Every EOFY checklist tells Australian firms what to do before 30 June. This one adds the column that changes the workload: what to automate, so the checklist runs itself next season instead of running your staff. Each item below pairs the compliance task with the agent workflow that carries it, drawn from what firms deployed through the last lodgement season. Rates and thresholds move every year, so verify the current super guarantee rate, write-off settings and caps when you run this; the automation should flag those numbers for review, never assume them.
Client data and documents
The task: year-end data requests across the whole client base. The automation: request lists built per client from last year's file, chase emails drafted and tracked, arrivals read and checked off. The season flattens because documents arrive weeks earlier
The task: reconciliations clean before 30 June. The automation: continuous exception checks on bank, GST, payroll and clearing accounts, so year-end starts from verified balances instead of archaeology
The 30 June deadline cluster
Trust distribution resolutions: a tracker across every trust client, with draft minutes prepared from the deed and prior-year pattern for the accountant to settle. The decisions are human; the deadline-watching is not
Div 7A minimum repayments: a flag list of shareholder loans, repayment status and agreements needing attention, assembled from the ledgers while there is still time to act
Super guarantee timing: contributions must clear the fund before 30 June to be deductible this year, so the reminder pulse goes out in early June, drafted per client with their actual figures
Asset and depreciation reviews: the schedule scanned for disposals, low-value pools and write-off candidates, listed for a decision rather than discovered in September
Tax planning at scale
The April-to-June planning season is where firms earn advisory fees, and it is chronically squeezed because every meeting needs a pack: current-year position, projected tax, options with numbers. An agent prepares those packs from live Xero data across the client base, so partners walk into planning meetings with drafts instead of building them at 9pm. Firms report this single workflow changes how many planning conversations they can actually offer, which at $300-plus advisory rates is revenue, not just saved cost.
Payroll year-end, prepared early
STP finalisation lands 14 July, but the work is June work: payroll reconciled to the ledger, terminated employees confirmed, fringe benefits amounts carried over from the FBT return. The automation runs the variance checks across every employer client in June and lists the exceptions, so the July declaration fortnight is a review exercise. The firms that suffered last July were not short of knowledge; they started the checks on 1 July.
What last season proved
None of this is speculative. Through the July-to-October lodgement season just past, Australian firms ran exactly these workflows: the document chase cut weeks off job cycle times, BAS and payroll first passes turned preparation into review, and the exceptions reports caught the reconciliation gaps that would otherwise have surfaced as amendments at $400 to $900 of unrecoverable time each. The pattern that emerged is worth writing on the wall: every deadline in the accounting calendar is downstream of the same three bottlenecks, information arriving late, assembly consuming staff hours, and attention stretched across too many dates. Automate those three and every entry on this checklist inherits the improvement. Chase the deadlines one by one and next June looks exactly like last June, only with newer software logos.
How to read the recovered hours
Be deliberate about where the freed capacity goes, because it does not allocate itself. The natural destinations in the EOFY quarter are the planning meetings the firm never had room to offer, earlier starts on the big compliance jobs, and simply ending the June overtime that burns out the people who carry the season. Firms that name the destination in April capture it; firms that do not watch the hours quietly refill with low-value work by August.
The meta-item: put the checklist itself in software
The most valuable automation is the checklist's own memory. A scheduled morning pulse carries the whole calendar, June resolution deadlines, super cut-offs, the July-to-October lodgement stack behind them, and reports what is due, what is blocked and what arrived overnight. The partner's mental load moves into a system that does not take leave in school holidays. At a blended $170 charge-out, the coordination hours alone that this replaces across a season are worth more than the $3,500 the whole setup costs.
Working the list before it works you
Run the checklist in April and the season is manageable; discover it in June and you are triaging. The same is true of the automation: deployed in autumn, the skills are tuned on live files before the peak arrives. A fixed-fee Claude Cowork setup covers the folder design, connectors and the first skills, typically live within a week. Book a brainstorm call with your worst item from last EOFY, and next year's checklist gets its automation column filled in properly.
