At a glance
Industry
Transport Energy
Revenue
$30B+
Employees
9,000+
Legal Entities
50+
Tax Team
5 FTE
ASX Listed
Yes
The challenge
A leading Australian transport energy provider had outgrown their manual, Excel-driven tax compliance process. With 50+ legal entities, the cracks were showing:
Fragmented processes: Tax effect accounting, income tax returns, and book-to-tax reconciliations ran as three disconnected workflows
Key person risk: Only one individual understood the Excel model's logic, creating bottlenecks and stress
Endless reconciliations: Book-to-tax true-up took 6–8 weeks of intensive manual work, with journals often booked 3+ months after lodgement
ATO pressure: Responding to Justified Trust queries required creating new workpapers from scratch, extending response times
Team burnout: Excessive hours during close, limited time for thorough reviews, mounting stress
Why they chose TaxTime
After evaluating three established market solutions, none were fit for purpose. TaxTime was selected for:
- GL alignment: Tax treatment mapped directly to GL accounts with full transparency
- One unified process: Provision to return on the same logic and data
- Embedded governance: Approvals, version tracking, and audit trails built in
- Entity-level precision: No more manual "pushdown" of group calculations
- ATO-ready outputs: Complete PBT-to-taxable-income reconciliation on demand
The transformation
The income tax process was completely redesigned: from three fragmented workflows to one unified system.
Before
After
Book-to-tax took 6–8 weeks
Completed in 5 days
Excessive hours, high stress at close
Calm, controlled environment
Key-person dependency
Shared clarity across the team
New workpapers for every ATO query
Complete transparency on demand
Results
"The team no longer works excessive hours during close, resulting in a calmer, more controlled environment."
- 91% faster book-to-tax reconciliation (6-8 weeks → 5 days)
- One system, one process: provision and return on the same data
- Eliminated key-person risk: logic is visible, anyone can review
- ATO confidence secured: full lineage from disclosures to GL balances
- Scalable foundation: now expanding to international jurisdictions
What's next
Encouraged by the transformation in Australia, the company is now extending TaxTime to international jurisdictions (Singapore, the US and New Zealand) to maintain a consolidated view of global tax positions with consistent standards across all entities.
This case study has been anonymised at the client's request.
