IMPORTANT NOTICE - GovConnect for BAS & Payment Summaries removal from Reckon Accounts Hosted

Rav
Rav Administrator, Reckon Staff Posts: 15,305 Community Manager Community Manager
edited July 2020 in Accounts Hosted
Hi everyone,

Please note, as of 6 September 2018, the GovConnect for BAS and Payment Summaries service will be removed from Reckon Accounts Hosted.

This service is entirely seperate and unrelated to the GovConnect STP application currently in the Reckon Portal. 

WHY IS IT BEING REMOVED?
With new standards being introduced by the ATO in relation to the submissions from cloud based accounting software 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).


HOW DO I LODGE MY BAS?
While the new GovConnect service is being developed, BAS lodgements will need to be completed via the ATO Business Portal.

For more info on this, please visit this page on the ATO website - 
https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Business-Portal/Using-the-Business-Portal/Lodge-an-activity-statemen...#


I USE RECKON ACCOUNTS DESKTOP, WHAT DO I DO?
We've got info for our Reckon Accounts Desktop users HERE


DOES THIS AFFECT GOVCONNECT FOR SINGLE TOUCH PAYROLL?
No, this does not affect your Single Touch Payroll (STP) submissions through the GovConnect STP application in the Reckon Portal.


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 while also providing peace of mind through additional security.

If you have any questions on any of the above, please let us know.


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Comments

  • Shco
    Shco Member Posts: 8
    edited September 2018
    Two quick questions: 

    1. Why are you only "in the early stages of development"? Should you not have seen this coming and had a solution ready by the time the rules changed, or did the ATO make a surprise announcement catching the whole industry off guard?

    2. What is the rough estimate for when the new solution will be ready?  Are we talking a matter of weeks?
  • Rav
    Rav Administrator, Reckon Staff Posts: 15,305 Community Manager Community Manager
    edited September 2018
    1. Our initial solution to incorporate these upcoming changes was for Reckon Accounts Hosted to make the move to the Reckon Portal, this has been in our plans well before the GovConnect changes were announced and will still be happening. 

    During this time however, it became apparent that a feasible, tested, safe and successful migration would not able to take place in conjunction with other projects that were well under construction such as the multifaceted process of new product releases for the full Reckon product suite, upgrade of the Reckon Accounts Hosted server environment, release of the Reckon API to NZ, rolling hotfixes & updates to Reckon One and probably the biggest of all, which has been the introduction of Single Touch Payroll to our products via the creation of a single mechanism that services 4 Reckon products all with varying processes (both cloud and offline) and meets the ATO's stringent requirements and testing. Its been massive and has taken a collective effort from the majority of teams throughout the business to get this over the line.

    We're going to go a different way by having an alternative cloud based solution to the outgoing GovConnect service that most importantly, is compliant moving forward to meet the new standards as set by the ATO.

    2. There is no rough estimate at this stage, so I won't speculate on a timeframe.


    ℹ️ Stay up to date with important news & announcements for your Reckon software! Click HERE for more info.

  • Shco
    Shco Member Posts: 8
    edited September 2018
    Re timeframe, you say "There is no rough estimate at this stage, so I won't speculate on a timeframe".  Do you know if it will be ready before 2020?
  • Alexey Taran
    Alexey Taran Member Posts: 2
    edited September 2018
    Over the last 5 years, the practical functionality of Reckon Hosted has been reduced, yet the annual fee doubled. Is the company offering a discount on such fee with this newly stripped feature that has been heavily relied upon? Or is it being massively increased again?
  • Rav
    Rav Administrator, Reckon Staff Posts: 15,305 Community Manager Community Manager
    edited September 2018
    Obviously we'd rather not remove this service from Hosted however this is a necessary step for us in order to maintain compliance with relevant incoming standards as set by the ATO which I've outlined above.

    In regard to functionality, Reckon Accounts Hosted has received significant enhancements for example, making the move to a brand new server environment which provides increased stability & performance benefits, streamlined printing process, removal of the clipboard (Chrome), Single Touch Payroll functionality etc. 

    If you have further suggestions/ideas on functionality that you think would benefit your use case we'd love to hear it at Reckon Ideas here - https://ideas.reckon.com/


    ℹ️ Stay up to date with important news & announcements for your Reckon software! Click HERE for more info.

  • Lyndel Small_7031337
    Lyndel Small_7031337 Member Posts: 2
    edited October 2018
    After 2.20 minutes talking to 2 very hard to understand people at support yesterday and as a newcomer to Hosted i am totally disappointed with myself for switching to hosted and losing this capability!!  Also they should have been able to advise this feature had been removed in less than a minute but had me going in circles running the bas for hours!! I gave up and lodged through the portal on my own out of frustration!  I also fixed the problem of printing for the first time through this support forum - which i thank god for believe me!  Starting to think i should have actually switched my accounting software all together.... very disillusioned with Reckon

  • Peter Brown
    Peter Brown Member Posts: 28
    edited July 2020
    Any News  or do i have to revert to manual bas as i dont have auskey   too hard to get one as Directors in another state and not computer literate .

  • Headlands
    Headlands Member Posts: 1
    edited October 2018
    To do the BAS reporting through the portal  - how can l be sure the figures from Reckon Accounts Hosted are correct ? 
  • Amy Naughton
    Amy Naughton Member Posts: 1
    edited January 2019
    Hi Rav,
    Is there an update available on the progress of the new version of GovConnect  for Reckon Hosted?
    Thanks
    Amy
  • Rav
    Rav Administrator, Reckon Staff Posts: 15,305 Community Manager Community Manager
    edited December 2018
    Hi Amy,
    This will be one of our more longer term projects at this stage. There have been some changes announced in the last couple of days by the ATO which has changed the landscape somewhat so we're going to have some further discussion around this. There are also some major projects in the development pipeline at the moment so there are no set timeframes on this currently but as more info comes to hand I'll share it with the thread here.


    ℹ️ Stay up to date with important news & announcements for your Reckon software! Click HERE for more info.