BALANCING GST RETURNS

Hi JANELLE 

Thanks for your post. Diffferent accountants/bookkeepers have different processes for reconciling their BAS/GST accounts so I'll tell you what I used to do when I was bookkeeper.

If you report on the cash basis to reconcile GST collected to the Balance Sheet run the Balance Sheet, Receivables with Tax report and GST summary cash report -

Balance Sheet - GST collected figure

less the total on the Receivables with tax report

equals GST summary cash - GST collected figure

I used to also manually reconcile this in the Reconcile Accounts window by changing the account to the GST collected account, the Closing statement balance to 0.00 and the date to the end of the period, eg, 31/12/2020. In the Mark column select all. Then using the Receivables with Tax report, untick all transactions that make up the customer totals in that report. This is because those invoices haven't been paid yet so are not reported in the cash accounting method and the GST value has not been collected.

When all unpaid invoices have been unticked the Out of balance amount should be the GST collected figure on the GST summary cash report. When you pay the BAS, go back to the Reconcile Accounts window, change the Closing Statement Balance to 0.00 and extend the date to the date you recorded the BAS payment. All previously selected transactions should still be selected so you will only need to tick the payment transaction. This should then give you an Out of balance amount of 0.00 so you can click on Reconcile and reconcile that account.

Repeat the process to reconcile GST Paid to the Balance Sheet, just use the Payables with Tax report and GST paid figures.

Please let me know if you need further help or have any questions about this.

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