June 30 is where messy voucher records become visible.
If your business sells gift vouchers, your accountant needs more than a total sales number. They need to know what is still outstanding, what was redeemed, what expired, and whether GST has been handled according to the type of voucher sold.
That does not have to be difficult. But it does need to be done before the year closes, not reconstructed afterwards from a spreadsheet, a till drawer, or a staff member's memory.
This checklist gives you the practical EOFY records to prepare for your accountant or BAS agent.
This is general information only, not accounting or tax advice. Your accountant should confirm the correct treatment for your business.
Six things to check before June 30
The EOFY voucher review comes down to six records:
- your outstanding voucher liability,
- vouchers that expired during the year,
- whether the liability account reconciles,
- GST treatment across the year,
- the GST reconciliation report,
- the opening voucher balance for the new year.
Run those in order and your accountant's review gets much easier. Skip them, and the voucher side of the business can turn into a reconstruction job.
Why EOFY hits differently when you sell gift vouchers
For many small businesses, end of financial year is a contained exercise: reconcile the bank, gather receipts, review income, and hand the records to the accountant.
Gift vouchers add another layer.
A voucher sale is not always finished when the cash arrives. Some vouchers are still outstanding. Some have been partly redeemed. Some expired during the year. Some were face value vouchers where GST is generally dealt with at redemption. Others may have been non-face value vouchers where the GST timing is different.
Your accountant does not need a lecture on any of this. They need clean records.
At June 30, the key question is:
What voucher value is still unresolved?
That means sold but not fully redeemed, refunded, expired, voided, or otherwise dealt with.
01 - Run your outstanding voucher liability
The first number your accountant will ask for is the outstanding voucher liability at June 30 - the total face value of all vouchers that have been sold but not yet fully redeemed, expired, or refunded.
This is what sits as a contract liability on the balance sheet under AASB 15.
How to get it
In VoucherGrid, run the Outstanding Liability Report as at 30 June. It should show opening balance, sales, redemptions, expiries, adjustments, and closing balance.
If you are working from a spreadsheet, you need to filter to vouchers issued before June 30 and still active, then sum the remaining balances.
What your accountant needs
A single, dated figure for total outstanding voucher value, with a breakdown by voucher type if your products are mixed.
02 - Identify vouchers that expired during the year
Vouchers that expired during the year with a remaining balance need to be reviewed.
Do not leave them sitting untouched forever. Do not assume they are income without review.
Your accountant needs to decide how to treat the expired balance. For face value vouchers, ATO guidance says an increasing adjustment can apply to unredeemed balances, and the adjustment is 1/11th of the unredeemed balance, reported at label 1A on the BAS.
How to get it
In VoucherGrid, run the Breakage Report for the financial year. It should show voucher code, issue date, expiry date, original value, redeemed amount, unredeemed balance, voucher type, and expiry period.
If you are working manually, you need to go through old voucher records and identify anything that expired during the year with a remaining balance. This is where manual systems get painful. The relevant voucher may have been issued years ago.
Common mistake
The common mistake is treating all expired vouchers the same way.
A face value voucher, a non-face value voucher, a package voucher, and a store-credit voucher may not all have the same GST or accounting treatment.
If you are not sure which category your vouchers fall into, review your voucher products with your accountant before year end.
03 - Reconcile your voucher liability account
If your accounting file has a voucher liability account, the balance in that account at June 30 should reconcile to your voucher system's outstanding liability report.
It may not match perfectly without accountant review, especially if you have old data, manual adjustments, refunds, migrations, or prior-period issues. But it should be explainable.
If the two numbers do not match, something needs investigation. Common causes include a voucher sale posted to income instead of liability, a redemption posted to income instead of reducing liability, a partial redemption recorded incorrectly, an expired voucher not processed, a refund recorded in one system but not the other, an opening balance imported incorrectly, or a manual journal posted without a voucher reference.
The goal is not to make the software look perfect. The goal is to make the difference visible enough that your accountant can review and correct it.
If you do not have a voucher liability account at all - and voucher sales have been going straight to income - EOFY is a natural time to review the setup.
Your accountant may decide whether current-year corrections, prior-period adjustments, or a clean opening balance are needed. That is their call. Your job is to give them the voucher history.
04 - Check GST treatment across the year
Run through voucher activity for the year and confirm that GST has been handled according to voucher type.
At a high level, your accountant may want to review whether face value voucher sales were excluded from GST-taxable sales at the time of sale where applicable, GST on face value vouchers was recognised when redeemed for taxable supplies, non-face value voucher sales were treated according to the supply identified at purchase, GST adjustments for unredeemed expired face value vouchers were identified, and refunds and voids were treated consistently.
This is not something to guess.
If you have been selling both open dollar-value vouchers and named treatments, packages, meals, or experiences, the distinction matters.
If something looks wrong
If GST has been reported incorrectly on prior BAS periods, your accountant or BAS agent can advise whether a correction or revision is needed and how to lodge it.
The practical point for EOFY is simple: do not wait until after the accounts are finalised to discover that all voucher types were treated the same way.
05 - Pull the GST reconciliation report for your accountant
Your accountant needs to be able to verify that the GST flowing through your voucher program matches what was lodged or needs to be reviewed.
A purpose-built voucher system should produce a GST reconciliation report showing voucher events by period.
That report should separate voucher sales, redemptions, partial redemptions, expiries, refunds, voids, adjustments, voucher type, and GST component where relevant.
If you are working from a spreadsheet, this can become a manual reconstruction exercise. You need to pull dates, amounts, voucher categories, redemption history, and GST components from your records, then organise them by BAS period.
That is possible at low volume. It becomes fragile once vouchers are being sold and redeemed every week.
06 - Note your opening voucher liability for the new year
Whatever the reviewed voucher liability balance is at June 30 becomes the starting point for the new financial year.
Document it clearly. Your accountant may record it in the accounting software. You may also keep a summary report on file.
If you are switching from a manual system to VoucherGrid at the start of a new financial year, this opening balance becomes your starting voucher inventory. Every outstanding voucher should be entered with voucher code, issue date, expiry date, original value, remaining balance, voucher type, and current status.
Starting the year with a clean opening balance means next EOFY is much easier. Starting with "we think there are about $12,000 of old vouchers somewhere" means the problem follows you into the new year.
EOFY is also a good time to audit your compliance posture
While you are reviewing the numbers, do a quick pass on the non-financial voucher rules too.
Four-point compliance pass
Expiry period. Are vouchers currently being issued with at least the required minimum expiry where the ACCC rules apply?
Expiry visibility. Is the expiry date clearly visible on the digital voucher, delivery email, online voucher page, and any customer-facing voucher view?
Balance lookup. Can staff look up a voucher balance without searching old emails, paper records, or archived spreadsheets?
Fee review. Are any fees reducing the voucher's redeemable value after purchase, such as inactivity, balance inquiry, administration, or redemption handling fees?
EOFY is a natural time to catch these issues because you are already looking at the voucher ledger.
The honest version of how long this takes
If your voucher records are clean, this is not a big job. Your accountant needs the reports, reviews the treatment, checks the liability, and moves on.
If you are using VoucherGrid with accounting sync and current voucher records, much of the underlying work should already be done throughout the year. The EOFY task is mainly to run the reports, provide them to your accountant, and answer any questions.
If you are working from a spreadsheet, a POS gift-card feature, a paper logbook, or a pile of exported reports, the time depends on volume and record quality. At low volume, it may be manageable. At meaningful volume, it can take hours - especially if you need to reconstruct partial redemptions, old expiries, or GST treatment by voucher type.
That is the real cost of manual voucher tracking. It is not just the time spent during the year. It is the time spent proving what happened afterwards.
The one thing to action
Before June 30, run one report:
outstanding voucher value at year end.
If you can produce that number, explain it, and reconcile it to your voucher records, you are in a good position. If you cannot, start there.
Everything else flows from that number: liability, redemptions, breakage, GST review, and opening balance for next year.
A voucher system does not need to make you an accountant. It needs to give your accountant a clean ledger.