Problems
GST free exports as BAS Excluded from Zanda
Zanda sends the line as BAS Excluded when Tax Usage is left on No Tax, so the export carries no tax treatment and Xero records it that way. The revenue sits outside the activity statement instead of at G1 total sales. Change Tax Usage to price includes or excludes tax, then correct the lines already on those invoices, because the setting leaves them as they were.
Key facts
- What the vendor calls it
- One of the export problems Zanda documents under its own heading, GST free tax codes export as BAS Excluded in Xero1
- The setting behind it
- Tax Usage on the invoice sitting on No Tax, changed under Account Settings, Billing, Invoices to price includes tax or price excludes tax1
- What changing it does not do
- It leaves the line items already on an invoice as they were, so a line has to be removed and added again before it takes the new setting1
- Where the tax rates are mapped
- Set up tax codes, under Tools, Xero Export, Xero Settings, maps each Zanda tax rate to a Xero tax type, separately from the sales account2
- Why the account does not catch it
- Zanda maps Xero sales accounts by Calendar rather than by service or tax rate, so a GST free line and a taxable line can share one account4
- What the wrong code costs
- No GST is owed either way, so the money does not move. Total sales at G1 are understated for the quarter7
- What the line was meant to carry
- In all three canonical templates a private patient consult posts to account 400, Clinical services, private patients, at GST Free Income6
What the export actually did
Nothing was refused. The invoice went across, the contact was created or matched, the amount is right, and the line sits in the revenue account the settings named. The one thing that came over wrong is the tax treatment on the line: Xero holds it as BAS Excluded, which is the code for a movement with no sale behind it, rather than as GST Free Income, which is the code for a sale that carries no GST.
That is why it goes unnoticed for a quarter or more. It does not appear in the failed export list, because nothing failed. The profit and loss is unchanged, because the account and the amount are unchanged. The GST payable is unchanged too, because a GST free session owes nothing either way. Only the activity statement moves.
The setting that decides it
Zanda names the cause plainly on its troubleshooting page: it happens when Tax Usage is set to No Tax. Tax Usage lives on the invoice, and it takes its starting value from the practice setting under the user menu, in Account Settings, Billing, Invoices, where the option is how to calculate tax. The two values that carry a treatment across are price includes tax and price excludes tax.
The second half is the part that catches people, and it is on the same page. Changing Tax Usage on an invoice updates the invoice, not the line items already on it. A line that was added while the invoice sat on No Tax keeps what it had until it is removed and added again. So a practice can change the setting, watch the next export come across correctly, and still have a month of invoices behind it carrying the old treatment.
- Set how to calculate tax in Account Settings, Billing, Invoices to price includes tax or price excludes tax, and save.
- Open each invoice that is still open in Zanda and set Tax Usage on it to the same option.
- Where a line still shows no GST after that, remove the line and add it again, so it calculates on the invoice's current setting.
- Then decide, with whoever prepares the activity statement, what to do about the invoices already exported.
Where the tax mapping lives in the export
It helps to know that three separate settings stand between a Zanda invoice and the tax rate on the Xero line, because a practice that has checked one of them often thinks it has checked the others. The export itself runs in two batches, invoices first and then payments, so a wrongly treated invoice is across in Xero before the payment batch is even started.
| Setting | Where it lives | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Tax Usage, or how to calculate tax | Account Settings, Billing, Invoices, and again on each invoice | Whether the line carries a tax treatment at all |
| Set up tax codes | Tools, Xero Export, Xero Settings | Which Xero tax type each Zanda tax rate maps to |
| Xero sales account, or map to diary | Tools, Xero Export, Xero Settings | Which revenue account the line lands in, chosen by Calendar rather than by service or tax rate |
The third row is why the revenue account is no safety net here. Sales accounts are mapped by Calendar, which is usually a practitioner, so one account holds whatever that practitioner billed. A session that should be GST free and a report that should be taxable can sit in the same account on two different rates, and one of them being wrong changes nothing a reader would notice.
What the line was meant to carry
The ATO's conditions for a health service that is not a medical service are that it is one of the listed services, that it is supplied by a recognised professional in that service, and that it is generally accepted in that profession as being necessary for the appropriate treatment of the recipient. A session that meets them is a GST free sale. It is still a sale.
The canonical templates say the same thing in the account code. A private patient consult resolves to account 400, Clinical services, private patients, at GST Free Income, and all three templates resolve it there through the funding source rather than through the item.
What BAS Excluded does to the statement
Two labels carry the difference on a Simpler BAS, and only one of them moves. A GST free sale is reported at G1, total sales, and it adds nothing at 1A, GST on sales. A line coded BAS Excluded is left off the statement altogether. So the practice owes exactly what it owed before, and its total sales for the quarter are short by every session that went across on the wrong code. A practice on the full reporting method also loses the same sessions from G3, other GST free sales, which Simpler BAS does not report.
That understated total is the part worth acting on. Turnover tests, lender questions and the ratios a reviewer runs are all measured on reported sales, and a health practice whose GST free income is missing looks like a smaller and stranger business than it is. The label mapping here is stated from the research corpus behind the canonical templates rather than from a reading of the activity statement instructions, which is recorded as an open question below.
How to tell whether it happened
Three checks separate a practice that has this from a practice that does not, and each one takes a few minutes in Xero.
| Check | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Open a clinical revenue account for the quarter and group its transactions by tax rate | Whether any session line sits on BAS Excluded instead of GST Free Income |
| Read G1 on the activity statement report for the same quarter | Whether the quarter's session revenue reached total sales at all |
| Open one invoice exported before the setting was changed and one exported after | Whether the change took on new lines only, which is what the vendor documents |
The second check is the one to run first if the practice has already lodged. A statement prepared from figures that are short is a conversation for the practice and its BAS agent, and it is easier to have with the quarter's numbers in front of both of them.
Fixing the invoices already in Xero
What can be done to an invoice that is already across depends on the state it went across in, and Zanda documents each state. A practice that exports as draft has more room and less automation; a practice that exports as approved so payments can be applied has the opposite.
| The invoice's state | What the export documents |
|---|---|
| Exported as draft | It can be edited and deleted in Xero, and payments cannot be applied to it |
| Exported as approved, then edited in Zanda | It shows in the export list as edited, exported before but changes were made, so it can be selected for export again |
| Carrying a payment or a credit note | Zanda reports that the document cannot be edited because a payment or credit note is allocated to it |
So the third row is where the work is, and it is the row most practices are in, because the money has usually arrived by the time anybody notices. Xero draws that line at the field rather than at the document: it names To, Due date, Invoice number, Reference, Branding theme, Description, Account, Tracking and Project as editable while the payment stays on the invoice, and the tax rate is not on that list. Correcting the rate is therefore a Xero side decision for whoever prepares the statement, and a spreadsheet of manual corrections is not a control.
Manual overrides can increase the risk of GST errors and may not satisfy ATO scrutiny.8
Why it is worth checking both directions
A practice that has just found one coding fault tends to fix that fault and stop. An allied health bookkeeper describes the opposite error as the common one: coding everything GST free because health is GST free, which they name as one of the most common things they find in practice files.
Both faults come from the same place, which is a default nobody chose deliberately. While the revenue account is open on the screen, it is worth reading the taxable lines in it too: reports written for a third party, workplace assessments, training and product sales sit beside the sessions and take a different rate. The rate by rate picture is on Xero tax rates for health income, and the listed service test on is allied health GST free.
What this page does not settle
The same goes for a statement already lodged on understated figures. The size of it, whether it is worth amending, and how far back it goes are questions about one practice's numbers, and this page does not have them. The export side, which is the part this page can be sure about, is on the Zanda integration page, and the same fault on the Cliniko side is on wrong tax rate on synced invoices.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map decides the tax treatment from the standing map the practice approved, not from a setting on the document that produced the line. The funding source and the service category resolve to an account and a rate, and the rate comes from the canonical template the practice started from rather than from whatever the export happened to send.
A line the map cannot resolve becomes a question with the options laid out, rather than a silent posting on a treatment nobody chose. For a deposit it posts one balanced document set and leaves one exact match in the bank feed. It does not choose a treatment for the practice, and the map is approved before anything posts. The shape of it is on how it works.
Questions
Which setting makes GST free tax codes export as BAS Excluded?
Tax Usage on the invoice decides it, and the value that produces BAS Excluded is No Tax. Zanda names it on its troubleshooting page. The practice level version is under Account Settings, Billing, Invoices, where how to calculate tax has to be set to price includes tax or price excludes tax, and Tax Usage on each open invoice has to match.
I changed Tax Usage and the line still shows no GST. Why?
The change applies to the lines added after it. Zanda states that changing Tax Usage does not recalculate the line items already on the invoice, and that a line has to be removed and added again to pick up the new setting. New invoices come across correctly while older ones keep what they had.
Does the wrong code cost the practice any money?
The practice remits no extra GST. A GST free session owes nothing at 1A whichever of the two codes it carries. What changes is the statement: total sales at G1 are short by those sessions, so the turnover test and any ratio built on reported sales are measured on the wrong number.
How do I find the affected lines before the next lodgement?
Open a clinical revenue account for the quarter in Xero and group its transactions by tax rate, which shows any session line sitting on BAS Excluded. Then read G1 on the activity statement report for the same quarter. Sessions missing from it is the pattern this page describes.
Do I have to correct the invoices that are already in Xero?
That is a call for whoever prepares the activity statement, and it depends on the state each invoice is in. A draft invoice can still be edited or deleted in Xero. An approved invoice edited in Zanda shows in the export list as edited, so it can be selected for export again. Zanda reports that an invoice carrying a payment or a credit note cannot be edited from its side. Xero keeps a list of fields editable on a paid invoice without removing the payment, covering Account, Tracking, Description and the reference fields, and the tax rate is not on it, so correcting the rate is a Xero side decision rather than an export one.
Is BAS Excluded ever the right code on a clinic's revenue?
BAS Excluded does not belong on a practice's revenue. It is the code for a line with no sale behind it, such as a transfer between the practice's own accounts, wages or owner drawings. A session billed to a patient is a sale that carries no GST, which is a different thing, and it belongs on the rate that reports it.
Read next
- Practice systemsZanda Xero integration: what the batch export carries
- GST answersGST Free Income or BAS Excluded in Xero
- GST answersIs allied health GST-free?
- ProblemsSynced invoices arrive with the wrong tax rate
- ProblemsGST free income missing from G1 on the BAS
- Xero how toCash vs accrual GST for a clinic in Xero
- HubProblems
Sources
Open questions
- ato.gov.au refused an automated fetch on 3 Sep 2026 and again on 4 Sep 2026, so the ATO reporting methods page is carried from search result extracts rather than from a fetched body. What each Xero rate does at G1 and 1A is stated from the research corpus behind the canonical templates, and a BAS agent is the check on it.
- Neither Zanda support page shows a last updated date, so no source date is printed for the vendor half of this page.
- Xero Central's Edit an invoice article, read 4 Sep 2026, names the fields that stay editable on an invoice carrying a payment, and the tax rate is not among them, so the route to a corrected rate on a paid invoice is not documented there. How GST works in Xero served an empty body to an automated fetch on 3 Sep 2026 and is carried unverified.
- Whether supervision sold to another provider, NDIS report writing, therapy assistant time and gift vouchers are GST free is unsettled in the research corpus, and is left to the practice and its BAS agent.
- Whether other practice systems produce the same result under a different setting name is not established. Zanda is the one that documents this behaviour, which is not evidence that it is alone in it.
- GST reporting methods
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 15 Apr 2021.
primary
- Other health services, GST and health
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- Domain mechanics, Xero tax rate mapping and the BAS labels it fills
Ledger Map. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 29 Aug 2026.
secondary
- Providing GST-free supplies to NDIS participants
RSM Australia. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 30 Jul 2026.
secondary
- Bookkeeping for speech pathology and allied health practices
True Tally. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated Jul 2026.
secondary
Review
Last reviewed 4 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.
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