Use Cases for LS-ATO
Whether you are building a new system, needing to expand or simplify your current system, or wanting to move away from an expensive Sending Service Provider (SSP), LS-ATO is a quick and easy way to directly interact with the ATO’s SBR system.
Moving from the ATO’s Legacy Systems
The ATO has moved away from its original systems:
SBR1 is being replaced by SBR2
The ATO's SDK is no longer supported and its license does not allow it to be used for any new or non-tax related ATO services (e.g. STP).
The easy solution is to use LS-ATO - a modern, small, simple, feature-rich AS4 software client for SBR2 that supports all of the ATO’s services, and easily drops into any existing system.
Support for STP and new ATO services
The ATO's old SBR1 is now deprecated, and there are many limitations with the ATO’s legacy SDK (including licence restrictions). With LS-ATO, all SBR2 services are fully supported including tax time (e.g. IITR, CTR, PTR, TRT, etc), PLS (e.g. AS, CUREL, GRPT, etc), payroll (e.g. STP, TFND, TPAR, etc), superannuation (e.g. FVS, SMAT, STIC, etc) and new services (e.g. CLNTCOMM).
Smaller, simpler, easier
Most implementations that have used the ATO’s legacy SDK have had to contend with its bulky size, cumbersome configuration, and complex integration requirements. In contrast, LS-ATO is a tiny (only 4 MB), fast, single executable that requires no extra packages or privileges to run. Integration is as easy as invoking LS-ATO with appropriate command line options.
Rich in Features
The ATO’s legacy SDK just provided bare-bones messaging functions and required applications to do a lot of work handling the many SBR2 message types, file formats and options. By comparison, LS-ATO is feature-rich and automates many tedious aspects of SBR2 such as assembly/disassembly of batch/bulk interactions, and natively interfacing to the ATO’s M2M keystore, including its automatic renewal.
Moving from a Sending Service Provider (SSP)
While SSPs offer a convenient web service interface, their pass-through role comes at a cost. Most SSPs are expensive, as they charge based on employee or data volume. There are privacy implications with allowing the SSP to handle sensitive payroll data. And your payroll service may be more cumbersome because the SSP introduces extra steps getting requests and responses to/from the ATO.
Reduce costs
SSPs typically charge per employee or based on the amount of payroll data, which gets increasingly expensive the larger the employer. Moving to LS-ATO offers a considerably cheaper solution, as there's just a single tiny cost for each entire pay-run.
Keep your data private
While SSPs are trustworthy, it is preferable not to have your data passing through them. With LS-ATO, you directly connect to the ATO, and so your customer's payroll data remains private between your application and the ATO.
Gain more control
Though most SSP interfaces are relatively simple, they add extra steps and limitations. By using LS-ATO to directly interact with the ATO, your software can be more responsive (e.g. notification of results), more flexible (e.g. how to handle retries) and provide richer information (e.g. progress indicators and error reporting).
Improve your Desktop Products
Upgrading to LS-ATO is especially attractive for accounting, tax and payroll desktop applications which may be struggling with the ATO’s legacy and cumbersome SDK, or using an expensive intermediate SSP.
Tiny in size
LS-ATO is incredibly tiny, just a single 4 MB executable. This makes it is easy to package and distribute within your desktop application install. LS-ATO is also easy to deploy, as it requires no additional libraries, dependencies or special privileges to run.
Callable from any language
LS-ATO can be invoked using any system call that can start a process. LS-ATO has been integrated with a wide range of application languages including .NET, Java, PHP, Python, Go, Rust, Delphi, NodeJS, and even 4GL languages.
Unlimited number of copies
Our licensing model allows you to distribute and run as many copies of LS-ATO as you need. This means there is no extra cost if there is a large number of small usage desktop clients. It also works well for a progressive rollout and growing software companies.
Improve your Cloud Service
Upgrading to LS-ATO is especially attractive for cloud-hosted accounting, tax and payroll service providers who are looking to expand their services beyond what the ATO’s legacy SDK licence allows, or looking to move away from using an expensive intermediate SSP.
Fast and efficient
LS-ATO is tiny, just a 4 MB executable file, and uses miniscule amounts of CPU and memory to run, helping you keep your operational runtime costs low. LS-ATO is up to 10x faster, 20x smaller and 50x more efficient than any other ebMS3/AS4 client.
Dynamically scalable
To cope with peak loads, many instances of LS-ATO can be run concurrently and on demand with negligible CPU or memory costs. For convenience, LS-ATO instances can share a common configuration and, for higher performance, can share runtime tokens.
Secure and reliable
LS-ATO has been built by security experts and conforms to the ATO’s DSP Operational Security Framework. It has been running flawlessly in large-scale cloud systems as well as high-security environments for many years.