GST Registration

Tell Rebased whether — and from when — your business is registered for GST. Rebased uses this to decide whether you can charge GST on what you sell, and how the GST you pay on purchases is treated in your accounts.

Unlike other accounting software, Rebased tracks your registration date (not just an on/off switch). This means you can backdate a registration, de-register, or re-register, and Rebased automatically reclassifies the affected transactions for you — no manual rework.

Why registration status matters

In Australia you can only charge GST once you are registered for GST (compulsory above $75,000 turnover, voluntary below). Registration status affects two things:

What you sell — If you are not registered, you must not charge GST on invoices, quotes, or credit notes. Doing so would issue an invalid tax document.
What you buy — If you are not registered, the GST you pay on bills and expenses is not claimable. It becomes part of the cost rather than money the ATO owes back to you.

Rebased handles both automatically based on your registration date.

Setting your registration status during onboarding

When you create a business and verify your ABN, Rebased reads your GST registration status (and date) directly from the Australian Business Register (ABR) and pre-fills the GST Registration section for you.

You can confirm or adjust this before finishing setup:

Registered for GST — Toggle on or off
Registration Date — The date your GST registration took effect

This applies to all signup paths — standard signup, adding another business, and advisor onboarding of a client business.

Managing registration in Settings

You can change your GST registration status at any time:

Go to Settings
Open the Company Details page (Business tab)
Find the GST Registration section

Here you can:

Turn registration on or off with the toggle
Set the Registration Date — when your registration took effect
Set a De-registration Date (optional) — leave blank if you are still registered

When you save, Rebased reclassifies every affected transaction and confirms how many lines were updated.

Note: The de-registration date must be after the registration date. Leave it blank while you are still registered.

Backdating, forward-dating and de-registering

This is where Rebased differs from incumbents. When you change your registration dates, Rebased looks at every transaction in the affected period and moves the GST to the correct account automatically — for both what you bought and what you sold.

Change	What happens to purchases	What happens to sales
Register (backdated)	GST paid on bills/expenses on or after the new date moves from the non-claimable account back to GST Paid (claimable).	GST on past sales is absorbed — see below.
Register (from today)	Future purchases start routing GST to GST Paid. Past purchases are untouched.	No effect on past sales.
De-register (backdated)	GST paid on or after the de-registration date moves from GST Paid to the non-claimable account.	If you charged GST on sales now in the unregistered period, Rebased warns you (no automatic change) — see below.
Re-register	Reopening your registration window moves the relevant GST back to GST Paid.	GST on sales in the reopened window is absorbed.

Every change is recorded in an audit log, including how many transactions were reclassified and how much sales GST was absorbed, so there is a clear history of what changed and when.

Note: In incumbent software, backdating a GST registration usually means a bookkeeper has to manually re-edit or re-import historical transactions. In Rebased it is a single date change.

Backdated registration — GST absorbed on past sales

When you backdate your registration, the ATO treats the money you already received on sales in that period as GST-inclusive: 1/11th of it is GST you now owe — regardless of what your customer was invoiced.

Because Rebased records unregistered sales with no GST (the N/A tax code), it can handle this for you automatically. When you backdate, Rebased absorbs the GST on those sales:

It takes 1/11th of each affected sale and moves it from your income to GST Collected.
A $1,100 sale becomes **$ 1,000 income + $100 GST**. Your customer sees no change — nothing is re-invoiced.
It posts one adjustment per BAS quarter (dated to the quarter end) so the GST lands in the correct BAS.

This means your BAS for those past quarters now correctly includes the GST you owe — without you re-entering a single invoice. The adjustments appear in your Audit Trail (labelled “GST absorbed on unregistered-period sales”), and if you ever need to undo one, you can reverse it there.

Already lodged a BAS for that quarter? Rebased skips it (it won’t change a lodged period) and tells you, so you and your accountant can handle that quarter manually.

Backdated de-registration — sales that already charged GST

If you backdate a de-registration to a period where you had already charged GST on sales, Rebased does not silently reverse it — you genuinely collected that GST from customers, so it needs a decision (remit it to the ATO, or refund the customer).

Instead, Rebased shows a warning telling you how many sales charged GST in the now-unregistered period and the total amount, so you and your accountant can decide how to handle it via a manual adjustment in the Audit Trail.

The “GST Expense (Non-claimable)” account

While you are not registered for GST, the GST you pay on purchases still has to go somewhere. Rebased posts it to a dedicated account:

6995 — GST Expense (Non-claimable)

This keeps your books balanced and gives you a clear, auditable record of the GST you paid while unregistered (for example, if you later need to support a backdated registration claim).

This account is created automatically for Australian businesses. When you are currently registered for GST and the account has a zero balance, Rebased hides it from your Chart of Accounts to reduce clutter. It reappears if it ever holds a balance.

Charging GST when not registered (the outbound gate)

If your business is not registered for GST on a document’s date, Rebased prevents you from charging GST on:

Invoices
Quotes
Credit notes

In the tax code selector, the only available option is N/A — every other code (including GST, GST-Free, Exempt and Input-taxed) is hidden, because those are concepts that only apply once you’re registered. A short note explains why, and if you had previously selected another code, Rebased switches the line to N/A for you.

Recording unregistered sales as N/A also lets Rebased handle backdated registration cleanly: it knows exactly which sales to absorb GST on if you register later.

This is enforced on save as well, so a document can never accidentally charge GST while you are unregistered.

Effect on reports and BAS

While unregistered, your GST Collected and GST Paid accounts stay at zero — non-claimable GST sits in account 6995 instead, and sales are recorded as N/A.
The Tax Overview shows a “Not registered for GST” guide with current financial-year turnover progress toward the $75,000 registration threshold, and the Prepare BAS workflow is hidden.
Once you are registered (including after a backdate), GST on transactions inside your registration window flows through GST Paid / GST Collected and into your BAS as normal. For backdated periods, the absorbed sales GST is included via the per-quarter adjustment.
Outstanding BAS periods start from the quarter containing your effective registration date. Pre-registration transactions do not create overdue BAS periods.
See Tax overview and BAS Preparation for how these figures roll up.

Common questions

I registered for GST part-way through the year. What do I do?

Set your Registration Date in Settings → Company Details → GST Registration. Rebased reclassifies the GST on transactions from that date forward automatically: purchase GST becomes claimable, and GST on your sales in that window is absorbed (1/11th moved to GST Collected). Transactions before that date stay non-claimable / N/A.

Do I owe GST on sales I made before I registered?

If you backdate your registration to cover them, yes — the ATO treats those sales as GST-inclusive, and Rebased absorbs 1/11th into GST Collected automatically (one adjustment per BAS quarter). If your registration starts today (not backdated), sales before today are unaffected.

I forgot to mark myself as registered and have been entering bills. Is my GST lost?

No. The GST you paid was captured in the non-claimable account. When you set your registration date (backdated to cover those bills), that GST moves into GST Paid and becomes claimable.

I accidentally charged GST before I was registered.

If you are not registered on the document date, Rebased blocks GST codes on new and edited invoices, quotes, and credit notes — only N/A is available. For any historical document, set your correct registration date first, or change the document’s lines to N/A.

Can I de-register and keep using Rebased?

Yes. Set a De-registration Date. From that date, GST on purchases becomes non-claimable again and you can no longer charge GST on new documents. If the de-registration is backdated over sales where you already charged GST, Rebased warns you so you can decide whether to remit that GST to the ATO or refund your customers (it won’t reverse it automatically).