ABS Business Reporting Data Usage

ABS Business Reporting uses your accounting software to help you provide information to the ABS. To do this ABS Business Reporting will ask you to authorise the application to access your accounting software. This page describes what data the ABS has access to and how the ABS uses that data. 

ABS Business Reporting operates under ABS policies on privacy, security, and confidentiality. Please see the ABS Privacy, Security and Confidentiality pages for detailed information about these policies. 

When you use ABS Business Reporting you will be asked to authorise the application’s access to the data in the accounting software of your, or your client’s selected business. 

When authorising with ABS Business Reporting, users will be asked to select a specific business and grant ABS Business Reporting read-only access to that business’: 

• Chart of accounts 
• Profit and loss statement 
• Balance sheet 
• Australian business number (ABN) 

When authorising with ABS Business Reporting, users will also grant access to: 

• Name 
• Email 

ABS Business Reporting can view this information as long as a business has been authorised to be viewed by ABS Business Reporting, and you have not revoked access to the application. You can revoke access at any time in your accounting software’s application access controls. 

ABS Business Reporting will only use this access to display account information from your accounting software to allow you to generate reports in the application. 

Users can view accounts from their accounting software and associate specific accounts with specific report items while in ABS Business Reporting. Only the total for each report item will be processed by the ABS. This is equivalent to what would have been written as an answer to a question on a traditional ABS survey. 

ABS Business Reporting also saves a record of which account was associated with which report item. This allows ABS Business Reporting to automatically associate those same accounts with those report items when users return to complete subsequent reports, preventing users from having to manually add those accounts for every report.  

Your contact details are collected and stored so that the ABS can contact you if they have any queries about the values reported, and to notify you when a new report is due. 

Statistical information 

Statistical information is collected for statistical activities including the collection, compilation, analysis and publication of statistics.   

Throughout the application you will link accounts from your accounting software to report items. You may also add manual entries against report items. This information will be saved by the ABS and report item totals will be used in the production of statistics. 

Please see Privacy at the ABS for more information on how the ABS stores statistical data. 

Personal information collected for non-statistical purposes 

The ABS also collects your contact information. Some of this information is initially taken from your accounting software, and additional information is requested in ABS Business Reporting. Contact information collected includes your: 

• Name 
• Email address 
• Mobile phone number 
• Role in the business 

This information is collected and stored in order to make communicating with you easier. This information may be used if the ABS wants to contact you with questions about your responses, or to let you know when a new report is due.  

Please see Privacy at the ABS for more information on how the ABS stores non-statistical data. 

Information collected for the purposes of running the application 

As you complete the report, you will associate accounts from your accounting software with items in the report. This mapping of accounts against the report items will be stored by the ABS. This allows ABS Business Reporting to pre-fill report items with associated accounts when you return to the application for subsequent periods, removing the need for users to repeat the mapping process for each new report.  

The ABS will only store the most recent copy of the mapping of your accounts against data items in the report. When a more recent report is submitted, it will overwrite the previously stored mapping. 

Please see Privacy at the ABS for more information on how the ABS stores non-statistical data. 

You can disconnect your business from ABS Business Reporting within the application, or through your accounting software.  

Xero users 

When a business is disconnected, the ABS will no longer have access to that business’: 

• Chart of accounts 
• Profit and loss statement 
• Balance sheet 
• Australian business number (ABN) 

The ABS will also no longer have access through your accounting software to your personal details: 

• Name 
• Email 

The ABS will still have access to any information that was previously submitted in a report, including contact details, as well as the most-recent instance of data in the application.