Bookkeeping Services
We keep your numbers organised so you don’t have to.
Bookkeeping is the least glamorous thing we do and the one everything else depends on.
Every forecast, every valuation, every decision about pricing or hiring runs on the same underlying data. If that data is wrong, late, or classified inconsistently, then everything built on top of it is confidently wrong. So we treat it as infrastructure rather than admin.
A reliable month-end file takes each step in order.
What we handle
What’s included
The monthly and quarterly work that keeps the business current and compliant.
- Reconciliation
Bank and credit card, prepared ongoing rather than in a panic before the BAS is due.
- Payable & receivable
So you know who owes you, and who you owe.
- Activity statements
GST, PAYG withholding, PAYG instalments, FBT instalments, WET and Fuel Tax Credits.
- Payroll
Including Single Touch Payroll reporting, pay day superannuation and leave accruals.
- Your file
Xero or MYOB, including the chart of accounts and how things get classified.
- Month-end close
So the numbers actually mean something on the day you look at them.
What most arrangements miss
The file is maintained by the same firm that prepares your financial statements and lodges your tax return, so nothing has to be reconstructed at year end.
Being honest about capacity
We don’t take on every enquiry.
It’s fairer to say that here than after you’ve filled in a form. Bookkeeping is a capacity-constrained service, and we run it deliberately that way.
Doing it properly takes real attention, and doing it badly is worse than not doing it at all. So we prioritise businesses where the bookkeeping connects to something else:
- Existing clients
Businesses we already do advisory or accounting & tax work for.
- A moment that matters
Where the reporting is about to count, because of a sale, a restructure or a growth step.
What it costs
What bookkeeping costs
Dedicated contract bookkeepers typically charge from $70 to $100 plus GST per hour on a very small file.
Those prices are real, and for a sole trader with one bank account and forty transactions a month they are entirely appropriate. We are not competing at that end, and you shouldn’t want us to. Five things drive what it actually costs:
- Volume
How many transactions run through the file each month.
- Accounts & entities
How many bank accounts, and how many entities to keep straight.
- Assets & financing
The number of investments held and financing arrangements carried.
- Payroll
Whether it is involved at all, and for how many staff.
- Repair
How much the existing file needs before anyone can maintain it.
A fixed fee, not an hourly rate
Generally a fixed recurring fee, quoted after we’ve looked at the actual file. An hourly rate rewards being slow and gives you an invoice you can’t predict.
Xero, MYOB and the rest
A well-run file beats a badly-run file. Every time.
We work primarily in Xero. If you’re on something else and it’s doing the job, tell us — we’d rather assess it than move you for the sake of it.
Switching platforms rarely fixes a problem that was really about process. What we will do is make sure the setup is right:
- Chart of accounts
Built to match how you actually think about the business rather than a generic template.
- Bank feeds
Connected properly, with rules set so recurring transactions code themselves.
- Payroll
Configured so Single Touch Payroll reporting happens without anyone remembering to do it.
- Standard operating procedures
Written down, so the whole team falls into line.
What we usually find
Most of the time we spend fixing files comes down to the same thing: a setup nobody ever configured deliberately, then two years of transactions coded around it.
The dullest important topic
Why the chart of accounts is worth caring about
A builder whose chart of accounts lumps all materials into one line cannot see margin by job type.
A firm that codes every wage to a single expense account cannot tell you what each service line costs to deliver. The data was captured; it just wasn’t captured in a shape that answers the question.
Business Advisory & CFO AdvisoryWhat becomes possible once the underlying data is reliable.
Separate the work by job type so its profitability can be examined.
A small job, a big change
Restructuring a chart of accounts changes what the business can see about itself. It’s one of the first things we look at, and the reason bookkeeping sits inside an advisory firm here rather than beside one.
The financial year
The dates you’re working to
If you’re registered for GST and reporting quarterly, your business activity statements fall due on these dates.
Lodging through a registered agent can attract additional time on some quarters — we’ll confirm which apply to your cycle.
- 28 October
For the July – September quarter.
- 28 February
For the October – December quarter. Generous-looking, but that date already carries a one-month extension — there is no further concession on top of it.
- 28 April
For the January – March quarter.
- 28 July
For the April – June quarter.
The $75,000 threshold
GST registration becomes compulsory once your turnover reaches it, and you have 21 days from crossing. If you’re approaching that line, tell us before you cross rather than after.
A fair question
Outsourcing versus hiring someone
Once a business gets big enough this comes up, and the answer isn’t automatic.
Makes sense when the volume genuinely fills a role, or when the work is intertwined with operations.
Makes sense when the volume doesn’t fill a role, or when you’d rather not carry the recruitment and management overhead.
- Capability across the whole job
Payroll, BAS and reporting in equal measure, which one part-time hire rarely has.
- What happens when they’re away
A single in-house bookkeeper on annual leave is a business that stops reconciling for three weeks, and it’s usually the payroll run that exposes it.
- Separation of duties
One person with sole responsibility for both entering and paying is among the most common control gaps we see in small businesses. Outsourcing separates those duties almost by accident.
Internal Audit & Risk ManagementWhere that control gap gets looked at properly.
Working together
If you have a bookkeeper who’s doing a good job, keep them.
We’d genuinely rather work alongside someone competent than replace them.
In practice: we tell them how we need things coded and why, they maintain the file, and nothing gets quietly redone at year end and billed back to you. Most friction between accountants and bookkeepers comes from nobody having that conversation at the start.
If the file has drifted
We’ll say so plainly, and quote to bring it back. That’s a defined piece of work with an end, not an ongoing engagement.
Your bookkeeper’s day-to-day work connects with review and support.
Questions
Questions we get asked
How much do bookkeepers charge per hour in Australia?
Hourly rates in the market vary widely depending on qualification and complexity. We don’t charge hourly, because it makes your cost unpredictable and rewards inefficiency. A fixed monthly fee quoted against your actual file is more useful to both of us.
What’s the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant?
A bookkeeper maintains the records through the year. An accountant prepares the financial statements and the tax return from those records, and advises on what they mean. Here they’re the same firm, which removes the handover where most errors are introduced.
Do I need a registered agent to lodge my BAS?
You can lodge your own. If someone lodges it for you for a fee, they must be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board — as a BAS agent or a tax agent. A registered tax agent can provide BAS services, and MyCFO lodges under the company tax agent registration.
You can check any adviser’s registration on the TPB public register before you engage them, including ours.
Can you fix a file that’s in a mess?
Usually. It’s a separate piece of work with a fixed fee, and we’ll tell you honestly whether repairing or rebuilding is cheaper. Files that have gone two or three years without reconciliation are common and not a source of judgement.
Do you do payroll?
Yes, including Single Touch Payroll reporting, pay day superannuation and leave. Payroll is the part of bookkeeping with the least tolerance for error, because the mistakes are visible to your staff.
Do I have to be in Tasmania?
No. The work is done in the cloud and we have clients outside the state.
The point of doing it properly
Where this usually leads
Bookkeeping is the door in for a lot of our clients, and it isn’t the destination. Once the data is reliable, the conversation changes.
Accounting & TaxThe annual compliance the bookkeeping feeds into.
Business Advisory & CoachingLevel up by feeding the numbers into our business improvement services.
Where most of them began
Plenty of our advisory clients started here, with a file that needed sorting out and no particular intention of doing anything more. The bookkeeping is what made the rest possible.
Start with a consultation
Show us the file and tell us what’s going wrong.
We’ll tell you whether we can take it on, what it would cost, and whether you’d be better served by an internal or external dedicated bookkeeper.
Book a consultation