and all levels of Government and various peak bodies.
IAM - Impact Account Manager is the developing partnership with major institutions. IAM became SBR self enabled 13/5/10, is listed on the SBR.gov.au website
Tax Accountant
I must say I am stunned. I realise IQs have dropped a lot over the years but I have not heard so much nonsense in a long time. The only proponents of SBR seem to be the ones that will derive significant financial benefit.
Let’s look at some fundamental facts as opposed to hype:
Taking a BAS as an example. Most countries have VAT or GST. Our burden is not unusual in this respect. What SBR seems to be ignoring is that all your data and all your mapping must still be correct in order to lodge accurate and valid information. Well with about 90% of micro and small businesses you have already hit a large brick wall. SBR is not a magic panacea that is going do all your accounting for you and get everything right for you. It doesn't mind read either. Unbelievably people still think this is possible! So let’s sum it up. Completing and lodging a BAS on the existing portals takes about 4 minutes. Getting the data right to complete and lodge the BAS. Well that could take hours with some businesses. They are not going to magically become accountants over night. What is going to happen is the ATO is going to be swamped with even more data garbage simply because now these small businesses think all they have to do is click a button and all will be right with the world. What absolute nonsense! On the subject of large enterprises who may employ competent accountants. (Based on the latest CA program a rarity indeed) My response would be so what? Why on earth would I complicate my life further? I generate the reports go onto the portal and 4 minutes later my BAS is lodged. Where is the compliance nightmare or "burden"?
It's simple. There is none. You have a Govt that panders to every ridiculous whim of the public. Joe Blow the garage owner doesn’t want to do any admin or paperwork. He just wants everything to magically happen. Joe Blow has to on average complete 4 BASs a year (which if bothered to keep proper records wouldn't be a problem), one PAYG summary return and tax return. Wow. The burden.... Tell him about SBR mapping and about the fact that before he lodges his data it must be accurate and valid. I'll get a knock on my door a few hours later.....LOL
Yet another Govt initiative to pour Millions of Dollars down the drain. No wonder we are in debt up to our eyeballs.
SmallBiz Owner
Thanks Tax Accountant. I agree wholeheartedly. I thought I was missing something with this SBR stuff. The bottomline is if I can get my business records sufficiently accurate for SBR reporting purposes two things would need to happen. I would need to be a qualified accountant (please don't mention bookkeepers!). And all my books and records would need to be kept properly and up to date all the time. Well I'm thinking if that occurred you wouldn't need SBR in the first place!
Is the Government suggesting we just report rubbish? I mean if you can data map and have this level of accuracy what on earth do you need SBR for? The solution and the problem simply do not equate. Oh well more of the tax payer Dollars wasted on US IT companies (IBM and Co) who push this over hyped over blown garbage on everyone.
Tax Accountant 2.0
hmmmm, I seem to recall that XBRL was invented by accountants and not IT companies.
The general idea is that XBRL should be transparent to Joe Blow, his accounting software is supposed to do the hard work.
And if you're a business that reports to multiple regulators do you really want to log onto multiple regulator's portals to lodge your reports?
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