Is it possible to upload your BAS directly to the ATO through Reckon Accounts Hosted?

Hi - is it possible to upload your BAS to the ATO through SBR/GovConnect etc on Reckon Accounts Hosted?

It used to be possible, and it is possible through most of the competing products (Xero/Quicken/MTOB etc), but does not seem possible now. Are we doing something wrong, or is not possible through Reckon any more?

Comments

Kris_Williams

Not possible any more, for the moment anyway

Shco

Thanks Kris.

@Rav is there any plan to fix this? Do you know why competing products (which are cheaper) offer this functionality but Reckon does not?

Rav

The older GovConnect service for BAS was removed from Hosted a fair while ago now due to new standards being introduced for cloud software by the ATO.

I know the team were looking at formulating an alternative solution for this however if I recall correctly, it had to be put on pause due to changes in project priorities on the roadmap. I'll see if I can get some more info on this one from the team.

Zappy

Thats a shame. Thanks for the update Rav

Shco

Thanks @Rav for the update.

In your post in Sep 2018 (re when BAS was removed from Hosted), you said "as of October 2018, we have decided to remove the current GovConnect for BAS & Payment Summaries service in order to develop and replace it with a new cloud based service. Our new service will make the lodgement process simpler, more straightforward and importantly, more secure with the introduction of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)."

You also said (in the same post in Sep 2018):

"WHEN WILL THE NEW SERVICE BE READY?

We're currently in the early stages of development but we'll keep you updated throughout this process. Further details on timeframes and release will be made available as soon as possible. We certainly appreciate this may cause some inconvenience and we sincerely apologise for that. We're confident our upcoming solution will streamline your workflow processes around BAS ....

It has been around two and a half years since that post but not only has the promised "new service" never materialised, the other (easier to keep) promise that Reckon will 'keep us updated throughout the process' has also not been met, despite the 'sincere apology' for the inconvenience acknowledged.

It's disappointing that cheaper competing services have managed to retain that functionality and that Reckon has increased prices despite reducing features. Taking away a feature without discounting the price (in fact, while increasing the price) while promising to replace the feature (presumably to keep customers on) but then failing to do so, is misleading on Reckon's part and not a nice way to treat customers.

Are you able to get an answer from the relevant people about whether Reckon keeping its promise about the "new service" is on the radar and what sort of honest timeframe we can expect?

Rav

It has been around two and a half years since that post but not only has the promised "new service" never materialised

As I alluded to above, the team were looking at a replacement service however it didn't proceed. To provide some more context on this, the original plan was to utilise the new GovConnect service which we currently use for Single Touch Payroll submissions would be expanded to other forms eg BAS. I don't have the granular details on what happened to it back then but ultimately, the project hasn't gone ahead and has since been overtaken in terms of priority by other projects in the overall product roadmap. There aren't any timeframes on this that I can provide unfortunately.

In regard to communication, yep I'll put my hand up for that one. It could have, and should have been much better in terms of providing the Community with the additional info on this.

Shco

Thanks @Rav.

So, Reckon has permanently removed a feature, despite Reckon promising that it would be replaced. Despite this feature reduction, the price has been increased. That is not fair.

Apart from STP (which of course all Reckon's main competitors also provide), what are these "other projects in the overall product roadmap" that Accounts hosted users have received since the time-saving BAS-uploading feature was removed without a price decrease?
Also, what "other projects in the overall product roadmap" are we likely to see implemented in the coming months?

As for your communication: we certainly appreciate your responsiveness and openness. You do a great job in this community, so thank you.

Rav

I'm only going to list the ones I can remember quite clearly in terms of functionality/features which hopefully is ok. There has been a lot of work involved in the background of the service as well when it comes to server environment and quality of life improvements which I'm not exactly familiar with in terms of the specific details so I'm not going to try delve into that.

Bounced Email Report
Fast Coding
Electronic TFN declarations
Email Special Tags
Payment receipt print & emailing
New BankData implementation
Find/Search in Employee Centre
HTML support for emails
Enhancements to the tax window
Enhancements to the payroll confirmation window
Multiple email recipient enhancements
Secondary ID addition
Paypal to bank feeds
3rd party integrations such as Pinch Payments, Better Clinics, Better Bookings, Reckon Cloud POS, Time Tracker by eBillity and others
PayDay Filing V1 & V2 for Reckon Accounts Hosted NZ
Compliance updates
SDK changes and enhancements
Bug resolution

The attachments functionality is currently being finalised which will allow the ability to add links to attachments in transactions.

Single Touch Payroll V2 is being scoped which is currently looking like a fair bit of time and dev resources will need to go into. Still ongoing at this stage.

There is a longer term plan for Reckon Accounts Hosted to shift over to the Reckon Portal where all our other cloud services currently 'live'. This is a huge project with a lot of moving parts.

While the team haven't been able to get the BAS alternative over the line which I know you're not happy with and I apologise for that, they've certainly been kept busy and have done a great job in adding and enhancing the Reckon Accounts Hosted service and are continuing to do so.

Shco

Thanks, @Rav for listing this. In our case at least, most of these features are not used and don't make up for the loss of convenience of being able to automatically lodge BAS statements as once was possible.

The Accounts hosted portal seems like a slow/clunky interface stuck in the 1990s (albeit online) so the migration to a fresher portal that you mention will be welcome for those who stick around long enough to see it. Do you have a rough idea when this is likely to be happen? Is it likely to be in 2021? 2022?

Zappy

Shco you know for years and until very recently Xero didn't populate the wages figures at W1 and W2. All the software suites have their limitations. I know. I use all of em.

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