Superannuation and SMSF.

Each year we prepare the fund's financial statements and member records, arrange the independent audit the fund is required to have, and prepare and lodge the SMSF annual return with the ATO. In between we keep the fund's administration and record-keeping current so nothing is left to reconstruct at year end.

An external, independent auditor does. Independence rules mean the firm that prepares your fund's accounts cannot also audit them, so we arrange the audit with an independent, ASIC-registered SMSF auditor, prepare the file, and manage the process through to lodgement. The audit has to be completed before the annual return can be lodged.

No. We keep the fund compliant and tax-effective but stay independent of where it is invested. Where financial product advice is required, we work alongside appropriately licensed financial advisers.

Yes. We provide establishment support for a new SMSF and then handle its administration, annual accounts, tax compliance, and the tax and compliance side of contributions and pensions, including account-based pensions.

Usually more than one thing. Transfer balance account events, such as a member starting a retirement-phase pension, are reported to the ATO on a transfer balance account report, and most events are reported quarterly, within 28 days of the end of the quarter in which they happened. A fund registered for GST also lodges business activity statements, and a fund that withholds tax from a benefit payment reports that too. We keep these current alongside the annual accounts and the SMSF annual return, so a missed quarterly report does not surface a year later.

This is one of the easiest compliance failures to trip over. Once a member starts an account-based pension, the fund must pay at least a minimum amount each financial year, worked out by applying a percentage factor for the member's age to the pension account balance at 1 July. If the fund does not pay that minimum in full by 30 June, it cannot treat the income supporting that pension as exempt current pension income for the year, so earnings that would have been tax free become taxable. Only a narrow exception applies, for a small underpayment in limited circumstances. We watch the minimum during the year rather than at year end, because that is when it can still be fixed.

The audit has two halves. The financial half checks the fund's financial statements, including that assets are recorded at market value and held in the fund's name. The compliance half checks the fund against the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 and its regulations, which covers the trust deed, the investment strategy, whether the fund meets the residency conditions, benefit payments and record keeping. An ASIC-registered approved SMSF auditor examines all of it, independently of us, and it has to be finished before the annual return is lodged. We prepare the file and manage the process.

It depends on how the fund is likely to change over time. With individual trustees, every fund asset is held in the trustees' names, so adding or removing a member means retitling assets. A corporate trustee is a company that acts as trustee, so a change of member changes the company's directors while the assets stay titled to the same entity. A corporate trustee costs more to establish and carries an ASIC annual review each year, which we handle under corporate services. Administrative penalties also fall differently: they are imposed on each individual trustee, but once on a corporate trustee. We can talk the choice through at establishment against what you expect the fund to do.

A fund can borrow, but only through a limited recourse borrowing arrangement, which requires a separate holding trust to hold the asset until the loan is repaid and limits the lender's recourse to that asset. It is a structure with real consequences for the fund's liquidity, its cash flow and its record keeping, and those consequences are our part of it. Whether the borrowing and the investment itself suit you is licensed territory, so we work alongside appropriately licensed financial advisers and finance brokers on that side.

Yes. To pick a fund up cleanly we need the trust deed and any amendments, the most recent financial statements and member statements, the last lodged annual return, the most recent audit report and management letter, and access to the fund's bank and investment records. Where a prior year is unlodged or unaudited, we would rather know at the start, because it changes the order the work has to be done in.