Industry, accounting
AI automation for accounting firms in Melbourne
Accounting compliance automation reads the client records, engagement letters and receipts your firm already gets. It checks them against the rules, then keeps a register you can actually search. The professional judgment stays where the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 puts it, with your registered practitioners.
Fixed-price discovery. You see the scope and the cost before anything gets built.
- Public practice
- Tax and BAS agents
- Melbourne, Victoria
Talk to a human in Melbourne
Get your client files looked at
Tell us what your client records, engagement letters and source documents look like today. We will tell you straight whether we can help.
A real person reads every enquiry.
The short version
Accounting compliance automation, in plain English
Accounting compliance automation is software that does the repeatable half of practice admin. It reads client records, engagement letters and source documents, pulls out the details that matter, checks them against your rules, and sends anything doubtful to a named person.
Built for Melbourne practices working under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009, the Code of Professional Conduct Determination 2024 and APES 110.
What it does
- Reads every document, however it arrives
- Checks each field against the rule behind it
- Keeps a register you can search in seconds
What it never does
- Sign a return or give advice
- Reach an audit or assurance conclusion
- Decide whether a tax position is defensible
The actual problem
Nobody sat the CA program to become a document chaser
Ask an accountant what the job is. You'll hear about structuring, advice, and the year they saved a business that didn't know it was in trouble.
Then ask what last Tuesday actually looked like.
[Puts on reading glasses] Chasing a signed engagement letter. A client who sent eleven receipt photos to a personal mobile. A trust resolution everyone assumed somebody else had filed.
That gap is the whole business case. The judgment can't be replaced. The chasing can.
So we aim at the chasing, and stay well away from the judgment.
A confession
I once handed my accountant a fuel receipt that had spent a summer in my glovebox. It looked like a ghost had tried to write a shopping list on a warm napkin.
They were very kind about it. So when I say receipts arrive in rough shape, I'm speaking as part of the problem.
Engagement letterSigned. Page 3 missing.
Trust resolutionFiled by somebody. Probably.
Receipts11 photos, 1 car park
What we automate
Six document flows accounting compliance automation is built for
These are the six places a practice loses time to paper instead of thinking. Each one is a build we've scoped in Melbourne accounting practices.
Client onboarding
A new client arrives as a scanned licence, a half-finished form and an ABN hiding in an email signature. The completeness check runs the day it lands, not halfway through the job.
Customer due diligence
If you provide the services AUSTRAC now regulates, due diligence happens before the service starts. Kept as structured records, the file builds itself as you go.
Workpaper source documents
Invoices, bank statements and receipts photographed in a car park. Each one becomes data tied to the client, the period and the job.
Lodgement approvals
Every return needs the client sign-off behind it. Tracked as data, an approval is easy to prove. Buried in an email thread, it's a search you run under pressure.
Engagement letters and scope
Scope creep is a paperwork problem before it's a billing problem. The current letter stays attached to the client, and unsigned ones get flagged.
Advice and correspondence
Section 30 asks for records of the nature, scope and outcome of each service, kept for at least five years. Captured as it happens, that's a search, not a lost afternoon.
Under the hood
A very patient filing clerk, not a chatbot
It reads everything, never loses a page, and asks a person whenever it's unsure. Here's what happens to one document.
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01
Ingest
Scans, phone photos, PDFs and email attachments land in one place. However they arrive, and whatever state they arrive in.
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02
Extract
Each document becomes typed fields. Client, period, ABN, date, signature. Every value links back to its page.
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03
Validate
Every field is checked against its rule. Dates in order, ABN valid, authority current, signature present.
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04
Route
Clean records go into your register. Anything doubtful goes to a named person, with the source document beside the question.
Engagement letter
Signature missing- Client
- Client 0412, family trust
- Document
- Engagement letter, emailed PDF
- Source
- Page 3 of 3, signature block
- Rule
- Signed by the client before work starts
- Next step
- Sent to the client manager to chase
That last step, where a person decides, has a name. It's called human in the loop and it's the part we take most seriously.
And my glovebox receipt from earlier gets flagged as unreadable. Which is fair. Nobody has been able to read it since 2019.
Before and after
Same judgment, minus the archaeology
Nothing here changes what you advise or who signs it. It changes how long it takes to find things.
BeforeThree people are each sure they hold the current client list.
AfterOne register, one current version, every change named and timestamped.
BeforeA scope change agreed on the phone never reaches the engagement letter.
AfterScope changes are tied to the engagement, whatever channel they came in on.
BeforeAn unsigned engagement letter turns up during a review.
AfterMissing signatures are flagged the day the letter arrives.
BeforeA workpaper points at a source document that moved folders in March.
AfterEvery workpaper value links back to the page it came from.
BeforeFive years of advice records get pulled together in the week a request lands.
AfterThe record set builds as you go, so a request is a search.
Send us one awkward document. We'll show you what its after looks like.
Book a Pain Point AuditHow it works
Three stages. The first one exists so you can say no.
This isn't a platform you migrate to. It reads what your practice already gets, and gives back something you can defend.
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First
Fixed-price discovery
We map the document flows you really run, not the ones on the process map. You get what could be automated, what shouldn't be, and what it costs. The output is yours either way.
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Then
We encode your rules
Your onboarding checklist, engagement terms, sign-off steps and retention rules. This is the part generic templates skip. It's also what makes the register defensible.
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Ongoing
It runs, your team reviews exceptions
The pipeline does the reading and checking. Your people make the calls. A far better use of a senior accountant than retyping a bank statement.
What you get
From a client file to a register you can defend
Every build ends with the same kind of output, whatever mess it started from.
Searchable, not a filing cabinet.
Rule by rule, for every field.
Every value traces back to its page.
Doubtful records go to a person.
Named and timestamped.
Into the tools you already run.
Notably absent from this list, a spreadsheet called CLIENT_LIST_FY26_FINAL_v4_ACTUAL.xlsx.
The framework
The rules we write validation against
Validation rules are only worth having if they match the rules you answer to. Two of them changed recently.
Record keeping
1 Jul 2025From this date, the section 30 record rule applies to practices with 100 or fewer employees. Larger practices started on 1 January 2025.
Retention
5 yearsThe minimum time to keep records of each service, in English.
AML and CTF
1 Jul 2026Obligations started for newly regulated professions, including some accounting services.
Record keeping
Section 30 of the Code of Professional Conduct Determination 2024 asks for records showing the nature, scope and outcome of each service, kept for at least five years. The Tax Practitioners Board guidance says it covers making records, not just keeping them. It also reaches work your contractors do for you.
AML and CTF, if it applies
AUSTRAC lists the designated services in table 6 of subsection 6(5B) of the AML/CTF Act 2006. They're transaction work, like helping with transfers of real estate or a body corporate, holding client property and providing a registered office address. Ordinary tax and audit work isn't on the list. If a vendor says every firm is captured, ask which item they mean.
The ethics code
APES 110 is the ethical benchmark you work to. Automation doesn't interpret it. It makes sure the records you need to show you met it are present, current and filed against the right client.
The five fundamental principles in APES 110
- 1Integrity
- 2Objectivity
- 3Professional competence and due care
- 4Confidentiality
- 5Professional behaviour
Software shouldn't decide any of this. It should track it, timestamp it and route it to the person accountable.
The line we don't cross
What automation must never touch
This is the shortest section on the page and the most important. Automation earns trust by where it stops.
The professional opinion
Signing a return, giving advice and deciding a position is defensible are tax agent services. The Tax Agent Services Act 2009 places them with a registered practitioner. An audit conclusion sits with the auditor who signs it. No extraction accuracy changes that.
The judgment call
Structuring. Contested deductions. The client who wants a position you won't sign. That's where experience earns its fee, and where software should stay quiet.
We've written more about what human in the loop really has to mean, because the boundary matters more than the capability.
Next door
The same build, in the industries beside you
This shares its engine with the other work we do at Lumeio. The document problems rhyme.
Oversight
Human in the loop, defined
What a real human review looks like, and how to stop it becoming a rubber stamp.
Read moreBuilding surveying
Building surveying compliance automation
Permits, notification stages and certificates against the Building Act. Different regulator, same evidence problem.
Read moreConstruction
Construction compliance software
ITPs, SWMS, site diaries and subcontractor certificates, turned into a register somebody can audit.
Read moreAged care
AI automation for aged care
Care notes and incident records against the new aged care rules, on the same underlying build.
Read moreWaste and EPA
AI automation for waste management
Weighbridge dockets and transport certificates, turned into a register an EPA officer would accept.
Read moreMore from Lumeio
Notes on regulated document work
Short pieces on what auditors ask for, where admin time goes, and why we check before we store.
Read moreOr start at the overview of AI automation for regulated industries to see what every build has in common.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
The ones we hear most from Melbourne practices. If yours isn't here, ask us and a real person will answer it.
What is accounting compliance automation?
Accounting compliance automation is software that handles the repeatable half of a practice. It reads incoming client records, engagement letters, source documents and correspondence, pulls out the fields that matter, checks those fields against the rules that govern them, sends anything uncertain to a person, and keeps a structured register. It does not form professional opinions. Signing returns and giving advice stay with the registered practitioner.
Does this replace a registered tax agent or accountant?
No, and it legally cannot. The Tax Agent Services Act 2009 places the service and the accountability with the registered practitioner, and no software can hold that. What automation removes is the reading, keying, chasing and cross-checking around the work. The advice itself, and the judgment behind it, stay with your people.
Will it work with the documents we actually receive?
That is the design brief. Phone photographs of receipts, scanned bank statements, forms filled in by hand, and information buried in the body of an email are all normal inputs. During discovery we deliberately ask for your worst examples rather than your clean ones, so you see the failure modes before you commit to anything.
How does it help with the five year record-keeping rule?
Section 30 of the Code of Professional Conduct Determination 2024 asks for records showing the nature, scope and outcome of each service, kept in English and retained for at least five years. The obligation applies from 1 July 2025 for practices with 100 or fewer employees. Capturing those records as structured data when the work happens means producing them later is a query rather than a reconstruction from inboxes and folders.
What happens when the system is not sure?
It says so. Any record that cannot be validated against its rule is flagged and sent to a named person with the source document attached, rather than quietly filled in with a best guess. In regulated work a confident wrong answer is a lot more dangerous than an admitted gap, so the system is built to escalate rather than assume.
Next step
Send us the worst document in your client file
The receipt photographed in a car park. The engagement letter signed across three fields. We'll show you what we could pull out, what we couldn't, and what it would take. No slides.
- Fixed-price discovery
- You keep the output
- A real person replies
PS. The glovebox receipt is welcome too. We can't promise to read it. Nobody can.