Accounting & Operations

Where it usually starts

The software is rarely the problem. The receipts are in a shoebox or a phone camera roll, the bank feed has three months of unmatched lines, and the BAS is due before anyone has looked at it.

It usually sounds like one of these.

• "I'm on the tools all day and doing the books at 10 pm on a Sunday. I'd rather not."
• "We put on our first employee and I'm not sure the super and the payroll reporting are right."
• "Payday super started in July and our pay runs haven't changed."
• "I've got an ABN but I don't know if I should be registered for GST yet."
• "Our old bookkeeper left and nobody has reconciled anything since March."

What we actually do

Bookkeeping that the BAS can rely on

We reconcile every bank and card account to the statement, code transactions with the right GST treatment, and chase the items that don't explain themselves. The balance in the software has to match the balance at the bank on the last day of the period. If it doesn't, the BAS built on top of it is a guess.

Monthly suits a business with staff or stock, or one where cash is tight. Quarterly is enough for many sole traders. Each cycle ends with figures you can read as well as a lodged BAS.

Payroll, Single Touch Payroll and payday super

Every pay run is reported to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll on or before payday. From 1 July 2026 that report has to include each employee's qualifying earnings and their super liability, so payroll and super are now reported together for every payday.

Under payday super, the super guarantee of 12% has to be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of payday, not paid at the end of the quarter. The first contribution for a new employee, or to a new fund, gets 20 business days. A clearing house needs some of that window to process the payment, which is why the ATO says to pay super on payday.

The rules also reach people you may not think of as staff. Contractors paid mainly for their labour, and company directors, can count as employees for super. We work out who is in scope before the first pay run.

At year end we make the STP finalisation declaration, due 14 July for most employees and 30 September for closely held payees such as family members.

Registrations

A company needs its ACN from ASIC before it can get an ABN and tax registrations. After that, GST and PAYG withholding can be added through the Australian Business Register or through us as your registered tax agent. GST registration is required within 21 days of your GST turnover reaching $75,000, and PAYG withholding must be in place before the first payment you need to withhold from, even if the amount withheld is nil.

If your business provides building and construction, cleaning, courier or road freight, IT, or security, investigation or surveillance services, and pays contractors to deliver them, you may also have to lodge a taxable payments annual report by 28 August. We flag that when we set the file up.

Moving to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks

We work in whichever of the three you use. When a business is moving, we bring across opening balances that tie to the last lodged return, set up the chart of accounts and GST codes, and connect the bank feeds. Changing at the start of a quarter keeps a BAS period on one system; changing at 1 July keeps a whole year on one.

How it works

How fees work for this service

We quote a fixed fee and agree it with you before we start. For bookkeeping and payroll the quote depends on what the work involves: how many bank and card accounts there are, roughly how many transactions go through each month, how many people you pay and how often, and whether the books are current or need catching up first.

A catch-up is quoted separately from the ongoing work, so you can see what each costs. If the job changes, say you take on staff, we talk about it and agree a new fee before the work changes. How our fees work explains the approach across the practice.