ATO CC.0001 2016 Business Implementation Guide

Standard business reporting ATO CC.0001 2016 Business Implementation Guide

Standard Business Reporting
Australian Taxation Office –
Client Communication 2016 (cc.0001)
Business Implementation Guide
Date: 20October 2016
Draft for consultationProduction Release - suitable for useCandidate Release
This document and its attachments are Unclassified /
For further information or questions, contact the SBR Service Desk at or call 1300 488 231. International callers may use +61-2-6216 5577

VERSION CONTROL

Version / Release date / Description of changes
0.1 / 20/10/2016 / Draft for software developer consultation

ENDORSEMENT

APPROVAL

David BakerDirector

Tax Practitioner, Lodgment Strategy and

Engagement Support

Australian Taxation Office

© Commonwealth of Australia 2016 (see exceptions below).
This work is copyright. Use of this Information and Material is subject to the terms and conditions in the "SBR Disclaimer and Conditions of Use" which is available at . You must ensure that you comply with those terms and conditions. In particular, those terms and conditions include disclaimers and limitations on the liability of the Commonwealth and an indemnity from you to the Commonwealth and its personnel, the SBR Agencies and their personnel.
You must include this copyright notice in all copies of this Information and Material which you create. If you modify, adapt or prepare derivative works of the Information and Material, the notice must still be included but you must add your own copyright statement to your modification, adaptation or derivative work which makes clear the nature of your modification, adaptation or derivative work and you must include an acknowledgement that the adaptation, modification or derivative work is based on Commonwealth or SBR Agency owned Information and Material. Copyright in SBR Agency specific aspects of the SBR Reporting Taxonomy is owned by the relevant SBR Agency.

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Standard business reporting ATO CC.0001 2016 Business Implementation Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.Introduction

1.1.Purpose

1.2.Audience

1.3.DOCUMENT CONTEXT

1.4.Glossary

2.What are the Client communication interactions?

2.1Client communication – List

2.1.1Client identifier

2.1.2Date range

2.1.3Delivery method

2.1.4Sort order

2.2Client communication – Get

2.3Interactions

2.4Channels

3.Authorisation

3.1Intermediary Relationship

3.2Access Manager

4.Constraints and Known Issues

4.1Client communication list

5.Client communication Guidance

5.1Formation of the request and response messages

5.1.1Retrieve Client Communication List Service

5.1.2Retrieve Communication Item Service

5.1.3Record Pagination

Table 1: Interactions available in the Client communication process

Table 2: Channel availability of Client communication interactions

Table 3: Parties able to use Client communication

Table 4: Access Manager Permissions

Table 5: Client communication List constraints

Figure 1: SBR interactions and the Client communication List process

Figure 2: SBR interactions and the Client communication Get process

Figure 3: SBR interactions and the Client communication List pagination process

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Standard business reporting ATO CC.0001 2016 Business Implementation Guide

Introduction
Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide information to assist software developers in understanding the business context surrounding the Client communicationinteractions. These interactionsare performed with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) through the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) platform.

This document defines the interactions available to a tax practitioner to view and access client communications sent from the ATO, and explains any constraints and known issues with the use of the interaction.

Specifically, Client communication refers to the interactions with the ATO for a tax practitioner, depending on their role, to:

Request and receive a list of communications sent to a client
Request and retrieve a copy of the communication item.
Audience

The audience for this document is any organisation implementing the Client communication interactions into their products. Typically this will be software application developers and business analysts.

1.3.DOCUMENT CONTEXT

The ATO Client communication Business Implementation Guide forms part of the broader suite of documents used by the ATO to describe or interpret how the technical implementation relates back to the business context and process. This document is designed to be read in conjunction with the ATO SBR documentation suite including the:

Web service/platform information
Message information eg ATO Message Implementation Guide, and

Test information eg Conformance suites

See the SBRhigh level document map for the relationship of this document with others in the suite.

1.4.Glossary

For a glossary of terms, refer to the SBR website.

What are theClient communicationinteractions?

When a tax practitioner is authorised by the client to represent them for the income tax or activity statement role with the ATO, the tax practitioner may need to view communications sent from the ATO to the client.This functionality will be available through the Client communication interactions and supports all individual and non-individual entities.

2.1Client communication – List

The Client communication list service allows the tax practitioner to request the list of communications sent to the client from the ATO within a certain time frame. A flowchart of instructions is presented at Figure 1 over the page.

The service comprises the following search parameters:

Client identifier
Date range
Delivery method

Additionally, the tax practitioner is able to select the sort order and pagination settings of how the results are to be returned to them.

2.1.1Client identifier

The client’s TFN or ABN must be provided when the tax practitioner is requesting a list for a single or group of specified clients. If the tax practitioner is seeking a list for all their clients linked to their registered agent number, no client identifiers are to be provided in the list request.

2.1.2Date range

The date range of the request is a mandatory field and cannot be a date in the future. Communication history data is only available from 1 July 2008. The response message may be delayed if a large date range is selected in the list request due to large number of communication items available between the date range.

2.1.3Delivery method

The available delivery methods are:

Paper
myGov
SMS
Email

The tax practitioner can select one, all or a selection of delivery methods in the request. If no delivery method is included in the request, the list response will return all methods by default.

2.1.4Sort order

The list response is able to be returned in a specified order. The records can be returned in order of either ‘Sent date’ or “Client name’ and in either ascending or descending order. Where no sort preference is included in the list request, the response will return the data in the order of sent date > descending, followed by client name > ascending.

Figure 1: SBR interactions and the Client communication List process

2.2Client communication – Get

The Client communication Get service allows the tax practitioner to retrievea communications item from the List response.

The Client communication List response contains a ‘Communication Item ID’, which a mandatory requirement in the Get request.

Figure 2: SBR interactions and the Client communicationGet process

2.3Interactions

The Client communication process could consists of the following interactions:

Service / Interaction / Detail / Single / Batch / Optional
CC
(Client communication) / CC.list / Request and receive a list of client communication / Y / Y / Y
CC.get / Request and retrieve a communication item / Y / Y / Y

Table 1: Interactions available in the Client communication process

2.4Channels

The Client communication interactions are available in the following channels:

Interaction / SBR Core Services / SBR ebMS3.0
CC.list / N / Y
CC.get / N / Y

Table 2: Channel availability of Client communication interactions

Authorisation
Intermediary Relationship

The SBR services an intermediary (e.g. software user) can use on behalf of their clients depends on the activity being undertaken and whether the intermediary has a relationship with the client.Namely,anintermediary has the appropriate authorisationfor the interaction being performed on behalf of the taxpayer recorded in ATO systems.

For the Client communications interactions, the tax practitioner must be linked at the whole of client level for tax agents or role specific for BAS agent in ATO systems.

/ The tax practitioner to taxpayer relationship is a fundamental precondition to interacting with SBR for Client communication interactions

Note:If the relationship does not exist, the SBRAdd Client Relationship interaction of the Client Update services can be used to establish a relationship between the intermediary and the taxpayer. See the Client Update Business Implementation Guide and Client Update Message Implementation Guide for further information.

3.2Access Manager

AUSkey and Access Manager are used to manage access and permissions for SBR online services. ATO systems will check if the initiating party is allowed to use the interaction through the SBR channel.

For more information on Access Manager, see theATO website. For further information on AUSkey, see the Australian Business Register’s website.

The table below displays the interactions available to each initiating party via SBR for Client communication.

Service / Interaction / Activity / Tax agent / BAS agent / Business / Business Intermediary
CC
(Client communication) / CC.list / Request and receive a list of client communication /  / 
CC.get / Request and retrieve a communication item /  / 

Table 3: Parties able to use Client communication

A tax practitioner must be assigned the appropriate authorisation permissions to use the Client communication service. The below table references the SBR service to the relevant permission in Access Manager:

Service / Access Manager Permission
Client Communication (CC.list) / View client reports
Client Communication(CC.get) / View client

Table 4: Access Manager Permissions

Constraints and Known Issues

The Client communication service has the following unique constraints:

4.1Client communication list

# / Constraint
For single client and multiple client List requests, the response will return up to 1000 records per client.
All client searches will return all records.
Pagination is applied for all requests, and if total records exceed 1000 then further requests will have to be made to obtain that data.
The description field cannot to be provided in ascending or descending alphabetical order in the list results. This is due to the management of pagination and the correlation of responses from the internal data source.
The description field cannot be used as a search parameter in the call to the ATO. There are over 500 description titles currently in use with more being added.
Notice of assessment communication items cannot specify the income year of the assessment in the description of the response.

Table 5: Client communicationListconstraints

Client communicationGuidance
Formation of the request and response messages
Retrieve Client Communication List Service

The List request comprises the following fields for the search criteria:

Client’s TFN or ABN
Search start date
Search end date
Delivery method

With the List request, the tax practitioner can specify the order of which results are to be returned grouped by either the ‘Sent date’ or the ‘Client name’ in either ascending or descending order.

The List response will return:

Client’s TFN or ABN
Search start date
Search end date
Sent date
Client name
Description
Delivery method
Communication item ID
Total records returned for client
RetrieveCommunicationItem Service

The Get request service is used to retrieve the communication item. The message comprises of:

Client’s TFN or ABN
Communication item ID

The Get response will return:

Client’s TFN or ABN
Communication item ID

Document MIME Type Code
Communication item file attachment

5.1.3RecordPagination

The List service request and response messages also include fields concerning the number of records being returned in the response. These fields indicate where there are more than 1000 records available per client in either a single or multi-clientList request.

The List request must specify:

‘Record limit’- how many records are to be returned in the response, and
‘Record start number’ - from which record the responses are to be received.
Total records – how many records actually exist in total

The response will provide:

‘Record start number’ - the position number of the first record returned
‘Total record count’ - the total number of records available from the search criteria, and
‘Number of records per page’ - how many additional records are available per the criteria of the List request.

Figure 3: SBR interactions and the Client communication List pagination process

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