Schedule 1 — Monthly BAS Service (Engagement terms)

Version 2026-10-17j · Fingerprint dee2e753298f7352

These terms set out what Redhorse does for you each month, what we need from you, and how the arrangement works. They sit under the Redhorse Master Agreement as its Schedule 1: the Master Agreement covers the general legal terms, and this schedule covers the monthly BAS service. You accept both when you sign at sign-up.

1. Who we are and who you are

We are Redhorse Accounting (ABN 43 532 575 493), a sole trader practice. Our principal is a Chartered Accountant, a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), holds a CA ANZ Certificate of Public Practice, and is a registered BAS agent (registration number 26085346). Our principal provides or supervises all the work in this schedule.

You are the business named at sign-up, and anyone you authorise to use the portal for that business.

We are a BAS agent, not a tax agent. We can't prepare or lodge income tax returns, or give advice about income tax. See section 3 for how tax returns are handled.

You can check our registration on the Tax Practitioners Board's public register at tpb.gov.au/public-register: search for registration number 26085346. The register shows our registration details and any sanctions.

Disclosure under the Code of Professional Conduct. We confirm that no events have occurred in the last 5 years that the Tax Agent Services (Code of Professional Conduct) Determination 2024 requires us to disclose to you. We'll tell you promptly if that changes.

Purpose of this schedule. This schedule sets out and confirms our understanding of the terms of your engagement, as APES 305 Terms of Engagement requires. It covers each month and each quarter while you remain a client, from the day you sign until either of us ends it (section 11).

2. Your plan and what's included

Your plan depends on the size of your business:

You choose your plan at sign-up based on your current figures. If your business grows into a different plan, tell us. We'll give you at least 30 days' written notice before moving you to that plan's fee, and you can cancel before it applies.

On either the Red or Gold plan, we provide:

1. Receipts and bills. You send receipts by photo, upload or email. We read them, suggest coding, check them, and record them in your Xero file.
2. Bank reconciliations. We reconcile your bank feeds in Xero each week, matching transactions to receipts, bills and invoices.
3. Quality checks. We flag possible duplicates, GST errors, unusual coding and large overspends, and ask you to confirm or explain.
4. Your numbers in the portal. Sales, results, cash, invoices owing and a forecast, drawn from your Xero file.
5. Bills into Xero. Supplier bills you approve are entered in Xero, ready for you to pay.
6. Monthly CFO-style review. Commentary on your key ratios and results, with practical suggestions. This is general business commentary, not financial product advice.
7. Quarterly BAS. We prepare your Business Activity Statement, send it to you for approval, and lodge it with the ATO.

The Red plan suits up to 200 receipts and bills a month, and the Gold plan up to 600, each with one Xero file. If you regularly go over that, we'll talk to you before changing anything.

Payroll (optional)

If you choose payroll, we process each pay run in Xero Payroll: we check the hours and pay, lodge Single Touch Payroll (STP), calculate super and prepare the super payment for you to approve, track leave, send payslips, and set up new starters and leavers. We also flag unusually long shifts or high hours for you to confirm.

These fees assume your employees record their time electronically, for example in Deputy or similar timesheet software, or are salaried. More complex payrolls need a one-off setup, quoted upfront: for example, moving from paper timesheets to an electronic system, or calculating industry-specific or custom allowances. You remain responsible for approving each pay run, paying your employees and paying super on time.

What this service is not

• Not an audit or review. We compile, check and lodge from the information you and your Xero file provide. We don't audit or review it, so we don't give any assurance on it.
• Not a fraud check. Our quality checks may pick up some errors, but this engagement can't be relied on to find fraud, theft, other illegal acts or every error.
• Limited to this schedule. We only do the work described here, or in a quote you accept.

3. What isn't included

The monthly fee doesn't cover:

• setting up Xero, or catch-up bookkeeping for past periods
• payroll, unless you've chosen the payroll option above (charged per pay run), and setup for complex payrolls
• annual GST returns, instalment activity statements or other lodgements not listed in section 2
• work for more than one business or Xero file
• income tax returns or income tax advice

If you need any of these, we'll quote a fixed price and get your agreement in writing. The quoted fee is payable in advance, and we start once it's paid.

Tax returns. You choose how your tax return is done:

• A Redhorse partner. We match you with a registered tax agent, based on what you told us matters to you. The partner contracts with you directly and sets their own fees.
• Your own accountant. We keep your books ready for them and, with your permission, give them what they need at year end.

Either way, the tax agent is responsible for your tax return, not Redhorse.

4. Your responsibilities

You remain responsible for your own tax affairs, including the accuracy of what is lodged for you. To make that work, you agree to:

• send us all receipts, bills and information relevant to your business, and tell us about anything unusual, such as asset purchases, loans, private use or cash sales
• give complete and accurate information, and answer our queries in the portal promptly
• review the coding we suggest, and check each BAS before you approve it
• keep your Xero subscription active and the connection to the portal in place
• keep your business records for at least five years, as the law requires
• tell us promptly about changes to your business, such as a new entity, a change of ownership, or registering or cancelling GST

Australia's tax system works on self-assessment: the ATO generally accepts what is lodged but can review it later. If you disagree with an ATO decision, you may have a right to object and to have it reviewed. Talk to us or your tax agent first.

If you give us complete and accurate information on time, the law may protect you from some ATO penalties if we make a mistake. This is often called safe harbour. It doesn't apply to information you didn't give us, or gave late.

5. Our responsibilities and professional standards

We will do the work in section 2 with reasonable care and skill, and on time. In doing so we:

• follow the Code of Professional Conduct in the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 and the Tax Practitioners Board's requirements
• follow the CA ANZ professional standards, including APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants and APES 305 Terms of Engagement
• keep your information confidential, except where you agree or the law requires us to share it (section 9)
• tell you about any conflict of interest and how we'll manage it
• tell you if we can't meet a deadline, before it passes
• keep professional indemnity insurance that meets CA ANZ's requirements, and give you details of it if you ask
• respond to actual or suspected non-compliance with laws and regulations (NOCLAR) as APES 110 requires, which may in some cases mean raising it with you or reporting it

Quality review. As a CA ANZ member in public practice, our work may be selected for CA ANZ's quality review program. The reviewers may see your file, and they are bound by confidentiality.

We can't act on instructions that are illegal or that would breach our professional obligations. If that happens, we'll explain why.

6. Your BAS and the ATO

You authorise us to act as your BAS agent with the ATO. This lets us add you to our client list, see your ATO activity statement accounts, and prepare and lodge your BAS.

Each quarter:

1. We prepare your BAS from your Xero file and send it to you in the portal, with any queries.
2. You review it and approve it. Your approval is your declaration that the information is true and correct.
3. We lodge it with the ATO and tell you the amount payable or refundable and the due date.

We won't lodge a BAS you haven't approved. Paying the ATO is your responsibility; we don't handle your money. ATO refunds are paid straight to your nominated bank account, never to us, and we don't hold any money on trust for you.

Lodging through a registered agent usually gives you more time to lodge and pay. We'll confirm your due dates each quarter. If you don't approve in time, we'll lodge as soon as you do, but any ATO penalties or interest for late lodgement are your responsibility.

7. Fees and payment

• Monthly fee: the fee for your plan in section 2, charged monthly in advance from the day you sign up: Red $80 plus GST ($88 including GST), Gold $300 plus GST ($330 including GST), or the amount in your personalised quote.
• Payroll (if chosen): the per pay run fee in section 2, charged monthly in arrears for the pay runs processed that month.
• How you pay: monthly in advance, by direct debit or EFT bank transfer, as you choose at sign-up. Direct debits are collected automatically at the start of each month through our provider, Ezidebit. If you pay by EFT, please pay each invoice into the bank account shown on it, before the start of the month it covers. We'll never change our bank details by email alone, so call us to check if you're ever told they've changed. We send a tax invoice each month.
• Extra work: quoted at a fixed price, agreed in writing and paid in advance, before we start.
• Price changes: we give you at least 30 days' notice in writing. You can cancel before the new price applies.
• Late payment: if a payment is late or a direct debit fails, we'll tell you and try again, and a late payment fee of $10 (including GST) applies to each late payment. We don't charge interest. If it's still unpaid after 14 days, we may pause the service until it's paid. We'll always tell you before a BAS due date is affected.

Fees already paid for the current month aren't refunded when the engagement ends, except where the law requires.

Referral reward. If you refer a business to us using your referral link in the portal and they sign up as a new client, and stay with us for 6 months, you then get 5% off your monthly plan fee for the following 6 months. If they leave before their first 6 months are up, no discount is earned. The discount applies to your Red or Gold plan fee only, not to payroll, setup or other work. Each referral earns its own 5%, up to a total discount of 20% at any time. The discount is shown on your tax invoice, can't be exchanged for cash, and ends if you stop being a client. A business can only be referred once, and you can't refer your own business or a related entity.

8. The portal, Xero and automation

Your Xero file stays yours. You keep your own Xero subscription. When you connect it to the portal, you choose what the portal can do, and you can disconnect it at any time in Xero. The portal can read your chart of accounts and reports, add suppliers, and create draft bills with receipts attached. It can't move money or change your bank details.

Automation helps, people check. The portal uses software, including AI, to read receipts, suggest coding, flag unusual items and draft commentary. These suggestions can be wrong. You check the coding when you publish a receipt, and we review your figures before we prepare your BAS. AI is never the final decision on what's lodged.

Your login. Keep your password private, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account. You're responsible for what happens under your login, unless it's caused by our failure to keep the portal secure.

Where your information is kept. The portal runs on Microsoft Azure in Sydney, where your account, receipts and records are stored, encrypted and backed up. Cloudflare provides the website, receipts email and security, through its global network. Xero holds your books under your own Xero subscription. Anthropic's Claude, an AI service in the United States, reads receipts and drafts commentary; it receives the receipt or figures it is working on, and doesn't keep them to train its models. We don't outsource any part of the service to other accountants or bookkeepers. If any of this changes, we'll tell you first. The Privacy Policy has the full list.

Availability. We aim to keep the portal running at all times, but it relies on services such as Xero, the ATO and our hosting providers. If any of them is unavailable, we'll work around it and tell you if a deadline is at risk.

9. Privacy, confidentiality and tax partners

We handle your information as described in the Redhorse Privacy Policy. By signing this schedule, you consent to us sharing it with the providers named in section 8 to provide the service. Otherwise, we share it only:

• with the ATO, to lodge for you
• with Xero and the service providers that run the portal, under confidentiality terms
• with a tax agent, only when you ask us to
• where the law requires it

Tax partners. If you choose a Redhorse partner for your tax return, we'll only pass your details and books to them once you've confirmed the match. If you use your own accountant, we'll share your books with them when you ask.

Referral fees. We don't receive referral fees or commissions from partner tax agents. If that ever changes, we'll tell you before we refer you.

10. Liability and your consumer rights

The Master Agreement sets out how our liability is limited. In plain terms:

• Nothing in these terms takes away your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. Services we provide come with guarantees that can't be excluded.
• We're responsible for errors we make. We aren't responsible for losses caused by information you didn't give us, gave late or gave inaccurately, or by services outside our control, such as Xero, your bank or the ATO's systems.
• We are covered by the CA ANZ Professional Standards Scheme, which limits our liability: Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

11. Ending the engagement

There's no lock-in contract. To leave, give us one month's written notice in the portal or by email. Your monthly fee continues to the end of the notice period. You can still cancel without notice before a price or terms change takes effect, as sections 7 and 13 say.

If you don't give us what we need. We can only do this work with your information and responses. If you don't send what we've asked for, or answer our queries, within 14 days of us asking in writing, we're released from our obligations for the work affected, including any BAS that depends on it, and any ATO penalties or interest are your responsibility. We may then cancel your plan by written notice, and we'll tell you about any lodgement due in the next 30 days.

We can end the engagement with 30 days' written notice. We can end it sooner if fees remain unpaid after we've reminded you, if you ask us to act unlawfully, or if continuing would breach our professional obligations.

When the engagement ends:

1. We finish any BAS you've already approved, and tell you what's outstanding.
2. We remove ourselves as your BAS agent with the ATO.
3. You can download your receipts and records from the portal for 30 days, or ask us for a copy.
4. The portal's connection to your Xero file is removed. Everything in your Xero file stays yours.

If you move to another BAS agent or accountant, we'll give them the information they need, with your permission.

12. Complaints

If you're unhappy with our service, please tell us first at hello@redhorseaccounting.com.au. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 2 business days and aim to resolve it within 30 days.

If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to:

• the Tax Practitioners Board, about our conduct as a registered BAS agent, at tpb.gov.au
• Chartered Accountants ANZ, about a member's professional conduct, at charteredaccountantsanz.com

13. General

• Changes to these terms. We'll give you at least 30 days' notice of any change, by email and in the portal. If you don't agree, you can cancel before it takes effect.
• Reports are for you. The reports, commentary and BAS we prepare are for your own use in running your business. Please don't give them to a lender, buyer or anyone else to rely on without asking us first.
• Order of documents. If these terms and the Master Agreement conflict, the Master Agreement applies, except that this schedule decides what services are included.
• Law. These terms are governed by the law of Queensland.