ATO SmartDocs is designed to process documents downloaded from the ATO Portal. Automatic document identification and client allocation work best with PDF documents rather than scanned PDFs.
You can also process scanned documents if they were scanned using OCR text identification available on most modern printers. Depending on scan quality, ATO SmartDocs may automatically process them or you may need to use the adhoc method. Documents from the ATO Communications Portal can also be retrieved using the ATO API instead of downloading from the ATO Portal.
To support PDFs that are scanned without OCR text identification, the Adhoc filing feature is available. The process below applies to documents originally in PDF format.
Prepare documents for processing by either:
Retrieving documents from the ATO Portal
Retrieving documents via the ATO API
Using Bulk Scan Import
Once you load your documents into ATO SmartDocs using one of the above methods, you are ready to start processing them.
After processing and notifying clients, you can then upload the processed documents to your Document Management System.
You can use OCR to scan paper documents and process them through ATO SmartDocs. Depending on the OCR quality, SmartDocs may automatically process them or require adhoc filing. OCR is not always accurate, as it may misinterpret characters. A built‑in OCR option is also available under Bulk Scan Documents, though size limits apply.
Note: You can process any PDF document in ATO SmartDocs, not just ATO‑issued documents, as long as a Document Profile exists. To request creation of a new Document Profile, email [email protected] and upload an example document to the processing area.