Accountants Desktop

Accountants Desktop is a web-based collection of tools and resources for tax and accounting professionals in public practice with hundreds of users across Australia.   Our objectives are to provide practitioners with crucial tools to boost the productivity of their practice, maintain quality control and guide new or inexperienced staff members.  

Every practice needs time saving templates and procedures to run their operations and speed up their processes.  Setting this up can take several years of your time and therefore cost a great deal in lost productivity.  And then you have to keep it all up to date!  For a modest annual fee, a practice can acquire our industry leading calculations, template letters, checklists and much more.  Accountants Desktop is highly recommended for new practitioners to give them a “flying start”.  

Using our templates and checklists will assist you with quality control by setting specific standards that must be met for each process within your practice.  Because your processes become standardised, you can achieve a consistent, reliable and accurate outcome for each of those processes every time.

Supervision of new or inexperienced staff can be a drain on partner/principal time and further reduce productivity.  Our template calculations, forms, letters and library links will guide those staff members through the most difficult of tasks and give you jobs to review that are correct the first time. 

Here is what we offer to achieve these objectives -

1. Excel templates for client and practice Calculations
2. Template Word Letters for use in communicating with clients via email or post
3. Forms for practice workflow procedures and client communication
4. A comprehensive list of tax and other Rates for current and prior years
5. A Library of links to the ATO and other websites with technical reference material
6. Invoice templates, Important Dates, Practice Reminders, ATO News and more.

Here are some links to give you more information about our site and to actually use some of our resources.  To return to this page, click on our logo at the top left hand side of any screen -

Accountants Desktop is an affordable resource that can help you with your every-day tasks.  You can view the content of our site by surfing the menus and test drive actual content by using our Samples.  In the unlikely event that you are not satisfied with our site, we offer a MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE  if you notify us in writing to that effect within 30 days of becoming a member,

NO QUESTIONS ASKED!

Our firm has been using accountants desktop for over 5 years and the beauty is the ease of use of the workpapers and everything across the firm being standardised, so we know the quality of the work being performed.  We have around 30 staff who use it for referencing to information and they swear by how much time is saved, whereas others just use the workpapers.  However the site creates a standard and saves time.  The site is constantly getting new forms and becoming more and more valuable.  I highly recommend it to other practitioners.

Brian Willett, CPA, Partner, FinCare Accounting

I have been using Accountants Desktop for the last few years. As a sole practitioner I am very time poor, and I'm always looking for ways to make my practice a more efficient one. Accountants Desktop has been able to assist me with working papers (via excel), staff checklists and a quick view to look up important rates. Why re-create the wheel and make worksheets from scratch, download one of the many Accountants desktop excel working papers. The subscription is worth every cent.

Nathan Rigney, NGR Accounting

Thanks Dennis. Keep up the good work – love the website.

Andrew McManus, HLV Partners

I have been using Accountants Desktop for over 6 years and it has been invaluable to my business.  The information, links and spreadsheets have helped my staff and myself tenfold over the years; it has simplified our processes and helped us produce accurate work every time using their forms/spreadsheets.   I would thoroughly recommend Accountants Desktop to any accountant or bookkeeping business and I can’t thank Dennis @ Accountants Desktop enough for the support and his wonderful website.

Samantha Sharp, Guardian Bookkeeping & Training

Thanks for that – I love this worksheet – along with so many of the others that you have. 

Coral Page, Principal, Knox Taxation and Business Advisory

I have been using Accountants Desktop since its inception and have found this website to be a most valuable tool in my armory for the many and varied aspects involved in a public practice. From spreadsheets to interview forms, quick links to the "recent updates", rates, calculations and the library. This website is constantly updated with latest ATO information and I feel more than comfortable in recommending such a superior font of knowledge for any level of person in the accounting arena. 

Genelle Nash, Sydney

• PAYG Withholding Variations (2 May 2017)

  Four workbooks have been rolled forward to 2018 to assist with projections for PAYG Withholding Variations for the year ended 30 June 2018.  They include projections for rental income and expenses, depreciation of fixtures and fittings, interest on investment loans and motor vehicle expenses.

  PAYGW Variation – Depn
  PAYGW Variation – Interest
  PAYGW Variation – MV Exps
  PAYGW Variation – Rent

• FBT 2017 (6 Apr 2017)

  We have added our fringe benefits tax calculator for use with all employer and fringe benefit types for the year ended 31 March 2017.  The workbook includes calculation of FBT payable where applicable, calculation of the value of benefits for an employee contribution and a summary of all benefits by type and employee.

  FBT – Full Calculator

• Fixed Price Agreement (22 Feb 2017)

  Calculate fees and periodic payments for a client entering into a fixed price agreement with your practice.  This workbook provides for multiple jobs spread across multiple related client entities and includes automatic calculation of fees based on the prior year fee and a markup or enter your own fee.  Payments are calculated on either a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.

  Fixed Price Agreement

• Profit & Tax Projections for 2017 (8 Feb 2017)

  Two separate versions of this workbook (for companies and other entities) have been rolled forward to 2017.

  Profit & Tax Projection – Company
  Profit & Tax Projection – Other

• CGT Shares (13 Nov 2016)

  The 2016 and 2017 versions of these workbooks have been updated to include cost per share.

  Calculations/2016/CGT - Shares
  Calculations/2017/CGT - Shares

• Hire Purchase Fortnightly (14 Oct 2016)

  Calculate interest, borrowing expenses and end of year balances on a standard hire purchase contract with regular fortnightly payments.

  Calculations/2017/Hire Purchase Fortnightly
  Calculations/2016/Hire Purchase Fortnightly

• Tax & Super Debt - Company (9 Oct 2016)

  Enter a weekly or monthly summary of income, expenses with GST, wages and PAYG withholding to calculate amounts to be set aside for subsequent payment of GST, PAYG Withholding, PAYG Instalments (or Income Tax), Superannuation and FBT.   This workbook will also estimate the client’s annual tax liability and allow the use of separate (updated) quarterly rates for PAYGI and separate quarterly amounts for Superannuation and FBT instalments.  If you are maintaining a separate bank account for these future liabilities, the workbook allows entry of all transactions and will reconcile those figures and the calculated balance with bank statements.

  Calculations/2017/Tax & Super Debt - Company

• New Site Launched (20 Sep 2016)

  There has been a complete rebuild of the site with the following new features -

  • Larger screen space and font size, along with an improved layout, for easier viewing.
  • Calculations, Forms & Letters are now displayed in tables which can be sorted and searched.
  • Each Calculation, Form or Letter is assigned to a category and can be displayed as a group in the table when sorted or on their own when you search for the category name.
  • ATO News can now be searched.
  • Calculations for each year are now displayed in a compressed format with one line per calculation.
  • Full details about each calculation and suggestions for use are now shown in "About Each Workbook" in the Calculations menu.
  • Letters are now contained in a downloadable Microsoft Word file.
  • Foreign exchange rates are now shown in a table which can be searched to display that country's rates only.
  • The Library and Websites modules have been given a makeover with easier access via an alphabetical index of links.

   

• Hire Purchase Calculations (8 Sep 2016)

  Three hire purchase workbooks have been rolled forward to 2017 -

  Calculations/2017/Hire Purchase Payout
  Calculations/2017/Hire Purchase - Standard
  Calculations/2017/Hire Purchase - Structured

• Primary Producer Trading Accounts (31 Aug 2016)

  Prepare trading accounts for a primary producer, including separate worksheets for Livestock (with quantities), Produce and Other income.  A separate sheet summarises the figures for the client’s tax return.

  Calculations/2016/Primary Producer Trading

• 2016 Workbooks (29 Jun 2016)

  All workbooks for the year ended 30 June 2016 have been uploaded to the site for the new financial year.

• 2016 Personal Tax Checklists (13 Jun 2016)

  Three checklists have been added for personal tax returns for the year ended 30 June 2016. Each checklist is available in both PDF and Microsoft Word format. Here are links to the PDF copies -

  Forms/Records - Personal Return Short
  Forms/Records - Personal Return Long
  Forms/Interview – Tax Return

• 2016 Trust Distributions (1 Jun 2016)

  Estimate trust accounting distributions required for the trustee resolution by 30 June to achieve a desired taxable distribution for each beneficiary and prepare the resolution itself which forms part of the workbook.

  Calculations/2016/Trust Distributions - Resolution

• Present Entitlement Register (24 May 2016)

  For those discretionary trust ledgers which have not separated the present entitlements of a private company beneficiary each year into sub-accounts, this workbook will track those entitlements and automatically allocate payments and offsets against the appropriate years.  It will also identify any UPEs which will be subject to the deemed dividend rules under Division 7A.  To speed up data entry, export data from the ledger into a spreadsheet and copy and paste into this workbook. 

  Calculations/2015/Present Entitlement Register 

• BAS Summary & Reconciliations (17 May 2016)

  The latest version (2016) of this workbook includes a sheet which reconciles the FBT Expense and Liability shown in the accounts with instalments paid to the ATO and the FBT return itself.

  Calculations/2016/BAS Summary & Reconciliation

• ATO Small Business Benchmarks (10 May 2016)

  All ATO benchmarks now come in one workbook and the client's industry can be selected from a drop down list.  These latest figures were recently published by the ATO from information contained in 2014 income tax returns and activity statements.

  Calculations/ATO Benchmarks

Single User

$583 per annum (inc GST)

Multiple Users from the same practice

2 - 5 Users: $539 per annum per user (inc GST)

6 - 10 Users: $484 per annum per user (inc GST)

11+ Users: $462 per annum per user (inc GST)