Straight answers on tax, payroll and running a company in Australia.

Numerix Accounting is an Australian accounting and bookkeeping firm based in Sydney, New South Wales, providing accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, taxation, business advisory, finance and lending, and insurance services to small and medium businesses across Australia.

The firm works with owner-operated businesses and growing companies, handling everything from day-to-day transaction processing through to management reporting and tax planning. Numerix operates from two offices in Sydney — North Strathfield and Liverpool — and services clients nationally. More background: about Numerix.

Numerix Accounting has two Sydney offices. The North Strathfield office is at Level 1, 5 George Street, North Strathfield NSW 2137. The Liverpool office is at Level 1, 244 Macquarie Street, Liverpool NSW 2170.

Both offices take appointments in person, and the firm also works remotely with clients in other states. Phone 1300 595 155 or send an enquiry to arrange a time at either location.

Yes. Numerix Accounting works under registration with the Tax Practitioners Board, which is what allows a firm to lodge tax returns and BAS on a client's behalf and to give tax advice for a fee.

Registration details: Tax Agent Number insert TAN. Professional membership: CPA Australia / CA ANZ / IPA — confirm. You can verify any Australian practitioner yourself on the TPB Register, and see the team on about Numerix.

Numerix Accounting offers seven service lines:

• Accounting — financial statements, year-end compliance, management accounts
• Bookkeeping — transaction processing, bank reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable
• Payroll — pay runs, STP reporting, superannuation, award interpretation
• Taxation — company, trust, partnership and individual returns, BAS, tax planning
• Business services — cash flow forecasting, KPI reporting, structuring
• Finance and lending — business loans, equipment and asset finance
• Insurance solutions — business and personal risk cover

Numerix Accounting works across ten industry groups: trades and construction, medical practices and health services including NDIS providers, cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs, e-commerce and retail, transport, cleaning services, not-for-profits, manufacturing, business consulting, and importing and wholesale.

Industry focus matters in accounting because the compliance traps differ: a builder deals with retentions and contractor reporting, an NDIS provider with GST-free supplies, a restaurant with penalty rates and tips. Each of these is handled differently.

Numerix publishes fixed prices for its standard services rather than quoting hourly, so you know the cost before work starts. Published price lists cover company incorporation, discretionary trust set-up, ASIC agent and annual review, accounting and tax for companies, accounting for sole traders, and bookkeeping.

Pricing is published for company incorporation pricing, trust set-up pricing, ASIC agent pricing, accounting and tax for companies pricing, sole trader accounting pricing and bookkeeping pricing. For work outside those, contact us. Indicative ranges: insert from / to figures per service.

Numerix works in whichever cloud accounting platform you already use, and can migrate you to a different one if your current set-up is holding you back.

Platforms supported: list confirmed platforms — e.g. Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online — and any partner/advisor certifications. If you are starting from scratch, the firm will recommend a platform based on your transaction volume, payroll complexity and industry rather than defaulting to one product. Set-up and migration sit within bookkeeping services.

Yes. Accounting, bookkeeping, payroll and tax work is done in cloud software, so location does not limit service. Numerix has clients in other states and works by video call, phone and shared file access.

The one thing that varies by state is payroll tax and workers compensation, which are administered by each state or territory. Numerix handles the registration and lodgement rules for the state your employees work in as part of payroll services.

The practical difference is who does your work and how quickly you can reach them. At a large firm, an SME file is typically handled by a junior and reviewed by a partner you rarely speak to. At Numerix you deal directly with the person doing the work.

The trade-off is honest: very large firms have specialist teams for international structuring, transfer pricing and complex M&A. If your business needs that depth, you should use them. For an owner-operated Australian business that needs accurate books, on-time lodgement and someone who returns calls, a firm this size is usually the better fit. More on the team and approach: about Numerix.

Three ways: use the online quote tool, call 1300 595 155, or send an enquiry through the contact page.

To quote accurately, we need three things: your business structure (sole trader, company, trust or partnership), your annual turnover, and how many employees you pay. If you already use accounting software, read-only access lets us quote precisely instead of estimating.

You can change accountants at any point in the financial year, and you do not need to tell your current accountant first. Once you appoint a new agent, they send an ethical clearance letter to the outgoing accountant requesting your records, and the ATO agent link is updated.

What you should collect regardless: last lodged financial statements and tax return, depreciation schedule, software login or file, and any ATO correspondence. A mid-year switch is usually easier than waiting for June, because the new firm has time to fix problems before the deadline. Get in touch and we will manage the handover.

No. Changing tax agents is not an audit trigger. The ATO processes agent changes constantly and does not treat them as a risk indicator on their own.

What does attract ATO attention is late or missing lodgements, figures that fall outside the small business benchmarks for your industry, unexplained variances between BAS and the annual return, and unpaid super. A new accountant who cleans those up reduces your risk rather than raising it — see taxation services.

Bring enough for the accountant to see the shape of the business, not a perfect file. A useful list:

• ABN, ACN and business structure details
• Most recent tax return and financial statements
• Accounting software access, or bank statements for the current year
• Last four BAS lodgements
• Any ATO letters, payment plans or outstanding debts
• Employee count and current payroll software

If your records are incomplete, come anyway — sorting out where the gaps are is part of the job. Book a time at either office.

Yes — the initial conversation is free and carries no obligation. It exists so both sides can work out whether the engagement is a fit, and so we can quote on facts rather than guesses.

Duration and format: confirm — e.g. 30 minutes, phone or in person. Advice specific to your circumstances is chargeable work and begins after you accept a written engagement. Arrange a call.

Payroll is the tighter of the two, because pay runs cannot pause. A clean handover of payroll generally needs one to two full pay cycles of overlap so year-to-date figures and STP reporting carry across correctly.

Bookkeeping handover is usually quicker if the previous file is reconciled. If it is not, we scope the catch-up work separately so you can see what is bringing the books up to date and what is ongoing. Typical onboarding: confirm standard timeframe. See payroll services and bookkeeping services.

A bookkeeper records what happened. An accountant interprets it and handles the tax consequences.

Bookkeeping is the ongoing work: coding transactions, reconciling bank accounts, chasing invoices, running payroll, preparing BAS. Accounting is periodic: financial statements, the annual tax return, structuring decisions, tax planning, advice on whether to buy the asset or lease it.

Most businesses need both. Where they are handled by the same firm, the practical benefit is that the accountant is not spending billable hours fixing the bookkeeping before they can start — which is why Numerix runs bookkeeping services and accounting services together.

Software imports your bank transactions. It does not decide what they are. Bank feeds are accurate about amounts and dates and unreliable about coding, and a guessed coding rule applied automatically for eleven months creates a bigger problem than no rule at all.

The recurring errors we see in self-managed files: GST claimed on items that are GST-free or input-taxed, owner drawings coded as expenses, loan repayments expensed in full instead of split between principal and interest, duplicated payments from an unreconciled clearing account, and unreconciled bank accounts where the software balance does not match the bank.

If your turnover is low, transactions are few and you understand GST, doing it yourself is reasonable. Once payroll or inventory is involved, the cost of errors usually exceeds the fee — compare against bookkeeping pricing.

Cost is driven by transaction volume and payroll headcount, not turnover. A consultancy turning over $2 million with 40 transactions a month and no staff is cheaper to service than a cafe turning over $600,000 with daily takings and twelve casuals.

The four things that move the price: number of bank and card accounts to reconcile, monthly transaction count, number of employees and pay frequency, and whether inventory or job costing is involved. Numerix quotes bookkeeping as a fixed monthly fee once those are known — see the bookkeeping price list.

Bank reconciliation is the check that every transaction in your accounting file matches the bank's own record, and that the closing balances agree. Until that check passes, no report from the file can be trusted.

It matters because an unreconciled file hides both directions of error: money received and never recorded, which understates income and creates ATO exposure, and payments recorded twice, which overstates expenses and inflates a deduction that will not survive review. It is also the first thing a lender or a buyer looks at, which is why we reconcile before starting any finance application.

Monthly at minimum, weekly if you carry inventory or invoice on terms. Monthly reconciliation means an error is at most four weeks old when you find it, while the invoice, the supplier and your memory are all still available.

Quarterly reconciliation done only to prepare the BAS is the most common pattern and the most expensive one. Errors compound, GST is calculated on unverified figures, and you spend the year making decisions on numbers that turn out to be wrong. Monthly reconciliation is standard in our bookkeeping services.

Yes. Catch-up bookkeeping is standard work and being badly behind is more common than most owners assume. The approach is to reconstruct from source data — bank statements, merchant records, supplier accounts — rather than trusting whatever is already in the file.

The order matters: reconcile the oldest period first, correct GST on the affected BAS periods, then bring payroll and super into line, because unpaid super attracts the super guarantee charge and gets worse the longer it sits. Where BAS figures were wrong, revisions can generally be lodged; voluntary disclosure before the ATO asks usually reduces penalties. Catch-up work is quoted separately from ongoing bookkeeping services — contact us with a rough idea of how far behind you are.

Five years from the date you lodge, for most business records. Records must be in English, and digital copies are acceptable — you do not need to keep the paper original if the scan or photo is legible and complete.

Longer periods apply in some cases: records for an asset you still own must be kept until five years after you dispose of it and report the capital gain, so property and equipment records can need keeping for decades. Records relating to a dispute must be kept until it is resolved. Record-keeping is set up correctly from the start under accounting services.

A BAS agent is a bookkeeper registered with the Tax Practitioners Board to prepare and lodge BAS, deal with the ATO on GST and PAYG matters, and advise on those obligations for a fee. An unregistered bookkeeper can process your transactions but cannot legally do that work for payment.

You do not have to use one — you can lodge your own BAS. Two practical advantages if you do: registered agents get an extended lodgement deadline for most quarters, and they carry professional indemnity insurance. BAS preparation and lodgement is included in our bookkeeping services.

Payday Super started on 1 July 2026. Employers must now pay superannuation on every payday instead of quarterly, and the contribution has to be received by the employee's fund within seven business days of payday.

It was introduced by the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025 and applies to any payday on or after 1 July 2026. Wages paid up to 30 June 2026 still fall under the old quarterly deadlines.

Three things changed at once: the timing (each payday, not each quarter), the earnings base (qualifying earnings replaces ordinary time earnings), and the penalty regime (the ATO now issues super guarantee charge assessments directly from Single Touch Payroll data). The rate itself did not change. If you would rather not manage the new timing in-house, this is what our payroll services covers.

The super guarantee rate for 2026–27 is 12%. The rate reached its legislated target of 12% on 1 July 2025 and there are no further increases scheduled.

On a $90,000 salary that is $10,800 a year. On an $80,000 salary it is $9,600. What changed on 1 July 2026 is not the percentage but when it has to be paid and what it is calculated on — see payroll services.

Seven business days from payday, and the test is when the fund receives the money — not when you send it. A payment initiated on day six that clears on day nine is late.

That makes clearing house and gateway processing time your problem to manage. In practice, employers running weekly or fortnightly payroll should be submitting super in the same run as wages, not a few days after. Limited exceptions apply for new employees and out-of-cycle payments such as bonuses and commissions. We manage the timing under payroll services.

Qualifying earnings is the new base for calculating super from 1 July 2026. It brings ordinary time earnings together with additional payment types, most notably all commissions and salary sacrifice amounts.

For a salaried employee the result usually looks the same as the old calculation. The sharp edges are commissions, which are now fully included, and salary sacrifice contributions, which count toward the base.

Whether super applies to a payment depends on what the payment is for, not what your payroll software calls it. An allowance labelled the same way in two businesses can be treated differently. Allowances, overtime and bonuses are worth checking against the ATO's qualifying earnings guidance rather than assuming the payroll default is right — we audit pay codes as part of payroll services.

The free SBSCH was retired on 30 June 2026. Employers who relied on it need to pay super through their payroll software's built-in super processing, a commercial clearing house, or directly to each employee's fund.

Whichever route you take, check the processing time before you commit to it, because the seven-business-day clock measures arrival at the fund. A gateway that takes four days is workable; one that takes eight is not, and the shortfall is yours. Ask us to review your current set-up.

Late super triggers the super guarantee charge, which costs materially more than the original contribution and is not tax deductible. The SGC includes the shortfall, an interest component and administrative charges, and under the redesigned system the ATO raises assessments directly using your Single Touch Payroll data.

Two consequences owners underestimate. First, the deduction is lost — paying super one week late converts a deductible expense into a non-deductible one. Second, directors can be held personally liable for unpaid super through a director penalty notice, which pierces the company structure.

If you are already behind, disclosing it before the ATO contacts you generally produces a better outcome than waiting — contact us before the ATO does, and see payroll services.

Single Touch Payroll is the system that sends payroll data to the ATO every time you run a pay, rather than once a year. Reporting is mandatory for all employers, including those with a single employee.

Under STP Phase 2 the reporting is itemised rather than aggregated: gross pay is broken into components such as overtime, bonuses, allowances and paid leave, and employment and tax treatment codes are included. That granularity is what lets the ATO see whether super has been calculated on the right base and paid on time — which is why STP and Payday Super work together. Numerix handles STP reporting as part of its payroll services.

Sometimes yes, even if they invoice you with an ABN. If the contract is wholly or principally for the person's own labour and skills, and they cannot delegate the work to someone else, super applies.

The ABN is not the test. Neither is calling the arrangement a contract. What matters is the substance: who controls how the work is done, whether the person supplies their own tools and takes commercial risk, and whether they can subcontract it out.

This is the single most common and most expensive payroll error we see, because it accrues quietly across years and the SGC applies to the whole period. Treating a genuine employee as a contractor also creates leave, award and payroll tax exposure on top of the super. We review classification as part of payroll services.

$270,830, and it now operates as an annual figure rather than a quarterly one. Earnings above the cap do not attract compulsory super unless an award or agreement requires it.

The shift from quarterly to annual changes the timing for high earners: super on a large salary is effectively front-loaded earlier in the year, and an employee can reach the cap partway through. Getting this wrong is costly in both directions — underpay and you face the SGC, overpay and you may push the employee past their concessional contributions cap. Confirm how the cap applies to your pay cycle before assuming your software handles it — this is checked under payroll services.

You need to identify the correct modern award, the correct classification level within it, and then apply the loadings and penalties it sets. Paying above the minimum hourly rate does not by itself make you compliant, because awards also govern overtime, weekend and public holiday penalties, allowances, breaks and minimum engagement periods.

The national minimum wage rose to $26.44 per hour ($1,004.90 a week) from 1 July 2026, and award rates are reviewed annually, so last year's pay template is out of date. Underpayment is recovered with interest and can carry penalties, and in serious cases wage theft is now a criminal offence.

Highest-risk arrangements: annualised salaries that do not pass the better-off-overall test against the award, casual loading applied incorrectly, and unpaid time for opening, closing or handover. Award interpretation is part of our payroll services.

You must register once your GST turnover reaches $75,000 in a 12-month period, or as soon as you expect it will. The threshold is $150,000 for not-for-profit organisations, and taxi, ride-share and limousine drivers must register from their first dollar regardless of turnover.

The test is forward-looking as well as backward-looking, which catches people out: if you sign a contract in September that will clearly take you past $75,000, the obligation starts then, not when the money lands. You have 21 days to register once you cross or expect to cross the threshold.

Registering voluntarily below the threshold can make sense if your customers are GST-registered businesses and you have significant input costs, since you can claim credits. It rarely helps if you sell to consumers. We can assess this with you as part of taxation services.

Quarterly BAS is due on the 28th of the month following the quarter, except the December quarter, which is due 28 February.

• July–September: due 28 October
• October–December: due 28 February
• January–March: due 28 April
• April–June: due 28 July

Businesses with GST turnover of $20 million or more must report monthly, due on the 21st. Lodging through a registered tax or BAS agent generally gives an extended deadline for most quarters — a common reason to use one even if you prepare the figures yourself. See taxation services and bookkeeping services.

Cash basis means you report GST when money moves. Accrual basis means you report it when the invoice is issued or received. Businesses with turnover under $10 million can choose either.

Cash accounting suits businesses that invoice on terms and wait to be paid, because you are not remitting GST on an invoice your customer has not settled. Accrual suits businesses paid immediately but buying on supplier credit, since you can claim the credit before you pay the bill.

The most common mistake is choosing accrual, having a slow-paying customer base, and funding the ATO's GST out of working capital for 60 days. We model the cash impact under business services.

You cannot claim GST on purchases that did not include GST in the first place, or on anything used for a private or input-taxed purpose. The categories that cause most errors:

• GST-free supplies — most basic food, most medical and health services, education, exports
• Input-taxed supplies — residential rent and most financial services, including bank fees and interest
• Purchases without a valid tax invoice, where the amount is over $82.50 including GST
• Private-use portions, which must be apportioned rather than claimed in full
• Suppliers who are not registered for GST, even if their invoice says “GST”

Bank fees and residential rent claimed as GST-inclusive are the two we correct most often — coding is checked every period under bookkeeping services.

PAYG instalments are prepayments of income tax based on your last lodged return, and yes — you can vary them if your circumstances have changed.

Because the ATO calculates them from a prior year, a business whose income has dropped can end up prepaying tax on profit it is no longer making. You can vary the instalment amount or rate, but the variation must be reasonable: if you underestimate by more than the allowed margin, penalties and interest can apply.

The 2026–27 Budget also announced greater flexibility for businesses to change PAYG instalments as conditions change, including an option to opt in to monthly instalments. Announced measures should be confirmed as enacted before relying on them — we post updates on the blog. Instalment planning sits within our business services.

Lodging late and paying late are two separate problems with two separate penalties. Lodge on time even if you cannot pay.

Late lodgement attracts a failure-to-lodge penalty calculated in penalty units, which accrues per 28-day period the return is overdue. Unpaid amounts attract the general interest charge, which compounds daily. The ATO is generally willing to arrange a payment plan — but it is much easier to negotiate one on a lodged return than on an estimate.

A pattern of late lodgement also affects your standing: it can cost you agent lodgement concessions and, since business tax debts can be reported to credit reporting bureaus, it can affect your ability to borrow — which then flows into any finance and lending services application.

25% for base rate entities and 30% for all other companies. Neither rate changed in the 2026–27 Federal Budget.

The rate you pay is not a choice — it follows from whether the company meets the base rate entity test for that income year. Getting it wrong flows through to franking credits on dividends, which then have to be corrected at shareholder level. Company returns and franking accounts are handled under accounting and tax for companies pricing.

A base rate entity is a company with aggregated turnover under $50 million where no more than 80% of its assessable income is passive income. Meeting both tests gives the 25% rate; failing either gives 30%.

Passive income includes dividends, interest, rent, royalties and net capital gains. This is why a small company that stops trading and just holds an investment property can find its tax rate jump from 25% to 30% without anything obvious having changed. Aggregated turnover also includes connected and affiliated entities, so a group of small companies can exceed the threshold collectively. Group structuring is something we work through under business consulting.

Small businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million can immediately deduct the full cost of eligible assets costing less than $20,000 each. The threshold applies per asset, not to your total spend, so three items at $18,000 each are all deductible.

The 2026–27 Budget announced that the $20,000 threshold will be made permanent from 1 July 2026, replacing the year-by-year extensions of the past decade. Under the previous settings it was due to revert to $1,000. Assets costing $20,000 or more can still go into the small business simplified depreciation pool.

Two conditions people miss: the asset must be first used or installed ready for use within the income year — ordering it is not enough — and the $20,000 test is applied excluding GST if you are registered. Timing a purchase against your tax position is something we plan under taxation services, and fund through asset finance.

Division 7A treats money you take out of your own company as a deemed dividend — taxable in your hands at your marginal rate, often without franking credits — unless it is properly documented as a loan or repaid in time.

It catches ordinary behaviour. Paying a personal expense from the company card, drawing cash through the year and calling it a loan, or letting a shareholder loan sit on the balance sheet with no written agreement can all trigger it.

The way out is to put a complying loan agreement in place before the company's return is lodged, with the minimum yearly repayment and the ATO benchmark interest rate applied. That has to be done in the right window; it cannot be fixed retrospectively once the deadline passes. If you take money out of your company informally, raise it with your accountant well before June. Division 7A planning is part of taxation services.

The 2026–27 Budget announced that the 50% CGT discount will be replaced with an indexation mechanism, and that a minimum 30% tax will apply to capital gains accruing after 1 July 2027, applied after indexation. The changes are announced to apply to CGT assets held by individuals, trusts and partnerships.

Indexation adjusts the cost base for inflation instead of halving the gain, which is closer to the approach that applied before 1999. The effect on any particular asset depends on how long it is held and what inflation does over that period, so this is not uniformly better or worse than the current discount.

Small business CGT concessions — the 15-year exemption, 50% active asset reduction, retirement exemption and rollover — were not changed in the Budget. We track this measure on the blog.

Both are claimable, and both require records kept at the time rather than reconstructed in July.

For working from home, the fixed rate method is 70 cents per hour, which covers electricity, gas, internet, phone and stationery. You need a record of actual hours worked from home for the whole year — an estimate or a four-week sample is no longer accepted. The actual cost method can give a bigger deduction but needs receipts and a workable apportionment.

For vehicles, the cents per kilometre method covers up to 5,000 business kilometres and needs a reasonable basis for the estimate. Above that, or where business use is high, the logbook method applies: twelve continuous weeks of records establishing a business-use percentage, valid for five years unless circumstances change.

Travel between home and work is private, not business, in almost all cases. Sole traders can see what is included at sole trader accounting pricing.

If you lodge your own return it is due 31 October. If you are on a registered tax agent's lodgement program, the due date is generally later — commonly 15 May for many company and trust returns — but only if you were on the agent's list before 31 October.

That last condition matters: engaging an agent in March does not retrospectively give you their extension. Failure-to-lodge penalties accrue in penalty units per 28-day period overdue, and repeated lateness can see the ATO issue default assessments based on its own estimates.

If you have several years outstanding, lodging them all is still the better path. Penalties are often remitted where a taxpayer voluntarily brings everything up to date. If you have years outstanding, contact us — catch-up lodgement is part of taxation services.

A Taxable Payments Annual Report discloses payments you made to contractors during the year, and it is due by 28 August. It applies to businesses in building and construction, cleaning, courier and road freight, IT, and security, investigation or surveillance services.

The ATO matches your TPAR against what those contractors reported as income, which is precisely why it exists. Failing to lodge one, or omitting contractors, is an easy discrepancy for the ATO to find.

The catch for mixed businesses: if you provide any of these services, you may need to lodge even if they are not your main activity. A retailer that also does installation work can be caught. TPAR lodgement is included in our bookkeeping services.

From 2026–27, eligible companies that make a loss will be able to use it to claim a refund against tax paid in the previous two income years. The measure was announced in the 2026–27 Budget and is aimed at companies with turnover up to $1 billion, mostly small businesses.

Practically, this converts a loss year into cash rather than a carry-forward benefit you can only use once you are profitable again — which is exactly when a struggling business needs it least. A separate measure announced for 2028–29 would let small start-ups in their first two years get a refund for losses up to the value of FBT and withholding tax paid on wages. We will cover it on the blog once legislated.

If you provide anything of value to employees or their families beyond salary, FBT is in scope. The general FBT rate and rules were not changed in the 2026–27 Budget, other than the electric vehicle FBT transition.

The benefits that most often go unreported in small companies: a work vehicle available for private use, including garaging it at home; paying an employee's private expenses; entertainment and staff functions; car parking; and low-interest or interest-free loans to employees. Directors of their own company count as employees for FBT.

The FBT year runs to 31 March, not 30 June, so it has its own deadline. Because FBT is calculated on a grossed-up value, the tax can exceed the cost of the benefit itself — often making a cash allowance or an employee contribution the cheaper structure. We review this alongside payroll services and taxation services.

ASIC charges $636 to register a new proprietary limited company from 1 July 2026, up from $611 the previous year. The fee is set by regulation, indexed to CPI each 1 July, and identical no matter who lodges the application.

What the $636 buys: company registration, an Australian Company Number, and a certificate of registration. What it does not include: an ABN, a business name, a constitution, share certificates, a registered office service, a director ID, GST registration, or any ongoing compliance. Reserving a name beforehand is a separate $65.

Set-up packages differ mainly in what they bundle around that fixed government fee. See the incorporation price list.

$342 for a standard proprietary company, $70 for an eligible special purpose company, and $1,583 for a public company, for the year from 1 July 2026. It is payable within two months of the company's review date, which is the anniversary of registration.

This is the single largest recurring cost of simply having a company. It falls due every year whether the company trades, sits dormant, or earns nothing at all — which is the usual reason to formally deregister an entity you have stopped using rather than leaving it on the register.

The reduced $70 rate applies to companies whose constitution restricts them to one narrow purpose, most commonly a corporate trustee of a single self-managed super fund. See ASIC agent pricing.

$102 if payment or a required change is up to one month late, and $428 if it is more than one month late. They apply automatically with no grace period, so a $342 annual review paid five weeks late becomes $770.

The same penalties apply to late lodgement of statutory forms. Changes to company details — a new director, a change of address, a share transfer — must be notified on Form 484 within 28 days of the change, and it is this deadline, not the annual review, that catches most companies out.

Appointing a registered agent is the usual fix: the reminders come to the agent, who lodges on time — see ASIC agent pricing.

There is no universally correct answer, and the honest short version is that structure should be decided on your actual numbers, risk exposure and intentions rather than a rule of thumb. What each option gives you:

• Sole trader — cheapest and simplest, taxed at your marginal rate, no separation between you and the business, so personal assets are exposed
• Company — separate legal entity, limited liability, 25% or 30% tax rate, but ongoing ASIC costs, Division 7A rules on taking money out, and no access to the 50% CGT discount
• Trust — flexibility to distribute income among beneficiaries, asset protection, retains the CGT discount, but more complex and must distribute income each year
• Partnership — simple to set up, but each partner is jointly liable for the whole of the partnership's debts

The most expensive structuring mistakes are the ones fixed later, because moving assets between entities can itself trigger CGT and stamp duty. It is worth getting this right at the start — structuring advice sits within business consulting, and set-up costs are published for company incorporation pricing and trust set-up pricing.

A director ID is a unique identifier every company director must hold, and you must have it before you are appointed. It is free, issued by the Australian Business Registry Services, and you keep the same number for life across every company you are involved with.

You have to apply yourself — your accountant cannot do it for you, because the process verifies your identity. That is the practical bottleneck when setting up a company: allow time for it rather than discovering it on the day you want to incorporate.

Directors are personally responsible for having one, and penalties apply for failing to apply when required. We flag it before incorporation — see company incorporation pricing.

A discretionary trust holds assets through a trustee who decides each year how to distribute income among a defined class of beneficiaries. The flexibility to vary distributions annually, and the asset protection that comes from the beneficiaries having no fixed entitlement, are the two reasons people use them.

They suit family businesses with several adult family members, and investment holdings where retaining the 50% CGT discount matters. They suit a single operator with no family and no significant assets much less well — the compliance cost buys little.

Obligations owners underestimate: income must be distributed each year or the trust pays tax at the top marginal rate, distribution resolutions must be made before 30 June, and the ATO scrutinises distributions to adult children who never actually receive the money. See the trust set-up price list.

Yes. Numerix offers ASIC agent and annual review services, which means the annual review statement comes to us, we prompt you before it falls due, and we lodge changes to company details within the 28-day window.

What that avoids in practice is the $102 or $428 late fee, and the messier problem of a company register that no longer matches reality — wrong directors, old addresses, unrecorded share transfers — which becomes expensive to unwind when you need to borrow or sell. See the ASIC agent price list.

A dormant company can be voluntarily deregistered using ASIC Form 6010 for a fee of $52 in 2026–27, provided all members agree, the company has assets worth less than $1,000, has no outstanding liabilities and is not party to legal proceedings.

Deal with tax first. Final returns and BAS need lodging, ABN and GST registrations cancelled, and any remaining assets dealt with — distributing assets out of a company can itself trigger tax. Doing it in the wrong order creates obligations for an entity that no longer exists.

The cost of not doing it is $342 a year, indefinitely, for a company doing nothing. Final returns and deregistration can be handled together — contact us.

Compliance accounting looks backwards to satisfy the ATO. Management accounting looks forwards to help you decide something. Same underlying data, different purpose and different timing.

It typically means monthly or quarterly reporting on gross margin by product, service or job, a cash flow forecast, comparison of actual results against budget with the variances explained, and a short set of operational metrics.

Whether you need it depends on whether you are making decisions you could get materially wrong — hiring, pricing, taking on debt, opening a second location. If you are, an annual set of accounts finalised nine months after year end is not decision-grade information. Monthly reporting, forecasting and KPIs are what our business services covers.

Forecast cash movements by the week they actually happen, not the month they are earned. A useful forecast runs 13 weeks ahead and is updated weekly against what really occurred.

Structure it as: opening bank balance, expected receipts based on your actual debtor ageing rather than invoice dates, then payments split into fixed commitments (wages, rent, loan repayments) and variable ones. Then add the items that sink forecasts because they fall outside the monthly rhythm — quarterly BAS, PAYG instalments, super, annual insurances, and tax instalments.

The value is in the variance. A forecast that was wrong tells you something specific about how your customers actually pay; the second version is far better than the first. We build and maintain these under business services.

Fewer than you think, and each one has to be attached to an action you would actually take. A workable core set:

• Gross margin percentage, by job or product line, not just overall — this is where profit is won or lost
• Debtor days — average time to get paid, and the trend
• Cash runway — weeks of operating costs covered by available cash and facilities
• Break-even revenue — the monthly sales figure that covers fixed costs
• Labour as a percentage of revenue — the earliest signal of overstaffing or underpricing

Revenue growth on its own is the metric most likely to mislead you, because it can rise while margin falls. KPI reporting is part of business services.

Because profit is measured when you earn it and cash is measured when you receive it, and the gap between those two moments is funded by you.

The usual culprits: debtors paying slower than you pay suppliers; inventory or work in progress holding cash you have already spent; loan principal repayments, which reduce cash but are not an expense; owner drawings, which reduce cash but are not a deduction; and asset purchases written off for tax but paid for in full up front.

A fast-growing business is the classic case — every new job consumes cash before it produces any, so the healthier the growth, the tighter the cash. This is a working capital problem, not a profitability problem, and it is solved by changing payment terms, deposits and facilities rather than by selling more — or, where the growth is real, by a working capital facility through finance and lending services. Diagnosis sits within business services.

Most small businesses are valued as a multiple of normalised earnings, and the work that lifts the price happens in the two or three years before the sale, not during it.

Normalising earnings means adjusting for things a buyer would not inherit: an owner working below market wage, private expenses run through the business, one-off items. That adjusted figure is what the multiple applies to, and the multiple itself depends on how transferable the business is.

What raises a multiple: recurring or contracted revenue, a customer base not concentrated in one or two accounts, documented systems, a management layer that is not you, and clean reconciled accounts. What lowers it: revenue that walks out the door with the owner.

Structure and timing also determine the tax on sale — the small business CGT concessions can be worth more than a modest improvement in price, and eligibility is decided by decisions made years earlier. Exit planning is part of business consulting, with the tax side under taxation services.

Yes. Numerix offers finance and lending services covering business loans, equipment and asset finance, and working capital facilities.

The advantage of arranging finance through the firm that prepares your accounts is that the financial information a lender asks for already exists in a form they will accept. Applications commonly stall not on credit quality but on presentation — unreconciled accounts, missing BAS, or figures that cannot be explained.

Credit representative details: confirm ACL/credit rep number and licensing disclosure.

Evidence that you can service the debt from existing cash flow, and that your numbers are reliable. A standard document set:

• Two years of financial statements and tax returns
• Recent BAS lodgements, which the lender will cross-check against reported turnover
• Interim management accounts for the current year
• Business and personal bank statements
• Aged debtors and creditors listing
• ATO integrated client account statement showing no unmanaged tax debt

Three things reliably cause problems: an ATO debt without a formal payment plan, add-backs to profit that cannot be substantiated, and BAS turnover that does not reconcile with the tax return. Fix those before applying rather than after a decline, since declined applications leave a credit enquiry behind. We prepare the pack and manage the application through finance and lending services.

Equipment finance funds a specific asset using that asset as security, which usually makes it cheaper and easier to obtain than an unsecured loan. The main forms are chattel mortgage, where you own the asset from the start, and lease or rental, where the financier retains ownership.

The choice is driven by tax treatment and cash flow rather than headline rate. With a chattel mortgage you own the asset, so depreciation and the instant asset write-off can apply, and GST on the purchase is generally claimable up front. With a lease, payments are typically deductible instead and there is no large GST claim.

Run both options with your accountant before signing. The instant asset write-off can make ownership substantially better in the first year for an asset under $20,000 — and irrelevant above it. Numerix can model both and arrange the facility through finance and lending services.

Consider it seriously if the business stops earning when you stop working — which is the position most owner-operators are in. Employees have sick leave and, in many cases, cover through their super fund. A sole trader or working director generally has neither.

Points that matter more than price: whether the policy defines disability by your own occupation or any occupation, the waiting period before benefits start relative to your cash reserves, the benefit period, and whether premiums are stepped or level. Income protection premiums are generally tax deductible, unlike most life and trauma cover.

Numerix can arrange this through its insurance solutions service. This is general information only, not a recommendation about any particular policy — personal advice requires assessing your circumstances.

Three are compulsory by law in most cases; the rest are commercial decisions or contract requirements.

• Workers compensation — required as soon as you employ anyone, administered state by state, so a business operating across borders may need cover in each
• Compulsory third party — for any registered vehicle
• Public liability — not universally mandated by statute, but effectively compulsory because leases, head contracts and licences almost always require it

Professional indemnity is mandatory for some licensed occupations. Beyond that, business interruption, cyber and product liability are risk decisions.

The most common gap we see is a business that has grown past its policy — wages declared for workers compensation years out of date, or a sum insured that no longer reflects what it would cost to restart. Review annually, or arrange cover through insurance solutions.

Four things, in order of how often they cause damage:

• Contractor classification — a subcontractor supplying mainly their own labour may attract super, and the liability accrues quietly across years
• Retentions — amounts held by the head contractor still need correct treatment for income and GST, and are frequently forgotten as receivables
• Work in progress — jobs part-complete at 30 June affect reported profit; ignoring WIP distorts both the tax result and your view of the business
• TPAR — building and construction businesses must report contractor payments annually by 28 August

Job-level margin reporting is the other gap. Builders who only see whole-of-business profit often cannot tell which jobs made money, which is how a busy year produces a poor result. See accounting for trades and construction.

Many NDIS supports and most medical services are GST-free, but not automatically — the exemption depends on conditions being met, and mixed practices commonly get the split wrong.

For NDIS supports, GST-free treatment generally requires that the participant has an NDIS plan in effect, there is a written agreement for the supply, and the support is of a kind listed in the relevant determinations. Fail one of those and the same service becomes taxable.

Medical practices face a related issue with mixed income: bulk-billed and most patient services are GST-free, while room rental to practitioners, some reports and cosmetic procedures are taxable. That mix determines how much of your GST on expenses you can claim, so apportionment has to be right.

Service trust arrangements between a practice entity and practitioners are also an area the ATO looks at closely. See accounting for medical and health services.

Payroll is where hospitality margins are made or lost, and the award is more complex than the hourly rate suggests. Weekend and public holiday penalties, evening loadings, split-shift allowances, minimum engagement periods and overtime after set daily hours all apply, and casual loading interacts with them.

Tips are assessable income to whoever receives them. Tips paid to the business and then distributed to staff are wages, with PAYG withholding and super applying. Tips paid directly to an employee are their own income to declare. Treating a distributed tip pool as if it were not wages is a frequent error.

The other two: annualised salaries for chefs and managers that fail the better-off-overall test against actual hours worked, and unreported private use of business food and premises.

Because gross margin swings on food cost and wage percentage, weekly reporting is worth far more here than a monthly report. See accounting for cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs.

GST applies to sales to Australian customers once you are registered, and the complications come from platforms, exports and imports rather than from the 10% itself.

Key points: sales to overseas customers are generally GST-free exports, but you need evidence the goods left Australia. Marketplaces may collect GST on your behalf for some sales, which changes what you report. GST is payable on imported goods, and the deferred GST scheme can move that liability to your BAS rather than paying it at the border — a meaningful cash flow difference for importers.

Reconciliation is the practical challenge. Platform payouts are net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and currency conversion, so the deposit in your bank account is not your sales figure. Books built from bank deposits rather than platform settlement reports understate both revenue and expenses. See accounting for e-commerce and retail.

Fuel tax credits are the item most often underclaimed. Businesses using fuel in heavy vehicles and machinery can claim credits for the excise already paid, at rates that vary by fuel type and use — on-road heavy vehicle use attracts a different rate to off-road use, and rates are indexed twice a year.

The claim depends on records: fuel purchase documentation plus a defensible basis for apportioning between uses. Businesses that have never claimed can often backdate, subject to time limits.

Also relevant: reasonable travel allowance amounts for drivers away overnight, which have specific substantiation rules; whether owner-drivers are contractors or employees for super and payroll tax; and depreciation on prime movers and trailers, which sit above the instant asset write-off threshold and go into the pool. See accounting for the transport industry.

Contractor classification, and the TPAR that makes it visible. Cleaning businesses must lodge a Taxable Payments Annual Report by 28 August disclosing payments to contractors, and the ATO matches it against what those contractors declared.

The sector's structural risk is that cleaners are often engaged as contractors when the substance of the arrangement is employment — set hours, supplied equipment, no ability to subcontract. That exposes the business to super, leave entitlements, payroll tax and workers compensation across the whole period, not just the current year.

The commercial pressure is real: contract cleaning is priced tightly and competitors treating staff as contractors appear cheaper. Getting the classification right is what makes the pricing defensible. See accounting for cleaning services.

Not-for-profit status does not by itself make an organisation tax exempt, and the two are frequently confused. Charities must be registered with the ACNC to access charity tax concessions, and deductible gift recipient status is a separate endorsement again — being a charity does not automatically mean donations to you are deductible.

Non-charitable NFPs with an active ABN that self-assess as income tax exempt must lodge an annual NFP self-review return with the ATO to keep that exemption.

Other differences: the GST registration threshold is $150,000 rather than $75,000, ACNC reporting tiers set different financial reporting obligations by size, and grant income needs correct treatment — grants with performance conditions may not be recognised as income when received. See accounting for not-for-profits.

The R&D tax incentive gives a tax offset for eligible experimental activity where the outcome cannot be known in advance, and it is being reformed. The 2026–27 Budget announced changes applying from 1 July 2028, including that supporting R&D expenditure will no longer be eligible, and that the minimum expenditure threshold for claims rises from $20,000 to $50,000, with smaller activities needing to be conducted through a registered Research Service Provider or Cooperative Research Centre.

What manufacturers most often miss on the current rules is that process improvement can qualify, not just product development — but only with contemporaneous records showing the hypothesis, the experiment and the results. Claims reconstructed after year end from memory rarely survive review.

Separately, inventory and work in progress valuation drives reported profit in manufacturing more than in most sectors, and overhead absorption is where the errors sit. See accounting for manufacturing.

The deferred GST scheme lets approved importers defer the GST payable on imported goods from the point of clearance to their monthly BAS, where it is offset against the credit claimed in the same period. The cash flow effect is significant — instead of paying GST at the border and waiting to recover it, the liability and the credit meet in one return.

Eligibility requires monthly BAS lodgement, electronic lodgement and payment, and a clean compliance record. Businesses with an outstanding ATO debt or lodgement history generally will not qualify, which is one more reason to keep lodgements current.

The other importer issue is landed cost. Customs duty, freight, insurance and currency movement all belong in the cost of inventory, not in general expenses. Businesses that only record the supplier invoice overstate their gross margin and price too low. See accounting for importing and wholesale.