A new era has begun with the commencement of the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) program, a standardised approach to financial reporting across government agencies that could save businesses up to USD 800 million a year. Three years in development, SBR takes in several government agencies, including ASIC, APRA, the ATO, state and territory revenue offices and ABS. SBR program director, Paul Madden, said the idea is to harmonise the information reporting requirement.

“SBR is all about reducing the reporting burden for business,” he said. The program, led by the Australian Treasury, is nothing if not complex; Madden co-ordinates the work of teams across 12 government agencies. Its scope takes in about 87 different forms, including business activity statements (BAS), payment summaries (PAYG), tax file number declarations (TFN) and State Revenue Office Payroll tax. It has the potential to change the business process for more than 240 financial software developers and 2.1 million businesses. It will reduce the number of questions that require financial answers from about 9600 to less than 2840.

SBR uses eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an open specification which Madden said allows the capture of definitions and meta data. “The technology also allows you to map those definitions to the data within the business systems,” he said. It means the taxonomy can be mapped to business accounting and financial information. “The real benefit comes with being able to take the taxonomy and impose it inside business software systems so [forms] can be prefilled directly,” Madden said.