Thursday 31 March 2011

ATO e-Record Downloads

This is not breaking news in any sense, but something I've just had to work around.

For some years, the ATO has provided a program called E-Record that lets small businesses and organisations keep financial records. It was free, it worked, it satisfied various reporting requirements, etc... but then they decided it was too much hassle to keep updating it. In July 2010 they removed the download and in September stopped supporting it altogether. That's all good and well and I'm not going to rant about how they should be supporting small businesses with free accounting software; it's ultimately their call to can it (and there's plenty of software around that's really not that expensive).

But... it's really rather awkward when you find that you need to open old records that are in the ATO's E-Record proprietary, binary format, and you can't actually download their software to open them.

So... after a lot of digging (and failing to find any other software that can open the *.ifm files), I've managed to find some installers for E-Records around the Internet.

Firstly, there's this Computer-Aid website that's "selling" the old installers for $6 (they claim to recover bandwidth costs, but I'm not convinced a 15 MB download costs $6). If you're feeling generous (and to be fair, its not a big price for accessing your old records) then by all means grab a copy there.

I did a bit of asking around and managed to find some installers, which are now hosted on DropBox (if you're new to DropBox and decide to sign up, please use my referral link!)
Please run an up-to-date virus scanner over these before you open/install them! I got these from other people who I don't know — not the official website (since it's long gone!). If you don't check them yourself, you're putting a lot of blind faith, not only in me, but in various people that I've contacted randomly on forums... You don't even know me (probably), let alone the random people I got these installers from. So scan it! Better still, run it on a 'throw-away' virtual machine.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting these links, I just upgraded to windows 7 and wanted to keep using erecords rather than buy some software.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link, downloaded the MAC version and saved my bacon.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU SO, SO MUCH. We run a very small business and I was almost in tears when my computer had just fozen up on me and I couldn't save anything.... you have no idea how much this means to me.... THANK YOU

Sam said...

Any idea how to transfer records from e-record on lion to e-record on snow leopard? Lion disabled e-record and I had to install on laptop but need to transfer 11 months of data to laptop so can finish end of year financials

Andrew said...

I can't open the ifm file to finalize my year end tax in ERecord. Is there anyway i can get into it? I'm on a Mac. thanks Andrew

Anonymous said...

Thank you SO SO So very much! You are an absoute darling!

Anonymous said...

Thank you so so much! I have been looking all over the Internet for hours trying to find a version of eRecords for Mac and spent even longer trying to convert a windows exe onto my Mac using WineBottler. You have no idea how grateful I am. Never remove those links!

Coasty said...

HI There I have just changed to a new laptop and had no idea the ATO had pulled e-record the problem i have now is i downloaded both version 6.1 & 6.2 when the 1st one did not work but i am still unable to open the work index sheet it goes to internet explorer and you should be able to open but it does not i believe ths issue is my operating system is 64bit and e-record is 32bit I should be able t go into properties and select XP but that function is also not available to me can any HELp me!

Anonymous said...

just downloaded 6.2 onto Win 7 and it found the old files created under XP perfectly! Thanks

Anonymous said...

Likewisse, I downloaded 6.2 to my new Win 7 64 bit laptop and copied the data files across from the old laptop. Works perfectly. Thanks again for the software :)

Unknown said...

Had more trouble than a pregnant nun until I over installed 6.2 over my 4 and it works great.
Thank You

Unknown said...

Hello, do you still happen to have the links? they no longer work and ive lost my erecords :(

The Frog said...

Hi Jim, sorry didn't realise the links had broken (dropbox have obviously updated their sharing). Reload and try again, should be working now.

MCNEWS.COM.AU said...

The mac download does not work for me from your link unfortunately.

Unknown said...

I have downloaded version 6.2, how do I now get the data into erecord. My old computer crashed and I needed to resurrect files. Appreciate any help available.
cheers
mick

Anonymous said...

My Mac says the link is broken (the dropbox Mac version) :-(