Preparing and lodging a client BAS in QuickBooks Online Accountant

Every quarter, Australian practitioners land in QuickBooks community threads with the same job on their desk: preparing and lodging a client’s Business Activity Statement from QuickBooks Online Accountant. The accepted solution to that recurring question does not point to a statement form hidden in a menu. It points to a structured review tool, and to the connected tax product that handles the filing itself. The usual symptom, before anyone finds that answer, is time lost hunting for a BAS form the accountant product does not actually contain.

Books Review is where preparation starts

QuickBooks Online Accountant does not treat the BAS as one screen you open, complete, and submit. Preparation lives in Books Review, a review tool inside each client’s file. It looks for the issues that would otherwise distort a statement, from incomplete transactions to account balances that need attention. Lodgement lives elsewhere, in QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT. The two are connected, so reviewed numbers carry across without rekeying. Get that split clear and the rest of the workflow follows.

Start the review from the Bookkeeping tab

Opening a review takes a handful of clicks, and they are worth knowing by heart at quarter’s end:

1. Sign in to your QuickBooks Online Accountant file.
2. Open the Your Practice menu and choose Clients.
3. Select the Bookkeeping tab.
4. Find the client whose BAS you are preparing.
5. In the Books Review column, select Start review. If a review is already part-done, the clock icon shows the tasks still outstanding.
6. Select View details to step inside the review tool in that client’s file.

Work through the four stages in order

The review is built as four stages, and the workflow is designed to run them in sequence: transaction review, account reconciliation, final review, and wrap up. Each stage contains its own checks, and each check is marked Done as you clear it.

The transaction review carries the most weight. It gathers uncategorised transactions, entries with no payee, transactions missing their GST detail, duplicates, undeposited funds, and unapplied payments. A blank cell in a column is the tell that data is missing. Open the transaction from there, correct it, and close the section out. You can also pin extra tasks, such as reports you want the team to check, alongside the built-in shortcuts.

The other three stages follow the same rhythm. Reconciliation comes next, with account balances under the microscope and its own sections to sign off. The final review is the last pass over the books before you commit. The wrap up then closes the review out. Nothing here is finished until every section reads Done, so resist the urge to skip ahead.

Ask the client when a transaction is unclear

Guessing at a client’s transactions is how BAS errors are born, so the tool builds requests into the flow. Select one or more transactions and choose Ask client in the action panel that appears. A request form opens with a name and description already drafted. You can rewrite those fields, set a due date for the reply, and attach documents before sharing it.

Your client receives an email and answers inside QuickBooks Online, under My accountant and then the Requests tab. When the reply lands, open the client requests list inside the review tool and read what came back. The Client Requests button in the review serves the same purpose when your question is not tied to a specific transaction.

Does Books Review lodge the BAS itself?

No, and this is the part questioners keep tripping over. Books Review prepares the books and stops there; nothing is filed from inside it. Once the four stages are wrapped up, the workflow connects to QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT. That is where the BAS workpapers are prepared and where the lodgement happens. The integration is the whole point: the numbers you just cleaned up flow across, so you are not rebuilding the statement in a second product. Treat the wrap up as a gate, because a half-finished review hands over a half-finished set of books.

The short version

Open the Bookkeeping tab, start the client’s review, and clear all four stages in order. Use client requests early rather than assuming what a transaction was for. Finish the wrap up completely, then move to the tax side for the workpapers and the lodgement itself. That sequence is what the accepted answer prescribes, and it is the cycle we would run at each quarter’s end.