How to switch bookkeepers mid-year without missing a BAS

When is the safest time to switch bookkeepers?

Straight after a BAS is lodged. At that point the last quarter is closed, the ATO has the figures and nothing is half-prepared. A switch in the middle of a quarter works too, as long as one person is named as responsible for that quarter’s BAS from the first transaction to lodgement.

Your due date depends on who lodges and how. The table gives the quarterly BAS dates for the 2026-27 financial year. If you lodge on paper, the original due date applies. If your business receives and lodges its quarterly BAS online itself, the ATO’s two-week lodgment concession usually gives two more weeks for every quarter except October to December, and the new date shows on your activity statement automatically. A registered BAS agent lodging electronically for you can have a later date again under the ATO’s BAS agent lodgment program.

Quarter	Original due date	You lodge online yourself	A registered BAS agent lodges for you
July to September 2026	28 October 2026	11 November 2026	25 November 2026
October to December 2026	28 February 2027	28 February 2027, no later date	28 February 2027, no later date
January to March 2027	28 April 2027	12 May 2027	26 May 2027
April to June 2027	28 July 2027	11 August 2027	25 August 2027, subject to change

When a due date falls on a weekend or a public holiday, you can lodge and pay on the next business day. 28 February 2027 is a Sunday and Monday 1 March is Labour Day in Western Australia, so in practice that quarter is due on Tuesday 2 March 2027.

The agent program date has a condition. It applies only if your previous BAS was lodged electronically, and a first statement, or one after a paper lodgement, may be due earlier. Ask your new agent to confirm the due date showing on its client list before you rely on it.

What this means for timing: the October to December quarter has no later date for anyone, so a switch in January or February 2027 leaves the new team the least room. A switch in late November or early December 2026, once the July to September BAS is lodged, gives the new team until 2 March 2027 to own a full quarter. If you lodge monthly, the same logic applies one month at a time, and the two-week concession does not apply to monthly statements.

Who lodges the BAS for the quarter you switch in?

This is the gap a switch can fall into. The outgoing bookkeeper assumes the new team will pick the quarter up, the new team assumes it is finished, and the BAS sits unprepared past its due date.

Settle it with one of two arrangements, in writing. In the first, the outgoing bookkeeper reconciles the quarter and lodges its BAS, then hands over. That suits a switch in the last weeks of a quarter or just after it ends. In the second, the new team takes the whole quarter from the last reconciled date and needs every record for it. That suits a switch early in a quarter. Both work. A quarter nobody has agreed to own does not.

Say, as an example, your bookkeeper gives four weeks’ notice in mid-November 2026, and the July to September BAS has not been lodged. If your bookkeeper is a registered BAS agent lodging for you, ask them to lodge it by 25 November 2026, and keep them linked as your agent until it is lodged. If your business lodges its own BAS, it was due on 28 October 2026, or 11 November 2026 if you lodge online, so lodge it now and tell the new agent. Either way, ask for books reconciled to 31 October 2026 and nominate the new agent the same week, so the October to December quarter is theirs from the start.

How do you move your BAS agent at the ATO?

If your business is a company, trust, partnership or other entity with an ABN, your business nominates the new agent. The agent cannot do it for you. In the ATO’s Online services for business, the business’s principal authority, or someone they have authorised, goes to Profile, then Agent details, and adds the new agent under Agent nominations using the agent’s registered agent number. Tell the agent the same day, so they can complete the link. If the agent has not completed the link within 28 days, the nomination expires.

Sole traders do not nominate an agent this way at present. If you are a sole trader, your new agent will tell you how they link to your business.

Before you nominate, check the new agent on the Tax Practitioners Board register. After you nominate, ask the agent to confirm in writing that the link is complete and which services it covers. Leave the outgoing agent linked until they have lodged the last BAS they agreed to lodge, then remove them, so the quarter always has someone able to lodge it.

Visory is a registered BAS agent, which you can check on the Tax Practitioners Board register.

What should the outgoing bookkeeper hand over?

Ask for these before the last day, not after it. Each one saves the new team from rebuilding something the old bookkeeper already knows.

What to get	Why it matters
Admin access to your Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks file, with the subscription in your business’s name	Whoever holds the subscription controls who gets in. It should be an owner of the business, not the bookkeeper.
Admin access to your payroll software and to the service you use to pay super	The next pay run and its super payment cannot wait for the handover.
The last reconciled date for every bank, card and loan account	It is where the new team starts. Everything after it gets checked again.
Any lock date set in the file	A lock date stops edits to periods already reported. The new team needs to know where it sits.
This financial year’s BAS lodgements and working papers	The next BAS builds on them, and any adjustment carried forward sits in the papers.
Payroll year-to-date figures and leave balances, plus super paid and still owed	Each employee’s end-of-year figures and super depend on a clean carry-over.
Who makes the Single Touch Payroll finalisation declaration, if the switch lands between April and July	Most employers must finalise by 14 July, and one person needs to own it.
Unpaid bills and unpaid customer invoices	So nothing is paid twice and nothing owed goes unchased.

Agree in writing which records come back to you, in what form, and by when. Change the outgoing bookkeeper’s logins on the agreed last day, including bank and payroll access. Our guide on giving a bookkeeper safe access to your bank explains how to set roles so that no one person both prepares and approves a payment.

What happens to payroll and super if you switch between pay runs?

Payroll cannot wait for the handover. Since 1 July 2026, super must reach each employee’s fund within seven business days of payday under Payday Super. A pay run that slips during a switch now puts super at risk within days, not at the end of a quarter.

Name who runs the next pay run before the outgoing bookkeeper’s last day. Then have the new team check their first pay run against the last one the old bookkeeper ran: the same people, the same rates, the same leave balances and super paid. If payroll moves to new software mid-year, agree who carries each employee’s year-to-date figures across, so their income statements are right after 30 June.

With Visory, your Payroll Officer runs your payroll. Delphi AI prepares and checks the routine work in the background, and you approve before a dollar moves. See how payroll runs.

How long does switching bookkeepers take?

It depends on the state of the books, so any timeline given before someone has looked at them is an estimate. Granting access takes a conversation. Books reconciled to a known date hand over quickly. Books that are months behind need a catch-up first, which goes back to the last properly reconciled period.

With Visory, any catch-up is scoped and quoted in your proposal as part of onboarding, before work starts, and the books then move to one flat monthly fee. Outstanding BAS are prepared by a registered BAS agent. Read what catch-up bookkeeping involves.

What does it look like when Visory takes over?

It starts with a 30-minute discovery call. A senior member of the Visory team then runs the free financial health check on your own numbers: they analyse your financials and show you where your finance function can improve. A proposal follows, with the scope and one flat monthly fee. Most engagements land between about A$1,250 and A$4,000 a month, ex GST, and your proposal fixes the number. There is also a one-off onboarding fee, which covers the clean-up of your books, system setup and integrations, and the transition of admin. It is set out in your proposal before you commit to anything.

Your books stay in your own Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks file, and any change to your setup is agreed with you before we start. As a registered BAS agent, the team prepares and lodges your BAS. If you leave, Visory runs a full, professional offboarding and handover, so your records, lodgements and access pass cleanly to whoever takes over.

If you are planning a switch, a 30-minute call is enough to map the quarter, the agent link and the handover. Book a discovery call

Common questions about switching bookkeepers

Do I have to wait until 30 June to change bookkeepers?

No. You can switch at any point in the year. The BAS quarter matters more than the financial year: switch just after a BAS is lodged, or agree in writing who lodges the quarter you switch in.

What if my bookkeeper holds the accounting subscription?

Ask them to transfer it to your business before their last day. Whoever holds the subscription controls access to the file. With Visory, the books stay in your own file, so ending the service later means removing Visory’s access, not moving your records.

Do I have to change accounting software when I switch?

Not if you use Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks: Visory works inside your existing file. On other software, any move is set out in your proposal and agreed with you first.

What if the books are months behind and a BAS is overdue?

A catch-up comes first. It goes back to the last properly reconciled period, and outstanding BAS are prepared by a registered BAS agent. Visory scopes the catch-up in your proposal as part of onboarding into ongoing bookkeeping, rather than as a one-off job.