How does this business compare to the ATO small business benchmarks

The ATO publishes benchmark ranges for around 100 industries and uses them to pick which small businesses to look at more closely. This tool maps a profit and loss to the ATO's own categories, applies its narrow definitions, and shows whether each ratio falls inside the published range. Sitting outside a range is not a finding that anything is wrong.

The ATO publishes benchmark ranges for around 100 industries and uses them to decide which small businesses to look at more closely. Checking a client against them before lodgement is a sensible thing to do, and it is usually done by hand: find the industry page, work out which turnover band applies, add up the right accounts, and divide.

This tool does that on your own machine, with no network call in the runtime, and it records which account went into which figure so the answer can be checked by someone else later. It applies the ATO's own narrow definitions rather than a rough "expenses over income": wages sitting inside cost of sales are excluded from that ratio, and payments to associated persons come out of total expenses before the division.

The workflow is two steps on purpose. First the tool drafts a mapping from the profit and loss, suggesting a bucket for each account from its name alone. Then a person reviews and corrects that mapping, because no account name on its own tells you whether wages went to an associate.

What this tool does

Reads a profit and loss and maps each account to the ATO's benchmark categories, with a person reviewing that mapping before anything is compared.
Applies the ATO's own narrow definitions of turnover, cost of sales and total expenses, for example excluding wages inside cost of sales from that ratio and deducting payments to associated persons from total expenses.
Prints the figures behind each ratio and shows whether it sits inside or outside the ATO's published range, so the comparison can be checked by someone else.

Limits

It is not tax advice, and sitting outside a range is not a finding that anything is wrong. The ATO publishes ranges precisely because businesses differ.

Get it

git clone https://github.com/ryanduguid/ato-benchmark-compare.git ato-benchmark-compare
cd ato-benchmark-compare
pip install .

Source on GitHub

Common questions

What are the ATO small business benchmarks?

Ranges the ATO publishes for around 100 industries, showing the usual relationship between figures such as cost of sales and turnover. The ATO uses them to decide which businesses to examine more closely.

Does being outside a benchmark range mean something is wrong?

No. The ATO publishes ranges precisely because businesses differ. Being outside a range is a prompt to be able to explain why, not a finding of error.

Does this tool send my client data anywhere?

No. It runs on your own machine with no network call in the runtime, and it records which account went into which figure so someone else can check the comparison later.

Why does a person have to review the account mapping?

Because no account name on its own tells you whether wages went to an associated person, and the ATO's definitions turn on that. The tool drafts the mapping, a person corrects it, and only then is anything compared.

Published 24 August 2026. Last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Written independently by Ryan Duguid, a provisional member of Chartered Accountants ANZ, in his own time and on his own equipment.