The ATO Business Portal is vital to Australian businesses. This secure gateway allows us to provide reporting information to the tax office, to meet our compliance regulations.
It’s understandable that if you do any of those kind of tasks (either for your own business or someone elses), you need to know that the website and it’s AUSKey authentication is going to work before you upgrade to Windows 10.
The goods news is – it does work.
This is thanks to Internet Explorer 11 which is still included in Windows 10 and is still supported by the ATO – https://abr.gov.au/AUSkey/Help-and-support/Setting-up-AUSkey-troubleshooting/AUSkey-compatibility/
What you’ll hear a lot of is that the ATO Business Portal doesn’t work in Edge, which is Microsoft’s new browser in Windows 10. It’s designed to be clean and responsive and doesn’t allow for add-ons like Java .. which is needed for the ATO Business Portal.
What you are going to find when you visit https://bp.ato.gov.au in IE 11 on Windows 10 is you might be blocked because your Java version is out of date. Let me pull that apart in English and explain how to get everything running smoothly!
How to find Internet Explorer 11:
In the ‘Search the web and Windows’ bow, just start typing Internet. You’ll see the Internet Explorer Desktop app at the top of your search results. If you right-click on it, you can select Pin to taskbar and it will sit on the bottom of your screen for future use.
Set IE11 to always open:
If you use a lot of websites that are dependant on Java or other ‘plugins’, you might want to set Internet Explorer 11 as your default browser instead of Edge. To do this, start typing ‘set default browser’ into the Search the web and Windows bar. This brings up ‘Choose a default web browser System settings’ at the top of your search results.
Click that, scroll down to the Web Browser section and click the Microsoft Edge icon and then click the Internet Explorer icon. To exit this screen, click the X in the top right hand corner.
OK, now we’ve done all that, we can just start IE11, type in https://bp.ato.gov.au and we’re good, right? Well, almost.
If Java hasn’t been updated, you might be presented with this:
Click the www.java.com/verify link and let’s go and update Java!
How to update Java:
- Even the Java verify page itself might throw up an error box at the bottom of your screen:
2. Click the Update button.
3. On the Java update page click Agree and Start Free Download. Click Run when the file download pop-up appears.
4. If User Account Control also complains, click Yes to allow Java to make changes to your computer:
5. Follow the setup screens to update Java and uninstall any old versions:
6. And when you hit close .. the Microsoft Edge might still want to load and give you a Java warning. Just close Edge with the X in the top right hand corner:
7. Close ALL open browser Windows, then re-open Internet Explorer 11 and go to https://bp.ato.gov.au
Allow Java to run:
Almost there! Now that Java has been updated, you’ll get another couple of Allow prompts to click Run on. Put a tick in any box that says ‘Do not show this again for apps from the publisher and location above.’
And finally, you’ll see the good old Login box with your AUSKey credentials!
A final word …
While this seems like a lot of mucking around, Windows 10 is offering a new level of security protection by blocking out of data Java software. Java has had several high profiles hacks, where developers have used the code to gain illegal access to your computer. All of these are fixed by Java releasing a new version with a security update. So, not running old Java versions is a good thing!
Once you’ve updated Java, you won’t have to go through all of these steps again .. until Java releases a new update.
Subscribe to my blog by entering your email address above and I’ll notify you when a Java update comes out. I also have a new post coming to show you how you can use the Microsoft Edge browser to draw on web pages and collaborate with others, which will feature Xero.
-SCuffy