Navigating the ATO Legal Database is Slowing Accounting Firms Down: This Is What To Do About It
A familiar scene in every accounting firm is when a client's situation involves a niche area of tax law and you need to find the answer or confirm your thinking.
You expect the answer is buried somewhere in the vast library of ATO publications, but finding the precise ruling, determination or legislative section to support your advice is the real challenge.
Costs of Inefficient Tax Research
The most obvious impact of inefficient research is the unbillable time it creates.
Every six minutes spent trawling through the ATO legal database is another timesheet entry that might be unrecoverable. But the damage can go deeper.
Client service suffers when you can’t get back to them with definitive answers as quickly as they expect. Staff become frustrated when their day is consumed by searching through endless documents instead of developing new skills or building client relationships. Most importantly, the firm loses momentum.
Strategic growth opportunities, staff training and proactive advisory work are all pushed aside to make way for the urgent, time-consuming grind of research. In a profession already dealing with tight deadlines and a talent shortage, every wasted minute matters.
From Frustration to Innovation: A Solution Built for Accountants
As someone who spent years as a director of an accounting firm, SavvyWise co-founder Drew Pflaum knows this pain first-hand. The frustration of trying to find relevant ATO publications quickly, especially highly specific private rulings, was a real battle. That very experience was the reason he started building SavvyWise following the introduction of AI.
He realised the solution is to find a much better way of working with the ATO legal database and AI. It’s about leveraging technology to help accountants work smarter.
How SavvyWise Transforms Your ATO Tax Research
SavvyWise is an AI assistant for tax research, purpose-built for Australian accountants.
It has been designed with a deep understanding of the structure of rulings, legislation, determinations and case law. It surfaces what you need far faster than any manual search ever could.
Instead of spending hours sifting through irrelevant results on the ATO Legal Database or Google, you can ask SavvyWise a direct question and get authoritative citations to back your tax position in seconds. It’s designed to be the starting point for all your research, giving you the relevant information you need to dive deeper and finalise your advice.
The early feedback from accountants during our beta launch confirms the impact. One user noted:
"This has already saved me a lot of time compared to Google or ATO searching, and I can see it'll only get better as you make the system faster."
This is the power of using a tool built by an accountant, for accountants.
Give SavvyWise A Go Today
Gain early access to SavvyWise during the free beta by signing up at https://www.savvywise.com.au/early-signup.