What to upload
Which documents change the quality of a working paper, which are optional, and what happens to a file the moment it lands.
Anything readable works — PDFs, photos of receipts, spreadsheets, bank statements. But the documents are not equal, and two of them do most of the work.
The two that matter most
Last year's return. It is the only thing that lets the build notice an absence: something claimed last year with no counterpart this year. A missing figure produces no error on its own — it produces a smaller number that looks fine — so without the prior year nothing is watching for it.
This year's ATO pre-filling report. It is authoritative for the income side, and it is what the build reconciles against rather than trusting a payslip someone photographed.
The rest, by entity type
| Return type | Also worth having |
|---|---|
| Individual | Payment summaries, private-health statement, rental agent summary, logbook |
| Sole trader | Bank statements for the full year, asset purchases, home-office basis |
| Company | Trial balance, BAS for every quarter, the ATO integrated client account |
| Trust | Trial balance, the trust deed if a distribution question is likely, BAS |
| Partnership | Trial balance, partner agreement, BAS |
What happens when a file lands
Each file shows Uploading & analysing while it is read. When it settles it carries a suggested name, the period it covers, and the role it plays — a trial balance and a supporting receipt are routed differently, and that routing is what puts a figure in the right schedule.
The Sources rail is where you see what it decided:
Wait for the reading to finish
A document still being read is not part of the case. Pressing generate while files are mid-analysis builds a working paper from the ones that happened to finish first.
When a file cannot be read
A photo too blurred to read does not fail silently and it does not guess. It becomes a line that says so, with the reason, and it counts against the case until you replace it.
The trial balance is its own page
For company, trust and partnership cases the trial balance has a dedicated screen — upload the export from Xero or MYOB, or fill the firm template directly. Accounts are auto-classified and you correct what it got wrong.
Duplicates
Files are hashed on content. Upload the same document twice — under a different name, from a different folder — and the second copy is kept for the record and excluded from the build. You do not need to delete it.
Build your first working paper
From an empty case to a finished Excel working paper — what to upload, when to press generate, and how to read what came back.
The case model
A case is one client for one financial year. What that constraint buys you, how a case moves through its stages, and how last year's case seeds this year's.