Checking your bills for GST credits before you lodge the BAS

What the ATO says you need

Per the ATO, you can claim a GST credit when you intend to use the purchase for your business (and it doesn't relate to making input-taxed supplies), the price included GST, you pay or are liable to pay for it, and you hold a tax invoice for purchases over A$82.50 including GST. You must also be registered for GST yourself.

The ATO points to ABN Lookup for checking a supplier's GST registration. Doing that one bill at a time, for every bill in a quarter, takes a long time, so most businesses never do it.

1. Export the quarter's bills

In Xero, go to Purchases, then Bills, pick the tab you need (for example Paid or All), then open the menu next to New bill and choose Export bills. The export has the supplier name, invoice date and tax amount for each line, but not the supplier's ABN, which sits on the contact record.

Any spreadsheet works too, as long as it has a supplier name or ABN, an invoice date and, ideally, the GST amount.

2. Add your contacts export

Upload the bills file to ClearABN's bulk check. If it has no ABN column, add a Xero contacts export (or MYOB card file) and each bill is matched to its supplier's ABN by name. Matching ignores case, punctuation and suffixes like Pty Ltd. Bills that match no contact, or a name that matches contacts with different ABNs, are listed so you can fix them by hand.

3. Each bill is checked on its own date

ClearABN reads the invoice date column (day first, as Australian dates are written) and looks up the supplier's ABN and GST history on the Australian Business Register. A bill is flagged "No GST on invoice date" when GST is recorded but the supplier wasn't registered for GST on that date, and "ABN not active on invoice date" when the ABN was cancelled or not yet issued. A bill with zero GST from a supplier that isn't registered passes.

Missing, cancelled and checksum-failing ABNs are flagged too. The first 25 rows of each check are free with no account.

4. Follow up before you lodge

For each flagged bill, look at the invoice and ask the supplier about it before claiming. The ATO's guidance is to wait for a valid tax invoice before claiming, even if that falls in a later period, and a 4-year time limit applies to claiming GST credits. You keep a CSV and PDF of what the register showed on the day you checked.

Register facts, not advice

ClearABN reports what the Australian Business Register shows for each date. Whether a particular GST credit can be claimed depends on more than the register; read the ATO's guidance or ask your registered tax or BAS agent.