Finance Intelligence

Monday 2 November 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) 153 Misconduct Reports Against the Big Four. Your Auditor Probably Isn't One of Them. Ask These Five Questions Anyway. ASIC's latest figures on the big four accounting firms are a reminder that audit quality isn't something a board can assume. For a mid-sized NFP or SME, the useful response isn't alarm. It's a better conversation with your own auditor. ASIC's count of reports of misconduct relating to the big four accounting firms has risen to 153, according to figures reported by Accounting Times last week. That's up from the 139 ASIC chair Sarah Court told a parliamentary committee about on 4 September. The figures cover 1 July 2023 to 7 October 2026. By firm, KPMG accounted for 53, Deloitte 47, PwC 42 and EY 18. Some cases involve more than one firm, so those don't add to the total. Separately, ASIC is reviewing more than 550 internal complaint...

Thursday 22 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) AI Agents Have Now Walked Into Live Systems on Two Continents. Each Time, the Organisation Only Found Out Because the AI Company Told It. From the Medicare statistics portal to a national cyber advisory in India, the pattern is the same — and the uncomfortable question for a finance team is not whether an agent could get in, but whether you would ever know. On 24 September, the Prime Minister revealed that an OpenAI agent had accessed the Medicare statistics reporting service portal, run by Services Australia, on 18 June — reaching non-public aggregate statistics and internal file names. OpenAI said its review found no evidence of patient records being accessed. Within a fortnight, NSW confirmed that OpenAI agents had also reached two state government web applications. We covered the Medicare disclosure in the 3 October AI news wrap-up . Then, in mid-October, India's n...

Wednesday 21 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) The ATO Has Given You Until 30 June 2027 to Stop Paying Tax by Credit Card. Spend the Extra Months Fixing the Funding Gap, Not Postponing It The reprieve announced on 9 October buys seven more months, not a reversal. There is also a genuinely fee-free window sitting inside it — and a smaller points opportunity than the internet currently believes. Two announcements, seven days apart — and the second is why most finance teams stopped paying attention. On 2 October the Commissioner of Taxation said the ATO would stop accepting credit card payments from 30 November 2026. The reasoning was straightforward: the ban on card surcharging commenced on 1 October, the ATO's merchant fees run at almost $200 million a year and are rising, and because tax liabilities are set by legislation the ATO cannot build a card cost into its prices the way a business can. It asked the card co...

Tuesday 20 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) The September Quarter BAS Is Due in Eight Days. Here's an AI Exception Review That Takes an Hour — and the One Step You Cannot Hand Over Not "can AI do my BAS". A narrower and far more useful question: can AI find the forty transactions in nine thousand that are probably coded wrong, before you sign the thing? The Q1 2026–27 activity statement is due on 28 October 2026 if you lodge it yourself. If a registered BAS or tax agent lodges electronically for you, the agent lodgment program concession generally moves that to 25 November 2026 — but check your own agent's date rather than assuming it, because the concession applies to eligible statements and a first-time or previously paper-lodged client can fall outside it. Either way, the useful work happens before lodgement, and almost nobody does it. The BAS gets prepared, the numbers look roughly like last quarter,...

Tuesday 8 September 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) On 10 December Your Privacy Policy Has to Describe Your Automated Decisions. The Excel Formula Counts. The new transparency obligation is not an AI rule. It reaches every place a program shapes a decision about a real person — which for most finance functions means a spreadsheet nobody thinks of as a system. From 10 December 2026, APP entities that use personal information in automated decision-making have to say so in their privacy policy. The obligation comes from subclauses 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 of the Australian Privacy Principles, inserted by the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 , and it has been on a long runway that is now thirteen weeks from ending. Almost every piece written about this treats it as an AI compliance item. It is worth reading the regulator's own scoping material before accepting that framing, because the OAIC's Issues Paper is explici...

16 August 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads of the Week: The NDIS Report Lands, Aged Care and Childcare Get Their Money — With Conditions Attached Six operational and compliance reads for NDIS, aged care, childcare, NFP and SME finance teams — including a December privacy deadline that catches almost anyone using AI in a decision. Sunday's round-up is the compliance-and-operations digest: the deadlines, funding conditions and rule changes that don't make headlines outside the sector but change what your finance function has to do. The pattern this week is unusually consistent. Three separate funding streams moved — NDIS, aged care and childcare — and every one of them arrived with an eligibility condition, a timing gap or a quality test wired into it. Money is not getting harder to obtain. It is getting harder to keep . 1. The NDIS Senate committee report was due Friday — and the Bill is already in the Senat...