Behind on the books? Let's fix that.

We haven't found it yet. Months, multiple years, a shoebox era followed by a spreadsheet era - catch-up work is a process, not a miracle, and it is one we run all the time.

Better than it feels, if you act. The ATO is consistently more workable with businesses that come forward through a registered agent than ones that go quiet. We bring lodgments up to date and deal with the ATO on your behalf, including payment plans where needed.

A fixed quote after we've looked at the backlog - never an open-ended hourly job. You'll know the full cost of getting current before we start, and the ongoing fee that keeps you there.

No. Every messy file has a story - a growth spurt, a staff change, a hard year - and our job is the fix, not the lecture. You will not be the worst we've seen.

The part that matters: a steady ongoing rhythm (weekly or monthly) so the backlog never rebuilds. Most catch-up clients move onto Basic Books or a tailored package the same month.

No, and the sooner an agent is speaking for you the better it goes. Reminder letters, default assessments and demands are all points at which the position is still workable - what makes it harder is a long silence after one of them. We take authority to deal with the ATO on your behalf, establish what is genuinely outstanding across every account rather than the one letter you received, request lodgment deferrals where there is a real reason for the delay, and put a payment proposal forward with lodged figures behind it. If a director penalty notice has arrived, bring it to us the day it lands. The response window on those is short and the options narrow once it closes.

Further than most people expect. Bank and card statements are the backbone and banks will supply history well past what a live feed reaches. Card provider data, supplier statements, reissued invoices and the history sitting inside any app you were using at the time fill in most of the rest. Australian businesses are required to keep records for five years, so a long backlog usually outlives some of them, and the honest position is that a deduction which cannot be substantiated should not be claimed. That is a smaller loss than it feels like. What matters is lodging a figure that holds up if anyone looks at it.

Because a price quoted over the phone is a guess, and guesses in this work go one of two ways: quoted low then revised upward halfway through, or padded so heavily you decide not to bother. A free look at the file tells us the number of periods, the state of the data, whether payroll needs correcting and whether anything has already been lodged on figures that will need amending. That takes us a short time and turns the job into a fixed price. You then know the full cost of getting current, and the ongoing fee that keeps you there, before anyone touches a transaction.

Then we lodge anyway and deal with the payment separately, because they are two different problems and only one of them gets worse by waiting quietly. Lodging puts an agreed figure on the debt instead of leaving the ATO to estimate one, and it stops the failure to lodge penalty growing. Payment plans for tax debts are ordinary and are usually available over a period a business can actually service. They work far better presented properly - what is owed, what you can pay each month, and what changed in the business. That conversation is a normal part of the job for a registered BAS agent.