24th June, 2024

Mixed weather today, ever so slightly warmer overnight. Rumour has it there will be rain for the rest of the week.

I rocked up to the accountant's office at 10am and we launched into attempting to process the SMSF rollover. It was a bit like the quest for all the parts of a magic key. We went into one program and did all the steps and pressed all the approval and authentication buttons that came up on the various phones (we had four phones and a computer all operating) and each time we came back to the gateway with one more number or link or file and progressed to the next quest.

After an hour of that we met with a stone wall in that the gateway was timing out when trying to "validate the member", ie confirm that we had Geoff's Aware Super account details right. So I went home to ring the bank account and the super fund for ideas. And was unable to get onto either. If an organisation is going to rely on increasingly complex systems they need to provide adequate support.

So I went into the manual super rollover system offered by Aware and started a parallel rollout. Same deal, off on various quests but at least knowing how to get each part of the magic key now. Until I reached the same point and discovered a small paragraph on the Aware site that gave me the clue of how to actually give the gateway the approval to validate the member, because it didn't automatically have that and made no mention of needing it. Ta da !! Done and another piece slots into place.

After the hour at the accountant's and (I kid you not) another THREE hours of solid work at home I had assembled all the pieces and pleased the gateway and tax office demons and obtained the account and reference details from Aware to ... do a bog standard EFT of the funds from the bank account into the super fund.

Really. I get that they want to protect us from identity theft, but the hours and hours and having to get a passport and all sorts of authentication just to get the account and BSB details for the money to go into and a reference number to make sure the transferred money went to the right person. The BSB and Account could just have been provided in Geoff's Aware account as you have to have the right to get into that account to see it. 

There could be a button that said "I am sending money your way and it's a rollover and not an ordinary contribution" that generated a reference number. 30 seconds work. If they wanted it could even take an email to Geoff and a text to his phone that each have a pin number that could be entered to confirm he hadn't been hacked. But no.

Anyway, I sent the first sum, the maximum I could send in one day, and scheduled the second amount for tomorrow, and with any luck the fund will get both of those and they should show up in his account in a few days. As soon as the second one goes (I'll check at one minute past midnight) I transfer the remaining funds to our saving account and close the SMSF account and that will allow the paperwork to close the SMSF. Yes, there's another round of paperwork, but this is in the hands of the accountant and is (I am told) pretty straightforward and should be done by the end of month deadline.

I got to feed the critters at about 3pm, raced out to get maize, barley and pellets and picked up a pizza base and milk from the supermarket. I had received a shift offer for today but didn't even open it, not happening. Two hours nap, a home made pizza and a glass of wine later and I am just starting to settle down. 

That four hours work rates up there among the most intense things I have ever done. These include getting lost in the middle of Melbourne looking for the dock for the Spirit of Tasmania and wrestling a full size quad bike around a bush track in the Snowy's when I'd never even been on one before. So, yeah, adrenaline.

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