Why setting up your tax invoice is important
There can be some pretty important repercussions on not getting the format of your tax invoice correct. Apart from penalties from the ATO, it could also be an excuse for some of your suppliers not to pay your invoice. If your invoice isn't in the correct format particularly if you've got a major client you might wait for 30 or 60 days for them to process it through their systems and then they might come back to you saying "well your invoice is not in the correct format can you please resubmit it". So it's really important to get that right.
Setting up your invoice
There is a couple of things that you should know when invoicing. If the sale is for under $75 you don't have to worry about it being in the correct format it's only once its over $75 and then up to a thousand dollars there's slightly less onerous requirements on the tax invoice as there is for once it gets over a thousand dollars.
Invoices between $75 and $1000
For invoices between $75 and $1000 there is a few things you need to have on the invoice.
- the words "Tax Invoice" need to be stated prominently on the invoice
- the name of the supplier (Which in most cases will be yourself).
- the ABN of the supplier
- the issue date of the tax invoice
- a brief description of the good and services sold
- the total price of sales including GST
Invoices above $1000
Once your invoice is over $1000 you will have to have the above and additional information such as:
- the ABN or Address of your client
- the quantity of the goods or the extent to which the services are sold.
It is a good idea to set this up correctly in your accounting software from the start to avoid any issues with the ATO later on.
If you have any problems or unsure about how to set these up, feel free to get in touch with us here and we can get our bookkeepers to help guide you through the process.
