Tax invoices for Australian locums

Invoices are built from shifts you have marked as delivered. On the Shifts page, move a shift to delivered once the clinical work is done; it then appears in the “Ready to invoice” list on your Invoices page. Click Create invoice and Sessional builds a numbered tax invoice with line items, amounts, your bank details, and the workplace address already filled in from the shift and your profile.

Each invoice gets a unique number in the format SES-YYYYMMDD-XXXXXX, where the suffix is cryptographically random so numbers cannot be guessed or sequentially scraped. Hourly shifts are billed as time multiplied by your rate; daily, per-session, and percentage-of-billings shifts are billed as a flat amount.

Sessional fills the fields the ATO expects on a tax invoice, drawing them from your profile and the linked shift:

• Your name (and your registered company or trust name above it if you trade through a Pty Ltd or trust)
• Your ABN, which is the legal identifier on every Australian tax invoice
• Your AHPRA registration number
• Your bank details: bank name, BSB, and account number
• The workplace name, contact, and address in the “To” block
• A line for each shift with the work type, date, and amount
• Payment terms, a payment reference, and any notes you add

If you trade as a sole trader you invoice in your own name; if you trade through a company or trust, Sessional checks that the registered entity name and a business address are present, because both belong on the invoice. You only need to fill these in once, on your billing profile.

Whether GST appears on your invoice depends on your own registration. You must register for GST once your turnover crosses the ATO threshold of $75,000, and many locums register earlier by choice. Sessional records whether you were registered for GST at the time each invoice was raised, and presents GST-registered invoices to the workplace as GST-inclusive at the standard 10% rate.

If you are not registered for GST, you issue a plain invoice with no GST component, which is correct and expected below the threshold. Your registration status, and when you are approaching the threshold, is something you can keep an eye on through your BAS readiness and tax views.

You can bundle several delivered shifts from the same workplace onto a single invoice. On the Shifts page, filter to one workplace, tick the shifts you want, and choose the invoice action. All selected shifts must belong to the same workplace, since each invoice is addressed to one organisation. Sessional serialises this so the same shift can never be invoiced twice, even if you double-click.

On a single-shift invoice you can also add a mileage line. Sessional formats it in kilometres at the rate you choose, defaulting to the ATO cents-per-km rate. Work out the figure first with the cents-per-km calculator.

Beyond the shift and mileage lines, you can add ad-hoc line items on the invoice form. Each carries a free-text description and a positive amount, and you can add up to 20. They are useful for things the shift rate does not cover:

• Retainer or block-booking fees charged separately from the session rate
• Consumables or equipment passed through to the workplace
• Out-of-scope hours at a different rate, such as an after-hours callout
• Induction or orientation time billed alongside clinical work

Extra lines are not tied to a specific shift. They print on the PDF and flow through to a Xero sync the same way the shift and mileage lines do.

Once an invoice is issued, use Send to email it to the workplace contact. The email attaches the PDF, summarises the line items and total, and shows your payment terms and bank details. Replies go to your own address, not to Sessional. After sending you can watch the delivery state (sent, delivered, opened) on the invoice card, and the dashboard tiles show what is outstanding, overdue, or settled at a glance.

The same email carries a secure link the workplace can open with no account, to view the invoice and mark it paid or raise a query. Many hospitals and large health services also require invoices through their own accounts-payable portal, so submit there too where that applies. If an invoice is not settled by its due date it moves to overdue, and on Plus and Pro your overdue invoices are chased automatically. See the auto-chasers guide for the schedule.

Invoices are immutable once raised, which keeps a clean audit trail. To correct one, void it and generate a fresh invoice. Voiding deletes the invoice’s line items and returns the linked shifts to delivered status, so they become available to invoice again with the corrected details. The voided invoice stays in your records, marked void, and drops out of your outstanding totals.

You cannot delete a voided invoice. Under ATO rules you generally keep business and tax records for at least five years, in English and in a form that cannot be altered, so Sessional retains voided invoices permanently. Export your records regularly with the CSV button on the Invoices page, which respects your current filters so you can pull a quarter or a full year at a time. If you ever delete your account, invoice data is removed after 30 days.