The law beside your ledger.

What is Toby?

Two things that work together. The first is a library of Australian compliance law, dated and cited: the tax and super the ATO administers, state payroll tax, the FairWork awards, and later workplace health and safety, privacy and ASIC obligations. The second is a set of tools that read your data and check it against that law: health checks over an accounting file, payroll and BAS reconciliations, obligation checklists and calculators. Every figure shows its working and cites its source.

It is not accounting software, a payroll system or a lodgement service. It answers one question: is the figure in your software the one the law requires?

How is Toby different from a tax research tool?

A research tool finds the paragraph and drafts a view for you to check. Toby computes the figure from the paragraph, shows the working, cites it, and gives the same answer next month. You make the judgement calls; Toby does the figures.

Who is it for?

Anyone who has to stand behind a tax, super or payroll figure: for your own business or for the clients you act for, especially where you employ across state lines. If you have ever kept a spreadsheet of thresholds, rates and due dates beside your accounting software, Toby replaces the spreadsheet and adds the citation.

Is this tax, legal or financial advice?

No. Toby states what the legislation, the revenue office or the award provides, and what your figures compute to under it. That is information, not tax, legal, financial or employment advice, and the Terms of Use say so. A qualified person decides what to do with it. For a registered agent that means Toby does the finding and the arithmetic; the professional judgement, and the sign-off, stay with you.

How is this different from asking a chatbot, or searching the ATO site?

A general chatbot writes the number. Toby never does. Rates, thresholds, dates and caps are held by Toby with their source and the date they were checked, and every figure is worked out from them. AI is used only to explain a computed result in plain language and to help you frame the question; it cannot change a figure, add a rate or take a legal position.

Searching the ATO or a revenue office finds you the page. Toby finds the provision, applies it to your figures, tells you which version of the law it used and gives you a record you can file. And where it does not hold the source, it says so rather than filling the gap.

Why it costs less.

Is Toby a replacement for Xero or MYOB?

No. Toby keeps no ledger and writes nothing to yours. It reads figures from your accounting file or an export and checks them against the law in force on the date in question. Keep your accounting software; Toby sits beside it and does the part it was never built to do. It never lodges with the ATO. Xero, including Xero Payroll, is read today, and we announce each new connection when it ships.

They do	Toby does
Xero, MYOB: record transactions, reconcile, report	Read the figures and check them against the Act, the revenue office's published rate and the award clause, with the citation
Payroll systems: calculate and pay wages, super and PAYG from their tables	Confirm the rate, threshold, due date and award classification the tables should be using on that date, and say where the law provides it
Your accountant or registered agent: advise and lodge	Hand them the working, the provision and the rate table version to stand behind
Your review checklist and the spreadsheet of thresholds beside it	Run the checks itself, over the real data, and record what it found and what it rested on

Does Toby run payroll?

No. It checks that the super guarantee rate, the PAYG scale, the payroll tax threshold, the due dates and the award rates your payroll uses are the ones the law provides on that pay date, and shows where the law says so. Paying people stays with your payroll system.

Does Toby lodge with the ATO or a revenue office?

No. Toby prepares and checks. You or your registered agent lodge, as you do today.

What does Toby read from Xero, and can it change anything?

Read-only accounting data, authorised by you in Xero, read server side in Sydney. Checks your accounting file. Works with Xero today. MYOB and QuickBooks Online to follow. The free Health Check, with a free account, reports what in the file would not survive review, with each finding cited. Toby never writes to your Xero file, and you can revoke its access in Xero at any time. Run it at app.tobyai.io/signup.

My clients use MYOB, QuickBooks or another payroll system. Does it still work?

Checks your accounting file. Works with Xero today. MYOB and QuickBooks Online to follow. The Health Check accepts a live Xero connection or a Xero export; direct connections to other ledgers and payroll systems are to follow.

How does it fit into client work?

As the check before the figure goes out. Run a client's payroll period, BAS or year-end figures through it and get back the items that do not match the law in force, each with the provision, the working and the rate table version. That is the file note. Each run is saved to History, where you can export it or collect it into a signed workpaper pack for the client.

What tooling is there, beyond looking up the law?

More than thirty tools, each one giving the same answer for the same inputs and each one citing what it rested on. They fall into four kinds:

• Data health. Reads an accounting file and reports what would not survive review: duplicate contacts, dormant accounts, stale bank feeds, aged unreconciled transactions, contact ABNs that fail the check digit.
• Reconciliation and close. Payroll close, STP finalisation against the ledger, BAS preparation and reconciliation, TPAR, who to chase for payment.
• Calculation. Payroll tax by state, Payday Super, the FBT return, final pay, long service leave, depreciation and Div 7A, each from a dated rate table that says whether it is attested.
• Obligations and research. Due dates from the tax calendar, engagement letters, and Ask, which answers a question from the provision itself.

The law and the tooling are the same product on purpose: a check is only worth running if it can tell you which provision it failed against.

What does the Free Health Check actually look at?

Checks your accounting file. Works with Xero today. MYOB and QuickBooks Online to follow. It reads the accounting data you authorise, read-only, and returns a list of findings rather than a score: duplicate and near-duplicate contacts, contact ABNs that fail the check digit or repeat across contacts, dormant accounts, missing or inconsistent tax codes, transactions coded to the wrong account, and transactions left unreconciled past their age. Each finding says what it found, where, and why it matters. Nothing is written back to your file.

Can I hand it a spreadsheet or an export instead of connecting anything?

Checks your accounting file. Works with Xero today. MYOB and QuickBooks Online to follow. The Health Check accepts a live Xero connection or a Xero export (an .xlsx workbook or three .csv files). If a workbook cannot be read honestly, for instance the columns cannot be identified with confidence, it is refused rather than guessed at.

Can I export an answer, and will Toby remind me of due dates?

You can export answers and checks with their workings, dates and citations. The Health Check report saves as a PDF. The Tax due dates tool shows upcoming lodgement and payment dates, and you can set in-app reminders. Toby does not send reminder emails yet.

How is this different from the checks my software already runs?

Your software checks itself against its own rules and its own tables. Toby checks it against the law: it re-derives the figure from the Act, the revenue office's published rate or the award clause on the date in question, and compares. When the two disagree, you get the difference, the provision and the working, not a warning icon.

What do I get at the end of a run?

The answer, the working in cents, the citation for each figure, the version of the rate table used and the date its source was checked. Scheduled audits are recorded, and each answer carries its schedule version and source, so months later you can show what the law said at the time. That is the point of the audit trail: not that the tool was confident, but that its answer can be re-derived.

Will a tool ever give me a figure it cannot support?

No. A tool whose rate table is not attested, or whose source has not been published for the period asked, refuses and says which input it is missing. Judgement calls, whether entities are grouped, whether someone is a contractor, are put to you with the test and its citation, and the figure is computed only after you record the decision.

Where does a number come from?

From the schedule or published source shown with the answer. Each answer names the source and date and says whether its rate schedule is attested by the Compliance Lead. Toby works the figure out from the schedule with the working shown in cents. You can read the source yourself.

What does AI actually do, then?

It explains the computed answer in plain language and helps you ask the right question. The part of Toby that calculates contains no AI at all.

How do I know a figure is right?

Three ways. The working is shown, so you can follow it. The source is cited and linked, so you can read the provision or the published rate yourself. And the calculator is held to the worked examples the publishers print, so a Revenue NSW or SRO Victoria example computes to the publisher's own answer before a change ships. Each answer also states whether the rate table behind it is attested.

What about questions that are a judgement call?

Employee or contractor, whether entities are grouped, whether a position is reasonably arguable: Toby shows the test and its citation and stops. A person records the decision, and the evidence they saw, before any figure is computed on it. The decision is logged as an input, never inferred or pre-filled.

What happens when Toby does not have the answer?

It says so. A state it does not compute, a rate the ATO has not yet published, a compilation it does not hold for the date asked: each is refused, or handed back with the test and the citation, rather than filled with an estimate that looks right.

Which law does Toby hold?

The obligations a business has to meet, at Commonwealth and state level, in one place:

• Commonwealth tax. Income tax, GST, PAYG withholding and instalments, super guarantee, FBT, Div 7A, PSI and the administration Acts, as Federal Register compilations, with the ATO's published rates, guidance and rulings beside them.
• State and territory revenue. The payroll tax Act of every state and territory, the revenue offices' published rates, thresholds and worked examples, long service leave: which Act applies where you employ, and the duty, cited, and workers' compensation Acts.
• Employment. The Fair Work Act and the National Employment Standards, the FairWork awards with their classifications, rates and allowances, and the Fair Work Commission's published data.
• The wider regulatory coverage. Workplace health and safety, workers' compensation, land tax and duties and the other regulatory areas Toby holds. Each tool shows whether its rate schedule is attested.

More than three thousand documents, held as published, so a citation points at the provision as it stood rather than a paraphrase. Toby also holds the ABS and RBA series used in tax work: CPI for indexation, the cash rate and GIC for interest, unemployment and wage indices for projections, each dated to its release. What is computed, and what is held for research and citation only, is set out on the coverage pages.

Can I ask about a prior year?

Yes. Ask as at a date and Toby answers on the law in force then where it holds the source for that date, naming the compilation, the version of the Act in force at the time, or rate table it used. Amended returns, audits and late lodgements are answered on the law of the day, not today's rates.

How current is it?

Legislation and published rates are refreshed against their publishers, and each document carries the date the publisher printed and the date it was retrieved. Where a tool requires an attested schedule, the Compliance Lead attests it before the calculator uses it. Where a publisher has not yet printed a figure, such as a quarterly interest rate the ATO has not released, Toby says the figure is not yet held.

Which states and territories are covered?

Commonwealth law applies everywhere. Payroll tax computes for Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria; the other states' and territories' Acts are held for research, and a question that needs a figure for one of them is refused rather than approximated.

How are new areas released?

Core is live with income tax, GST and BAS, PAYG withholding, super guarantee, termination pay, state payroll tax for Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, long service leave, and the FBT return workpaper. New areas and tools arrive one at a time, each complete before the next, and we announce each one on our news page when it ships. Each tool shows whether the rate schedule behind its figures is attested.

Where is my data, and my clients' data?

In Sydney. Tax file numbers, bank details, salaries, staff names and organisation identifiers never reach AI, and nothing you send trains a model. The Security page has the detail.

What does AI actually see?

Not your data. Tax file numbers, bank accounts, salaries and names stay in the part of Toby that calculates. AI sees an account code, a label and a computed figure, nothing that identifies anyone.

Is my data used to train AI?

No. Nothing you send, upload or connect trains any model, ours or a provider's, and your data is not sold or shared.

Who can see my organisation's data?

The people you add to your organisation, and no one else.

Can I keep a record of what it told me?

Yes. Each answer carries the rate table version, the source, the provision and a fingerprint of the assessment, so a file note can be reconstructed later and the provision reread as it stood.

What does it cost?

The Health Check is free for everyone, always, with a free account. Starter is A$50 a month for 1 user and 3 clients, Plus is A$150 for 3 users and 15 clients, and Pro is A$500 for 5 users and 50 clients. Enterprise is by quote. All prices include GST. Every account starts with a 14-day trial of Pro and no card is needed. Pricing has the detail.

Why does it cost less than a research library or AI research tools?

The figure is worked in code from the held source, so a repeat question costs almost nothing to answer and nothing is metered. The full answer is on the pricing page.

How do I get access?

Create a free account; the Health Check is free with it, and every account starts a 14-day trial with no card required.

Can I use Toby from my own AI assistant?

Not yet. Connecting your own AI assistant over the open Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard comes after launch. Until then, use Ask and the tools in the portal.

I have a question that is not here.

Write to hello@tobyai.io. A person reads it.