Stay on top of your books - without the stress.
Simple, reliable bookkeeping for sole traders and small businesses. From $80 per week +GST, everything stays clean, compliant and under control. No more chasing receipts, falling behind on BAS or messy books.
Rated 4.9 from 126+ Google reviews · Registered BAS Agents · Xero Platinum Partner
Simple pricing that works
From $80/week +GST
One package, everything a simple business needs. Built for small businesses that just need it done right - perfect for tradies, freelancers, consultants and owner-operators.
Book a quick chatEverything you need. Nothing you don't.
Cash coding & transaction allocation
Income and expenses categorised correctly, so your numbers make sense.
Monthly bank reconciliations
Accounts reconciled and up to date every month, without fail.
Receipt & invoice capture app
Snap a photo or forward an email - receipts and invoices stored automatically in one place.
Quarterly BAS, prepared & lodged
Accurate, on time, lodged with the ATO by registered BAS agents.
Monthly IAS (if required)
Handled without fuss when your business needs it.
Payroll for 1-2 employees
Wages for you and your team - simple, accurate, on time, payday super included.
Profit & loss reporting
Clear, readable reports so you always know where the business stands.
Email support
24-hour business-day response time. No chasing required.
Set up in three simple steps.
- 01
Quick chat
Fifteen minutes on the phone to confirm Basic Books fits your business and lock in your fixed price.
- 02
Setup & health check
We connect (or tidy) your Xero file, set up the receipt capture app and check nothing is lurking in the history.
- 03
Ongoing bookkeeping
Your books run on a steady weekly rhythm from then on - coded, reconciled, lodged and reported.
Where entry-level bookkeeping quietly goes wrong.
Packages at this price fail for boring, predictable reasons, and almost none of them are the bookkeeping itself. They are the inputs. Here is what actually makes a simple file stop being simple.
One bank account doing two jobs
The single biggest reason a small file gets expensive. Groceries, the phone bill and a supplier payment all land in the same account, and someone has to decide what each of them was. That decision takes a second when you make it at the time and half an hour when a bookkeeper makes it in arrears by asking you. A separate business account, and one card used only for the business, is most of the difference between a package that holds its price and one that quietly needs more hours.
Receipts that turn up in July
Bank data gives us an amount and a merchant name. It does not tell us what was bought, whether GST applied, or whether it was for the business at all. Without the document the safe treatment is usually the conservative one, so claims get missed rather than overstated. Above the substantiation threshold the ATO expects the receipt to exist. Photographing it at the counter takes four seconds. Reconstructing a year of them the week before a deadline takes a weekend you will not enjoy.
Scope that widened without anyone saying so
Fixed pricing works because the work is defined. Then a third employee starts, or subcontractors appear, or stock gets added, or a second entity opens, and the file is doing something the package was never priced for. Nobody notices for a while because the bookkeeper absorbs it, which is bad for them and eventually bad for you. We would rather raise it in month two and reprice than let the service quietly degrade to fit the fee.
A price that was cut instead of scoped
Cheap bookkeeping usually costs the same money in a different order. Coding done at speed with no query list means expenses land in whatever account looks close, so the profit and loss tells you very little and your accountant redoes the work at year end at a higher rate. Ask any fixed-fee provider what is excluded before you ask what is included. If the answer is that nothing is excluded, the number is not real.
Doing it yourself, counted honestly
Most sole traders who keep their own books lose an evening or two a month to it, plus a longer sitting each quarter for BAS. Put your own charge-out rate against those hours and compare. Then add the parts that never show up as time: GST credits missed because a receipt was never coded, a deduction claimed wrongly and unwound later, and the lodgment that slipped because a big job landed the same week. The hours are the visible cost. They are rarely the largest one.
Reports nobody opens
A profit and loss that arrives every month and gets read twice a year is a compliance artefact rather than something useful. It is worth ten minutes: this month against the same month last year, what your margin did, and who still owes you. On a small file that conversation is short, and it is usually where a pricing problem or a creeping stack of subscriptions first becomes obvious.
What the first three months look like.
This is where the habits set. After that it runs quietly, and you mostly hear from us when something needs a decision.
- 01
Week one: connect and look back
Bank feeds live on every business account and card, the receipt app on your phone, and a look over recent history so we know what we have taken on. If there is a real backlog sitting in there, you hear about it now, with a separate fixed quote for catch-up work, rather than later as a surprise.
- 02
Week two: settle the coding
Regular suppliers, subscriptions and income lines get coded once, correctly, and then repeat themselves. A short list of questions comes to you about anything genuinely ambiguous. Answering that list properly once is what stops the same query arriving every month for a year.
- 03
First month end: reconciled and reported
Accounts reconciled to the actual statements, not just to the feed, and a profit and loss you can read without a glossary. For plenty of owners it is the first clean monthly number they have seen for their own business. If something in it looks wrong to you, say so - you know the business, we know the file, and the two together find it quickly.
- 04
First BAS: prepared and lodged
Built from a reconciled file rather than assembled in a rush, checked, sent to you for approval, and lodged by a registered BAS agent (agent 26865001) on the agent deadline, which is later than the one you get lodging it yourself. From that point on, BAS is a quarterly non-event.
Frequently asked questions.
Who is Basic Books for?
Small, straightforward businesses that don't need complexity - just consistency. Tradies and small trade businesses, freelancers and consultants, sole traders and owner-operators. If your business is simple, your bookkeeping should be too.
What does it cost?
From $80 per week +GST. The exact figure is confirmed in a quick chat once we've seen your volume - and it stays fixed once agreed.
What if my business grows?
You graduate. When payroll passes two people or the volume steps up, we move you to a tailored bookkeeping package - same bookkeeper, same rhythm, more coverage. Nothing breaks on the way up.
Is BAS really included?
Yes - quarterly BAS preparation and lodgment by a registered BAS agent (agent 26865001) is part of the package, along with monthly IAS if your business requires it.
How is this different from doing it myself in Xero?
Xero makes bookkeeping possible; it doesn't make it correct. Basic Books means a professional codes it, reconciles it and lodges it - and the errors, missed claims and late-lodgment penalties that DIY quietly accumulates stop happening.
What is not included at $80 a week?
Quite a lot, and knowing it up front is the point. Basic Books does not include cleaning up prior years - that is catch-up work, quoted separately once we have seen the backlog. It does not include payroll beyond two employees, award interpretation for a rostered team, or termination calculations. No inventory or stock valuation, no job costing, no multi-entity or trust consolidations, no foreign currency. It does not cover ATO debt negotiation or audit representation, and it is not your tax return - your accountant still does that, from a clean file we hand over. If any of that is your business, the package will not fit and we will say so on the first call.
How can the price be fixed before you know how messy it is?
Because the scope is fixed, not the effort guessed. Basic Books covers a defined list of work for a defined shape of business, and we check the file against that shape before agreeing a price rather than after. Nothing is being cut - the reconciliations are done properly and the BAS is lodged by a registered agent - but the package will not absorb a year of unreconciled history or a payroll that grew to nine people. That is why the health check comes first. If the file is worse than expected, you get a separate fixed quote to bring it current, and the weekly price starts once it is.
What do you need from me for it to work at that price?
Three things, none of them heavy. Business banking that is actually separate from your personal accounts, because untangling mixed spending is the single biggest driver of extra hours. Receipts through the capture app as they happen, which is a photo at the counter rather than a shoebox in July - and for anything over the substantiation threshold, no receipt means no deduction and no GST credit. And replies to the coding queries, which normally amount to a short list once a month. Clients who do those three things sit at the base price for years.
How do I know when I have outgrown Basic Books?
The usual signals are a third employee, a payroll with rostered hours or award penalties in it, subcontractors that bring TPAR with them, stock you have to value, a second entity, or transaction volume that has roughly doubled since we set the price. You will normally hear it from us first, because your bookkeeper is the one processing it. The move up is a conversation and a new fixed fee, not a migration - same file, same bookkeeper, same rhythm, wider scope. Nothing has to be rebuilt because nothing was ever set up as a temporary version.
No cost, no obligation
Ready to simplify your books?
From $80 a week, the books stop being your problem. Call 07 3899 8311 or book your quick chat.