What does the ATO require of trustees for the audit?
According to the ATO, trustees must appoint an approved SMSF auditor each year, no later than 45 days before the SMSF annual return is due. The audit must be complete before the return is lodged, and it is required even in a year with no contributions or payments. Before the audit starts, trustees must give the auditor a statement of financial position and an operating statement for the previous financial year. If the auditor asks for more information, trustees must provide it within 14 days. The auditor must be registered with ASIC and independent of the fund.
Which documents does an auditor ask for?
Request lists differ between auditors, so work from the list your auditor sends. The ATO notes that auditors must hold sufficient documentation to support their findings, and it has published information on the evidence needed for matters such as verifying the market value of fund assets. Lists commonly cover the groups below, and automation can be set up to collect and file each group the same way every year. Keep each auditor's previous request list on file for the fund, so the expected documents can be prepared before the new list arrives.
- Financial statements, the general ledger and year-end account balances.
- Bank statements for every fund account for the full year.
- Investment holding and transaction statements, and year-end valuations.
- Contribution and benefit payment records.
- Trustee minutes, resolutions and the trust deed.
- The signed audit engagement letter and representation letter.
How can automation assemble the audit file?
Preparation involves gathering documents from banks, investment platforms, trustees and earlier years, then checking that each statement covers the right period. Automation can download or receive statements, name and file them to a standard structure, check that each bank account has statements covering 1 July to 30 June with no gaps, and compare closing balances with the ledger. Where a balance or period does not match, it raises a task for staff. The output is an indexed file that follows the auditor's request list, plus a list of what is still missing.
How should auditor queries be tracked?
Each auditor query should become a task with the date received, the person responsible and a due date inside the 14 days the ATO allows trustees to respond. Group queries by fund, so the administrator can see which funds are waiting on trustees and which on the practice. Automation can draft the request to trustees for a missing document using the practice's approved wording, send reminders and file the response against the query. The reply to the auditor goes from a person who has checked the answer.
What must stay with the auditor?
The ATO describes the auditor's role as examining the fund's financial statements and assessing compliance with superannuation law. The auditor provides the audit report, advises trustees of breaches and must report certain contraventions to the ATO. Auditors must hold sufficient documentation for their findings, including the audit plan, evidence, analysis and reasoning on matters that need professional judgement. Automation on the administrator's side prepares documents for the auditor and does not draft audit conclusions. Because the auditor must be independent of the fund, keep the administrator's preparation workflow separate from the auditor's own work and systems.
How do you set it up across a book of funds?
Start with funds that have simple structures: one or two bank accounts, listed investments and no property. Build the folder structure and naming convention, connect the statement sources, and run the completeness and balance checks. Compare the assembled file with what the auditor requested last year for the same funds. Add funds with property, unlisted assets or pensions later, since valuations and pension documents need more checking. Record for each fund who answers queries and which auditor it uses.