End of financial year prep: What finance leaders need to do
The Airwallex Editorial Team
Key takeaways
End of financial year (EOFY) in Australia falls on 30 June – and as a finance leader, you need to finalise records, meet Australian Taxation Office (ATO) obligations, and close the books before that deadline.
Preparation covers six core areas: reconciling accounts, reviewing financial statements, finalising payroll and superannuation, claiming eligible deductions, meeting lodgement deadlines, and planning for the year ahead.
Modern fintech platforms like Airwallex can cut the manual workload at EOFY – from automated transaction reconciliation and Xero, QuickBooksor Netsuite sync, to real-time visibility across multi-currency accounts and global spend.
End of financial year (EOFY) is one of the most predictable events on the business calendar. And yet, it still catches many finance leaders and business owners off guard – this is not because the date moves, but because the work is spread across the whole year and tends to pile up in June.
According to research from Xero, more than a quarter (28%) of small business owners find tax time more stressful than the rest of the year¹. To make sure you are prepared, here is a detailed breakdown of what you need to know, including what to review before 30 June, which reports to produce, which deadlines to track, and how to set your team up so next year’s close is far less stressful.
Snapshot: EOFY checklist for finance leaders
Verify all income, expenses, and cash flow records are complete and correctly categorised
Reconcile every bank account, corporate card, and foreign currency account
Confirm payroll is finalised and super contributions have cleared into the fund – not just scheduled
Lock in all eligible deductions and check whether asset purchases qualify for instant write-off
Run your end-of-year financial reports: P&L, balance sheet, and any foreign currency conversions
Submit your Single Touch Payroll (STP) finalisation declaration by 14 July
Lodge your BAS and annual tax return by the relevant deadline for your business structure
If you operate across multiple entities or currencies, run the checklist for each, and then consolidate
What you need to review before 30 June
Before you can close the books, everything that happened during the financial year needs to be accurately captured. Here are the four areas to work through before you hit 30 June.
Check your income, expenses, and cash flow records
Start by confirming every transaction for the year is recorded and categorised correctly. Check that all sales invoices have been issued and recorded, all supplier bills are entered and matched to receipts, and all operating expenses are coded to the right categories.
One thing to clarify: if your business uses accrual accounting – where income is recorded when it’s earned, not when cash arrives – you’ll need to check timing carefully. Income received in July for work done in June belongs in this financial year. If you use cash accounting, you record income and expenses when money actually moves, which is simpler but still needs a thorough check.
Reconcile your bank accounts, cards, and bills
Bank reconciliation is matching your internal records against your actual bank statements to catch discrepancies, duplicate entries, or missing transactions. Think of it like checking your receipt against your credit card statement after a shopping trip – you’ll catch errors before they compound.
This applies to every account your business holds: business bank accounts, corporate cards, and any foreign currency accounts. Unreconciled accounts are one of the most common sources of EOFY errors, and they make it impossible to produce accurate financial statements.
Settle payroll, superannuation, and contractor payments
Payroll has some strict deadlines, so give this area its own focus. Confirm all employee pay runs for the year are processed and correct, and that superannuation guarantee (SG) contributions have actually cleared into the fund before 30 June, not just been scheduled.
The superannuation guarantee is the mandatory employer contribution rate set by the ATO, and for the 2025-26 year is 12%². Super contributions that don’t clear by 30 June lose their tax deductibility for that year. Also check whether any contractors paid during the year trigger a Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR), which is a report required by the ATO for certain industries that pay contractors. The TPAR lodgement deadline is 28 August each year³.
Confirm your deductions, asset purchases, and stock records
Before 30 June, identify every legitimate business deduction. Common examples include:
Operating expenses, equipment, and software subscriptions
Travel costs directly related to earning income
Interest on business loans
Home office costs, where applicable
You’ll need receipts, invoices, or bank statements to support each claim. If your business purchased assets this year, check whether they qualify under the instant asset write-off scheme – which lets you immediately deduct the cost of assets purchased and first used before 30 June. Thresholds change annually, so check ato.gov.au for the current rules. If you run a product-based business, a stocktake is also essential – your closing stock value directly affects your taxable income, and writing off obsolete or damaged stock before 30 June reduces it.
Which financial reports you need to close the year
Once your pre-close review is done, you need to produce the core financial statements that underpin your tax return. These reports are the clearest view you’ll get of how the year actually went.
Profit and loss statement
The profit and loss (P&L) statement – sometimes called an income statement – shows your total revenue minus total expenses over the financial year, arriving at a net profit or loss. Think of it as a year-in-review for your revenue. It tells you whether you earned more than you spent, and by how much. This figure is what the ATO uses to assess your taxable income, so it needs to be accurate before you lodge.
Balance sheet
The balance sheet is a snapshot of your business’s financial position at a specific date – assets on one side, liabilities on the other, with net assets (equity) as the result. Unlike the P&L, which covers a period of time, the balance sheet covers a single point in time: 30 June. You’ll need it for company tax returns, and it’s essential if you’re ever seeking finance or reporting to investors.
Foreign currency balances
If your business pays overseas suppliers, holds funds in foreign currencies, or receives revenue from international customers, EOFY close adds a layer that domestic-only businesses don’t face. Any foreign currency balances held at 30 June need to be converted to Australian dollars for tax reporting, using exchange rates accepted by the ATO.³
On top of that, unrealised gains or losses on foreign currency positions – meaning changes in value that haven’t been converted to cash yet – may need to be reported. If you’re managing multiple foreign currency accounts across different providers, pulling this together manually is time-consuming and prone to error. Consider a tax adviser with international experience and read our guide on multi-currency accounting.
Key EOFY deadlines after 30 June
Once 30 June passes, a sequence of reporting and lodgement deadlines kicks in. These vary by business structure and by whether you’re lodging yourself or through a registered tax agent⁴.
Obligation | Deadline |
|---|---|
STP finalisation declaration (payroll) | 14 July |
Super guarantee contributions Q4 (April–June) | 28 July |
Monthly BAS lodgement (June) | 21 July |
Quarterly BAS lodgement (April–June) | 28 July |
Individual, partnership and trust tax returns (self-lodging) | 31 October |
Non-full assessment company entities | 1 December |
Companies and trusts – medium to large taxpayers in the prior year | 15 January |
Companies, trusts and self-preparing taxpayers – all other entities | 28 February |
Taxable not-for-profit organisations | 25 May |
These vary by business structure and by whether you're lodging yourself or through a registered tax agent. Dates can shift if they fall on weekends or public holidays. Always confirm your specific lodgement schedule at ato.gov.au.
Single Touch Payroll finalisation
Single Touch Payroll (STP) is the ATO’s real-time payroll reporting system. It sends pay data directly to the ATO each time you run payroll, rather than at year end. At EOFY, you must submit an STP finalisation declaration by 14 July⁵, which marks each employee’s income statement as ‘tax ready’ in myGov.
Employees should wait for that ‘tax ready’ status before lodging their individual tax return. If they lodge early with unconfirmed figures, they may need to amend their return.
BAS, GST, and your annual tax return
A Business Activity Statement (BAS) is the form you use to report and pay GST, Pay As You Go (PAYG) withholding, and other obligations to the ATO – lodged monthly or quarterly throughout the year. The annual income tax return is separate and lodged after year end.
One thing that might catch you out: Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) runs on a different year – 1 April to 31 March – so the FBT return deadline falls before EOFY close⁶. If your business provides fringe benefits to employees, such as company cars or entertainment, make sure this is on your radar separately.
How to manage EOFY across multiple entities or currencies
If your business operates across multiple entities, currencies, or countries, all the steps above still apply – they just multiply. If you have an Australian parent company and a New Zealand or Singapore subsidiary, you’ll need to run the pre-close checklist for each entity separately, then consolidate.
Set a close calendar per entity
The challenge with multi-entity close is timing. Each jurisdiction may have different financial year-end dates, tax rules, and reporting requirements. A shared close calendar with clear deadlines per entity is the most reliable way to make sure nothing falls through. Set internal deadlines two to three weeks before each entity’s statutory deadline to give your team time to catch errors.
Cut off expenses and receipts early
For businesses with distributed or remote teams, the bottleneck at EOFY is often missing receipts, unapproved expense claims, and bills sitting in someone’s inbox. Set an internal cut-off date – typically one to two weeks before 30 June – by which all staff must submit expenses and receipts.
If you’re still chasing paper at year end, a spend management tool with built-in approval workflows and receipt capture can remove that bottleneck. Airwallex Expense Management can extract receipt data automatically using AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) and route claims through approval workflows so your team doesn’t have to manually chase every employee in the last week of June.
Keep a clear audit trail across currencies
For businesses paying international suppliers or holding multi-currency balances, every transaction, every foreign exchange (FX) conversion, and every cross-border payment needs to be traceable and correctly coded at EOFY. When that data is spread across multiple providers and accounts, pulling it together is disproportionately hard.
Airwallex Global Accounts can give you local bank details in 20+ countries, with all transactions visible in one place and synced directly to Xero, QuickBooks, or NetSuite – so your accounting software can reflect your actual position without manual exports at year end.
How to make next EOFY easier
EOFY stress is usually a symptom of year-round habits, not a June problem. If you close your books quickly and cleanly every year, you’re probably already treating reconciliation as an ongoing task, not an annual event.
Reconcile monthly, not annually
A continuous close means reconciling your accounts monthly rather than leaving everything to the last few weeks of June. If your books are reconciled to the end of May, June close is just one more month.
Use tools that remove manual work
The right tools take the manual effort out of EOFY. Three categories make the biggest difference:
Accounting software: Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite automate bank feeds and generate financial statements directly from reconciled data, so you’re not building reports manually.
Payroll with STP: Payroll software with STP built in submits pay data to the ATO in real time, so EOFY finalisation is a one-click declaration rather than a manual rebuild.
Spend management: Tools that capture receipts, approvals, and expense categories as they happen mean there’s no backlog to clear in June.
Consolidate your financial operations on one platform
If you’re managing global operations, the EOFY workload compounds quickly – fragmented accounts across currencies, manual reconciliation across multiple tools, and slow approval workflows for expenses and bills all add up. Airwallex brings these together in one platform, so you spend less time chasing data and more time closing accurately.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Global accounts: Hold and receive funds in 70+ currencies with local bank details for 20+ countries – no manual FX tracking across separate foreign accounts.
FX & transfers: Send payments to overseas suppliers at interbank rates, with all FX activity visible in one place for EOFY reconciliation.
Expense Management: AI-powered receipt capture and approval workflows can mean expense data is complete and categorised well before 30 June.
Bill Pay: Upload, approve, and pay domestic and international invoices with AI data extraction that can reduce manual entry and coding errors.
Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite integrations: Transactions can sync automatically, so your accounting software can reflect your actual position without manual exports.
Ready to simplify your next EOFY close? Open an Airwallex account and see how much manual work you can take off the table.
Frequently asked questions
When should a business start preparing for EOFY?
Ideally, EOFY prep is year-round – reconciling accounts monthly means most of the work is done before June arrives. If you’re starting fresh, aim to begin no later than May, so there’s time to chase missing receipts, correct errors, and make any deductible purchases before 30 June.
What are the four financial statements a business needs at EOFY?
The four core statements are the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, and the statement of changes in equity. For most small and medium businesses, the P&L and balance sheet are the priority for tax purposes.
What records does the ATO require to support a business deduction claim?
To claim a deduction, the expense must be directly related to earning your business income, and you must have records to support it – receipts, invoices, or bank statements. Visit ato.gov.au for a current list of eligible deductions for your business type.
How does EOFY prep change if your business pays overseas suppliers or holds foreign currency?
Foreign currency balances held at 30 June must be converted to Australian dollars for ATO reporting using approved exchange rates, and unrealised FX gains or losses may need to be reported. A tax adviser with international experience is worth involving early to make sure nothing is missed.
What should a finance leader ask their accountant before 30 June?
Three questions worth asking: Are there any deductions or concessions we haven’t claimed? Have our super contributions cleared – not just been scheduled? And, are there any timing decisions – such as asset purchases or debt prepayments – we should make before the financial year closes?
Sources
This information doesn’t take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs. If you are a customer of Airwallex Pty Ltd (AFSL No. 487221) read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for the Direct Services available here.
The Airwallex Editorial Team
Airwallex’s Editorial Team is a global collective of business finance and fintech writers based in Australia, Asia, North America, and Europe. With deep expertise spanning finance, technology, payments, startups, and SMEs, the team collaborates closely with experts, including the Airwallex Product team and industry leaders to produce this content.
