Templates
Massage therapy chart of accounts
A massage practice starts from the allied health chart and changes one thing: the clinical revenue accounts carry GST on Income, because massage supplied on its own is not a listed health service. Keep a separate account for work supplied inside a listed service, keep the settlement rails as they are, and let a BAS agent confirm the split.
Key facts
- The sentence this chart is built around
- A supply of massage therapy alone is not GST-free, because massage is not listed as a health service in the GST Act1
- What that does to the treatment accounts
- The allied health template ships its clinical accounts at the GST Free Income rate. On a massage practice's chart the treatment accounts carry GST on Income instead, and the rest of the chart is unchanged.4
- The template names the exception itself
- Account 400 carries a reason saying a service off the listed-service list, unsupervised massage among them, is taxable and needs its own account or an item override4
- When a line goes back to the GST free rate
- Massage supplied as part of a listed health service, by a recognised professional in that service who is also trained in massage, where the profession treats it as a standard technique and as necessary for appropriate treatment1
- A fund benefit does not decide the rate
- Where a third party pays the practitioner on the patient's behalf, the supply is still made to the patient, so the revenue line keeps whatever rate the service itself carries2
- Products on the shelf
- Goods are GST free only where they are a necessary part of a GST free health service supplied at the same time and place, so a retail line on this chart stays taxable3
- What the template asks a BAS agent first
- To confirm which of the practice's services are on the ATO's listed-service list before the GST free defaults on accounts 400 to 408, 424 and 425 are relied on4
What this chart starts from
There is no separate chart of accounts for massage. The starting point is the allied health canonical template: 18 revenue accounts, most of them split by who pays, 10 clearing accounts holding one settlement rail each, and 23 rows saying which account a line lands in. A massage practice can take that shape whole. What it cannot take whole is the rate on the clinical accounts.
The template was written for a practice whose patient work is a listed health service, which is the ordinary case in physiotherapy, podiatry or speech pathology. Massage is not on the ATO's list of health services, and the ATO says so in one sentence.
If you supply massage therapy alone, it is not GST-free because it is not listed as a health service in the GST Act.1
So the practice keeps the accounts and settles the rate itself. Is massage therapy GST-free? works the treatment argument through, including the ATO's own worked example. This page is about where the money lands afterwards.
The accounts that change rate, and the ones that do not
Read down the template's revenue accounts and most are already right for a massage practice. Reports, supervision, training, products and room rental ship taxable, because they are taxable whoever supplies them. It is the treatment accounts at the top of the chart that face the other way.
| Account | What it carries | Rate in the template | What a massage practice settles first |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400 Clinical services, private patients | A patient appointment with no funder behind it | GST Free Income | Whether the appointment is a listed health service. Massage billed on its own is not. |
| 403 Clinical services, private health fund benefit | The benefit a fund approves at the desk | GST Free Income | Nothing: the payer changed, the service did not, so it follows account 400. |
| 420 Reports, assessments and medico-legal | A report written for an insurer, a lawyer or an employer | GST on Income | Unchanged. Taxability turns on the report's purpose and recipient, not the funder. |
| 421 Supervision, training and workshops | Supervising another therapist, running a class | GST on Income | Unchanged, though the supervision question itself stays open below. |
| 422 Products and equipment sales | Oils, balms, packs and anything else taken home | GST on Income | Unchanged. Goods ride a health service only where that service is GST free. |
| 423 Cancellation and no-show fees | A fee for the appointment that did not happen | GST Free Income | A cancellation fee takes the treatment of the supply it replaces, so it follows the treatment account. |
| 460 Other income, room rental and admin fees | Renting a room to another therapist, admin charges | GST on Income | Unchanged. This is not a health service supplied to a patient. |
The row the template flags about itself
The template does not pretend its default fits every practice. The reason printed against its private patient account names the outlier out loud, and massage is the first example it reaches for.
A service that is not on the listed-service list, for example unsupervised massage or exercise physiology on its own, is taxable and needs its own account or item override.4
Two of those rows reach the GST free rate through a funding source default, a rule written for the ordinary case rather than a decision about this practice. Two are already taxable. A massage practice changes the first two, and the template's BAS agent checklist opens with that question: confirm which services are on the listed-service list before the defaults are relied on.
When a line goes back to the GST free rate
A taxable default is not the end of it, because the same technique can be part of a supply that is GST free. Three cases turn up in a real appointment book.
- A listed profession supplying the massage inside its own service. A physiotherapist using soft tissue work in a physiotherapy consult is supplying physiotherapy, which is the ATO's own example.
- A therapist recognised in a listed complementary service. The natural therapists association tells its members massage is GST free where it is supplied as part of a GST free supply of a listed complementary health service, and lists acupuncture, herbal medicine, naturopathy, chiropractic and osteopathy as those services.
- Everything else, billed on its own. A remedial or relaxation appointment booked directly by the patient is a supply of massage therapy, and it carries the practice's taxable rate.
A clinic holding more than one of these needs more than one revenue account, because one account with one default rate hides the split and somebody rebuilds it at quarter end. The second account plus an item rule against the appointment type keeps the decision in the chart rather than in whoever raises the invoice.
A fund benefit, and the two legs it produces
Extras cover on many health fund policies pays a benefit on remedial massage, and practices read that as a sign the service must be GST free. It is not a sign of anything. Where a third party pays the practitioner on the patient's behalf, the supply is still made to the patient, so the revenue line keeps the rate the service carries on its own terms. Where a fund contracts for the service itself, the ATO applies the same test: GST free only where it would be GST free billed to the patient.
That card is the revenue leg only, and it is the leg a massage practice changes. The settlement leg is a separate posting and it is not affected: the approved benefit lands in the HICAPS clearing account at the BAS excluded rate, whatever rate the revenue underneath it carries. How a HICAPS benefit settles covers that side.
The clearing accounts to keep
The template holds one clearing account per settlement rail rather than one per funder, because the thing that produces a bank line is the rail. A massage practice sees fewer rails than a mixed clinic, and each posts at the BAS excluded rate in the template.
- 104 HICAPS clearing, for the fund benefit HICAPS pays the day after the terminal settles.
- 106 EFTPOS clearing, for a card settlement from a bank's own merchant facility.
- 107 Online payments clearing, for a Stripe payout that arrives net of fees on its own schedule.
- 105 Tyro Health clearing, where the practice claims through Tyro rather than a HICAPS terminal.
- 109 Insurer clearing, where an insurer pays the practice directly for treatment it has approved.
Each balance is money approved but not yet in the bank, and it should return to nil once the matching settlement lands. How to set up a clearing account covers the account type and the reconciliation step. The template's checklist adds one thing to watch: look at the first fund deposits and split the account if the feed shows one line per fund rather than one line per day.
The shelf, and the rest of the invoice
A massage practice sells more than time: oils, balms, heat packs, foam rollers, sometimes a gift voucher. The ATO's rule on goods is narrow. A good is GST free only where it is a necessary part of a GST free health service, supplied at the same time and place as that service, and either specific to that patient's condition or essential to that consultation.
On this chart the point rarely arises: the service the goods would ride is taxable anyway, so the retail line sits on the products account. What GST applies to products and equipment works through the medical aids exception that can pull a specific item the other way.
What the wrong default costs, in each direction
The two errors are not symmetrical, which is why the account split is worth doing before the first BAS rather than after it.
- Taxable revenue coded at the GST free rate understates GST on sales. The shortfall stays payable once it is found, and by then the appointment is months old, so going back to the patient for the difference is awkward at best.
- GST free revenue coded taxable sends the ATO one eleventh of money the practice did not collect, and getting it back means amending a lodged statement.
Both are quiet failures. Neither shows up in the bank feed or in a practice report, which is why the check lives in the chart of accounts and in a BAS agent's sign off.
Keeping revenue split by payer
The other half of this chart is the split most practices do not get. A practice management system points at one sales account by default: Cliniko's setup article makes the default Xero sales account a required step and calls sending a billable item, payment type or product to its own account optional. Taking the default balances the books and answers none of the questions an owner asks.
Understand what percentage comes from each funding source. Heavy reliance on any single source creates risk.6
That is written for a physiotherapy practice, and it lands harder here, where a fund dropping a modality from its extras cover moves a whole revenue line. Splitting by payer answers it from the ledger. Practitioner and location go on tracking categories rather than into more accounts, which is what Xero tracking categories are for.
What Ledger Map does with this chart
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. The account and the rate for a massage line live in that map, so the second revenue account and the item rule are set once rather than invoice by invoice, and the template's confirm note arrives as a question with the options laid out.
On the settlement side it posts one balanced document set per deposit against the clearing account the map names, and leaves one exact match in the bank feed for a person to accept. Nothing here is a treatment the product picked: the accounts and rates come from the canonical template, and the practice approves the map. How it works shows the map and the approval step.
Questions
What accounts does a massage therapy practice need in Xero?
A revenue account for treatment, a second one where some of the work is supplied inside a listed health service, an account for products taken home, one for reports and one for supervision or teaching, plus other income for room rental. On the balance sheet, one clearing account per settlement rail the practice actually uses. That is the allied health chart with the treatment rate settled by the practice.
Do massage therapists charge GST in Australia?
Where the practice is registered for GST and the massage is supplied on its own, yes: the ATO says a supply of massage therapy alone is not GST-free, because massage is not listed as a health service in the GST Act. The same technique supplied as part of a listed health service can be GST free, which is a question about the practitioner and the service rather than about the treatment room.
Does a health fund benefit change the account or the rate?
It changes the account and not the rate. The fund pays on the patient's behalf, so the supply is still made to the patient and the revenue line keeps the rate the service carries. The allied health template gives a fund benefit its own revenue account so the practice can see the split by payer, and the settlement itself lands in the HICAPS clearing account at the BAS excluded rate.
Where do oils, balms and retail products go?
On the products and equipment account, at GST on Income. Goods are GST free only where they are a necessary part of a GST free health service supplied at the same time and place, so on a chart whose treatment lines are taxable there is nothing for a retail item to ride. A listed medical aid can still be the exception, which is an item level question.
Can one clinic hold both rates on the same chart?
Yes, and a mixed clinic has to. The treatment accounts split in two: one for work supplied inside a listed health service and one for massage billed on its own. An item rule against the appointment type decides which account a line lands in, so the split is made once in the chart rather than remembered at the invoice.
Sources
Open questions
- No search result capture exists for this page's query, so nothing here claims what currently ranks for it or what an answer engine says today.
- Myotherapy is not named on the ATO's list of health services and the sources read here do not settle whether a myotherapist's supply reaches a listed service. No myotherapy account or rate is printed above.
- Supervision of another therapist sits in a grey area the corpus leaves open: the template posts it taxable and an ATO ruling snippet suggests an exception in a specific fact pattern. The account is on the chart and the question is not answered here.
- Report writing funded inside an NDIS plan, and gift vouchers, are both left open by the research. The chart carries a revenue account for a report and a customer deposits liability account for a voucher, and neither treatment is decided on this page.
- The GST registration turnover threshold was not read from a primary source for this page, so no threshold figure appears anywhere on it.
- Whether a day's fund benefits arrive as one deposit or as one line per fund is unconfirmed. The template's checklist asks a practice to watch its first deposits and split the clearing account if the feed shows a line per fund.
- No bank feed narration is published for any of these rails, so none is printed here and the matcher learns them from the practice's own feed.
- The three ATO pages cited refuse automated fetches and were read through a signed-in browser on 3 Sep 2026. Each carries the last updated date it prints, and a reader checking the wording will need to open them the same way.
- GST and health: other health services
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health: supply of services through a third party
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health: goods supplied as part of a GST free health service
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- Allied health, revenue by funding source, the canonical template
Ledger Map. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Review
Last reviewed 3 Sep 2026 by Shane
General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.
Guided onboarding
Run one real month before you go live.
Sign up, connect Zanda and Xero, and replay a month you already closed. The map is reviewed with whoever owns the books, and nothing posts until you approve it.
Every practice starts from a template. Nothing posts until the map is approved.