Accounting /Document processing live field guide · 9 min

SMSF Workpaper & Compliance Pre-Check

Checks each SMSF file for complete workpapers and the common contravention indicators — caps, in-house assets, related-party dealings, year-end market valuations — so the administrator fixes gaps before the file reaches the independent auditor.

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FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reconciles the fund's records, confirms every workpaper is present and sourced, and flags the common contravention indicators — each pinned to its evidence and rule — for the administrator to clear before the file reaches the independent approved SMSF auditor.

Input 01

The fund's year-end file

Bank statements, the asset register with year-end market valuations, contribution records, member statements, the trust deed and pension documentation for the fund's annual accounts.

Agent 02

Reconciles, checks, flags

Reconciles balances, confirms each workpaper is present and traced to its source, and raises contravention indicators — cap excess, the 5% in-house asset limit, related-party dealings, a missing valuation, a pension-minimum shortfall — with the rule behind each.

Output 03

A pre-audit checklist

A completeness checklist and a flagged-issues list, each linked to its evidence and rule, for the administrator or accountant to resolve and sign off before the independent approved SMSF auditor performs the audit.

Where it works well

It runs the same completeness and contravention checks on every fund, every time, and shows its working.

Best for a practice administering a book of funds — plan-day, annual accounts, pre-audit prep — where the checks repeat and consistency matters most.
Catching a routine breach early — a missing 30 June valuation, a concessional cap over $30,000 — is worth far more than the minutes saved typing.
At dozens of funds a year, the recaptured hours go back into the judgement calls and the audit relationship, not the workpaper tick-and-trace.

The slow, invisible cost of SMSF prep is the cross-checking — tracing every balance to a statement, every workpaper to its source, and every indicator (a cap, a valuation, an in-house holding) to the rule it sits under, fund after fund, with the standard of care wandering as the day wears on.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when the fund's records are stale or incomplete — and a tidy checklist hides a thin file.

Weak where compliance turns on judgement — the sole-purpose test, whether a market valuation is reasonable, a novel related-party structure. It should flag, not rule.
On a fund with genuinely contested or complex arrangements, the routine checks are the easy part; the administrator and auditor are still doing the hard thinking.

The honest test

If you cannot say, right now, which version of the contribution caps and pension-minimum rates this is checked against, and whether every asset has a current 30 June valuation on file — this tool makes a thin file look ready, not actually ready.

Point it at a file missing a year-end valuation or a contribution record, and it produces a clean-looking checklist with a flag where the evidence should be. The flag is honest; the green ticks around it can read as more assurance than the file has earned. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It prepares the file. A person clears it, and an independent auditor audits it. That boundary is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces each contravention indicator with its source and the rule behind it

Confirms which workpapers are present and traced, and which are missing

Flags every figure it could not reconcile cleanly rather than asserting a breach

WHAT IT WON’T

Decide whether a contravention is reportable

Audit the fund or sign the auditor's report

Judge whether a market valuation is reasonable

Every SMSF must be audited annually by an ASIC-registered approved SMSF auditor before the SMSF annual return is lodged, and APES 110 independence rules keep that audit separate from the administration work — a firm generally cannot audit a fund it does the accounting for. A wrong call on a cap, an in-house asset or a related-party dealing has consequences for the members and the fund's compliance with the SIS Act. The accountable person stays on the decision because the consequence lands on them.

What your data has to look like

Complete year-end fund records, as sourced documents, with valuations and caps current.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

Bank statements reconciled to the ledger

Usual weak point

Asset register with 30 June market valuations

Needs shaping

Contribution records per member, by type

Usual weak point

Current caps and pension-minimum rates, versioned

Needs shaping

Trust deed and pension documentation

Usually ready

The real first job

The weak point is almost always the year-end valuations and how fund documents are captured — a missing property valuation, a contribution record that lives in an email. Getting fund-document intake consistent across the book, and the caps and rates held as a versioned, current set, is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the checking layer on top. Once the inputs are clean, every fund after that is faster and right by default.

Right fit if…

You administer a book of SMSFs and prep them for audit regularly

Dozens of funds a year, mostly recurring annual-accounts work

Fund records arrive as sourced documents you can trace, not loose figures

You keep contribution caps and pension-minimum rates current and versioned

Walk away if…

Most of your funds carry complex or contested arrangements turning on judgement

Year-end valuations are routinely missing or unsupported at 30 June

Contribution and bank records live in emails and spreadsheets nobody owns

You want a tool that audits the fund or decides what's reportable for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It is a pre-check that surfaces contravention indicators for a person, not a system that decides. It raises potential issues — a concessional cap over $30,000, in-house assets above the 5% limit, a related-party dealing, a missing 30 June valuation — with the source and the rule attached, and where the evidence isn’t there it says so rather than asserting a breach. The administrator reviews every flag, and the independent approved SMSF auditor still audits the fund. The tool surfaces the indicators; the people stand behind the calls.

It works from sourced documents — bank statements, the asset register, contribution records, the trust deed. If a contribution record or a property valuation only exists in an email someone retypes, the check is only as good as that retyping, and the tool can’t tell a typo from a real figure. Getting fund-document intake consistent across the book is usually the first piece of work — and the piece that pays off across every fund after.

No, and it can’t. Every SMSF must be audited annually by an ASIC-registered approved SMSF auditor before the annual return is lodged, and APES 110 independence rules mean the audit is separate from the administration work. This tool serves the administration side — getting the file complete and the obvious issues fixed before it reaches that independent auditor. It never audits and it never signs.

Current to this financial year. For 2025-26 the concessional cap is $30,000 and the non-concessional cap is $120,000, both rising (to $32,500 and $130,000) from 1 July 2026, and the pension-minimum drawdown runs from 4% under 65 up to 14% from age 95. Point it at last year’s figures and it checks confidently against the wrong numbers. The rule set is versioned and updated as the ATO changes it; keeping it current as the caps step up is exactly what the ongoing arrangement covers.

Member and fund financial data is sensitive personal information under the Privacy Act. Any deployment runs inside an environment you control via API, not a public chatbot, and fund or member data is never used to train third-party models. Access is role-based and every flag is cited to its evidence. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; the Nguyen Family Super Fund is not a real fund.

It checks that a 30 June market valuation and its supporting evidence are present for each asset, because that is mandatory under SIS Reg 8.02B — but it does not judge whether a valuation is reasonable. A missing or unsupported valuation is flagged for the administrator to chase; the reasonableness call stays with the person and, ultimately, the auditor.

What it takes to build

4–6 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude · document intake · rules engine · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One contained check, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Keeps caps & rules current

Considering this for your practice?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one contained check, low risk. Tell us where the pre-audit prep hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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