Communication

Find out how to view and send within the Communication menu.

On this page:

• Client mail
• Communication history
• Practice mail
• Preferences
• Bulk preferences
• Historical transactions

Client mail

The Client mail inbox lets you view your clients' communications that have been sent to you digitally when your clients’ communication preferences are set to you.

These communications are also available in the Communication history.

Client mail can also be added as a feature on the agent home page.

To view communications where the communication preferences are set to you, select Communication then Client mail.

Note: You can also check Communication history for communications sent to your clients including other communication types such as SMS and paper that you won’t receive in your Client mail inbox.

See also:

• Client communication

Communication history

The Communication history gives you access to most communications we send to your clients via the following channels:

• myGov
• Email
• SMS
• Paper
• Agent digital
• ATO Online.

Not all communications with you and your clients are available in Communication history. We will continue to add more communication types to enhance this function further.

If your client registers for a myGov account and links it to the ATO then our digital communications will be sent to their myGov Inbox unless you set communication preferences. You can also view and action these communications from the Communication history.

To view a client's communication history, see Communication history - client summary.

To view your communication history, from the agent home page:

• select Communication then Communication history      
  • select or deselect All clients depending on the communications you want to view. For up to three clients deselect All clients and type the client identifier. If searching for multiple clients you can only use the same identifier type, TFN or ABN. You can use a combination of the identifier and name.
• select Time period using the drop-down menu – Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 5 years, or Choose dates
• select Channel – myGov, email, SMS, paper or ATO Online.
• results will be displayed
• select Download CSV – a new window will open with the search results as an Excel spreadsheet
• select Print friendly version to print or save a copy.

See also:

• Communication history

Practice mail

Practice mail allows you to communicate with us by a secure email channel, as well as view messages you have sent.

Within your practice, you may have access to more than one mailbox; your own, the practice's or another person in the practice.

What you can view depends on your Access Manager permissions. For:

• your own mailbox – you will have full email functionality to create, send, delete, reply, allocate and set up notifications (you will need your own myGovID to create your own mailbox)
• the practice mailbox – you can view, delete, allocate or set up notifications (you can't create, send or reply to an email)
• other mailboxes in your practice – you can view and allocate emails but cannot action or delete emails

Note: Before AUSkey was decommissioned, you could have multiple mailboxes as you could have one mailbox for each AUSkey you had. While AUSkeys can no longer be used, the mailboxes still exist for reference purposes. To respond to mail in these mailboxes, a user with admin access must first move them to your new myGovID mailbox. Each user can only have one myGovID and consequently only have one mailbox.

To view mail:

• select Communication then Practice mail
• select the relevant mailbox. The mailboxes you can view depends on your Access Manager permissions
• select Inbox or Sent – you can sort by Client, Subject and Received date.

To allocate mail for the practice mailbox you will need to be a principal authority or authorisation administrator in Relationship Authorisation ManagerExternal Link (RAM).

You can then:

• select mail items to Allocate to the relevant person in your practice
• set up notifications – if you have the relevant Access Manager permissions, you can set up email notifications for your own mailbox and the practice mailbox to alert you when you receive Practice mail messages from us by
  • selecting Notifications at the bottom of the screen
  • entering an email address
  • selecting Save.

To send a new message:

• from the Agent home page select Communication then Practice mail, or from Client summary select Profile then New messages
• select New
• select the topic and subject of your message. Certain messages require an attachment. See Forms required to be attached for a list of the topics and subjects in which require a form to be attached.
• complete the required fields and attach the relevant form if required
• select the declaration then select Send
• select Print friendly version to print or save a copy.

Note: You will receive an ATO receipt ID when the message has successfully been sent. You will need to quote this number to us when enquiring about the request.

Forms required to be attached

Preferences

The Communication preferences feature lets you and your clients choose where our digital communications are sent. It allows you to set a client's communication preferences to reflect their circumstances and your engagement with us.

You should only set communication preferences for communication types a client has authorised you to act on. Before you set or update their communication preferences, ensure you have clear and express written authorisation from your client. For more information, see Client communication.

You can choose to apply preferences to as many or as few clients as you wish. Communication preferences will not change activity statement lodgment channels or who will receive activity statement lodgment notifications.

Before setting communication preferences, consider if its functionality will benefit your entire practice.

You need to set default communication preferences before you can set any client preferences. This allows you to set, at the practice level, the default communication preferences (or favourites) that can be applied to your clients.

Before setting communication preference you will need written authority from your client. For more information, see Client communication.

To set the default preference for the practice at the agent home page:

• select Communication then Preferences
• select Practice or Client to determine who we should send communications to for each communication type
• select Apply.

Communication preferences can then be set:

• when you add a client
• individually at their Profile
• using the Bulk preferences function for up to 25 clients at a time.

See Communication preferences to change individual settings.

Bulk preferences

To set up to 25 clients communication preferences:

• select Communication then Bulk preferences
• create a list of up to 25 clients
• select Apply default communication preference or a combination of Practice or Client to determine who we send these clients' communications to for each communication type
• select Submit.

Historical transactions

In Historical transactions you can check the status of enquiries you've made with us for your client or your practice. These include:

• Online services for agents      
  • mail messages
  • online forms
  • refund requests
  • transfer requests
• mail
• phone
• fax.

This function only shows a list of interactions and their status. You cannot view the content of the message. If you no longer have the content for a specific interaction, contact us with the receipt number.

Interactions remain viewable for three months after the completion date.

To view interactions for your practice, at the agent home page select Communication then Historical transactions

To view interactions for a client see Historical transactions – client summary.

Find out about:

• Payment options
• Client summary
• Profile
• Accounts and payments
• Lodgments
• Super
• Business