Computron teams for GST tool

By Alicia Camphuisen

Computron Software has teamed with accounting firm Pannell Kerr Foster (PKF) Worldwide, to deliver a Goods and Services Tax (GST)-compliant financial reporting and management tool in time for the July 1 deadline.

The solution uses Computron's COOL iMergence financial reporting tool set to manage organisations' business activity statements (BAS) using gross amounts.

"No software can handle this operation at the moment. There is a gap for organisations with basic financial systems and what's needed for compliance with the GST," said Computron general manager for Asia Pacific, Peter Bissett.

"The basic problem has been whether to separate GST at the transaction, and then how to reconstitute it on the BAS."

The GST-compliant iMergence solution assigns transactions to the correct sections of the BAS, and then manipulates and calculates the data. It also automatically populates the fields on the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) electronic tax form for organisations.

"This system can also provide support during an audit with its audit trail, whereas it may be difficult to try to manually calculate GST from data and recreate it," said Mr Bissett.

He expected that most staff members would need two days of training to be proficient with iMergence.

"It's almost too late to change legacy systems to meet the July 1 deadline. Organisations will have to work with existing systems," said Mr Bissett.