You have visited the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS)  and prepared your ABLIS package, but what exactly do the results mean?

As a business owner or operator, you are responsible for understanding what compliance obligations relate to your business circumstances so it’s important for you to do more than just get the results from ABLIS! You need to understand how the results apply to your business and what action you need to take.

If you are based in the ACT, all of the results that ABLIS provides are legal requirements. But there are some important differences between licences and codes of practice.

What is a licence?
A licence relates to the need to obtain recognition or certification and registration to undertake a certain business activity. Often licences are referred to as registrations, permits or approvals.

Do I need to obtain a licence?
If there are licences in your results, there is a legal requirement to apply to government before you undertake the related activity. There will be various eligibility criteria, fees to pay and you may need to demonstrate that you have various competencies.

If you require several licences and permits to conduct your business activity, you may find that you have to apply for them in a particular order. ABLIS helps you identify this by listing “prerequisites” in the information.

What is a code of practice and do I need to do anything about them?
A code of practice can be either a legal requirement or non-legal requirement. Legal codes of practice are defined as a result of legislation. These are the codes of practice that ABLIS will include in your results. Codes of practice offer practical examples of good practice and give advice on how to comply with the relevant law. You will need to incorporate good practice into your business operations to ensure you are meeting your obligations under the laws that apply to your business type.

Non-legal codes of practice are defined by industry regulators and bodies. These codes set minimum standards that businesses operating within a particular industry are expected to comply with. If you become a member of an industry body, you may be required to comply with the industry code of practice to maintain your membership. This information is not available through ABLIS and to find this information you would need to check with the industry regulator or body that relates to your business.

Need help?
If you’re based in the ACT, you can contact Canberra BusinessPoint, the ACT Government’s business mentoring and advisory service. They can offer support and tailored advice in the establishment, operation and development of your business. You can contact them on 1300 648 641 or visit www.canberrabusinesspoint.com.au  for more information.

The Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS)  is a searchable online tool that helps you find these and the government controls your business needs to comply with. For ACT businesses, ABLIS contains information about all the licences – sometimes referred to as permits or approvals – and codes of practice that you need to operate your business.

ABLIS saves you time by providing a single website to gather all the compliance information you need. ABLIS results include information summaries, links to forms and contact information for the relevant agency if you need more information.

While ABLIS is designed with starting a business in mind, established businesses can also use ABLIS, for example to check their compliance responsibilities, or to check for new requirements when you are growing or adding a new business activity.

The first step is found on the home page – you will need to enter a business type and a location to get started.

Ensuring your business complies with all its regulation obligations can be one of the most difficult parts of starting and running a business. It’s something we understand, and through a number of different initiatives identified in Growth, diversification and jobs: A Business Development Strategy, is something the ACT Government is working to fix.

One such initiative is the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS) . The ACT Government has had an ongoing role in the design, development and implementation of ABLIS which is part of the Australian Business Number and Business Names Registration Project – one of 27 regulatory priorities under the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) red tape reform initiative.

ABLIS allows you, for the first time, to go online and create a customised list of information about how to comply with the rules and regulations that apply to your specific situation. You can use it to provide information on ACT specific compliance obligations, or if you are trading in New South Wales (or any other Australian state for that matter), you can find out about theirs.

In addition to our ongoing role in red tape reform at a national level, we have also established the Red Tape Reduction Panel which works across the whole ACT Government to investigate and eliminate, or appropriately modify, regulatory impediments that frustrate you and other Canberra businesses.

Supporting the work of the Red Tape Reduction Panel, is the online feedback tool, Fix my Red Tape . If your business is having trouble with unnecessary red tape, you can use this tool to provide feedback, ask questions or lodge complaints about them.