Bookkeeping for tradies.
You didn't get a trade to spend nights on paperwork. Receipts from your phone, invoices from the ute, and a dedicated bookkeeper keeping the rest perfect - BAS, subbies, TPAR and all.
Rated 4.9 from 126+ Google reviews · Registered BAS Agents · Xero Platinum Partner
Admin in minutes, not evenings.
Receipts, snapped
Photo the docket, bin the paper. Everything lands in Xero coded and stored - the glovebox stops being a filing system.
Invoice from the ute
Quote and invoice on your phone before you leave the job, with automatic reminders chasing the money so you don't have to.
Job costing
Margin per job, visible while it is running - so underquoting gets caught on this job, not discovered at tax time.
TPAR handled
Pay subbies? Your Taxable Payments Annual Report is prepared from Xero and lodged every August without you thinking about it.
Subbies paid on time
Accounts payable on a rhythm keeps your best subcontractors loyal - and your projects moving.
BAS on agent deadlines
Registered BAS agents lodge on time, every quarter. The ATO becomes background noise.
Where trade books quietly go wrong.
Most trade files we take over have the same short list of problems. None of them stop the work. All of them change what you think you made on a job.
Retention nobody ever went back for
On commercial work the head contractor holds a percentage of every progress claim, releases part of it at practical completion and the rest once the defects liability period ends. If that retention is never recorded as money owed to you, the short payment just looks like the client paying less than the invoice. A year later nobody remembers it exists. Tracked as a receivable with a release date against it, somebody actually chases it.
Progress claims and the GST clock
Claim four goes in at the end of June, gets certified in July and paid in August. If you account for GST on a non-cash basis, the GST on that claim belongs to the quarter you invoiced it, not the quarter the money landed. Plenty of trade businesses fund GST on work they have not been paid for and never work out why the quarter hurt. Which basis you are on, and whether it suits how you get paid, is worth settling once.
The subbie who is legally an employee
An ABN and an invoice do not settle it. What counts is the substance: who directs how the work gets done, who supplies the tools and the vehicle, whether the person can send someone else in their place, and whether they are paid for a result or for their time. Super has a separate rule again - a contractor engaged wholly or principally for their labour can be entitled to super even holding an ABN. Getting it wrong arrives as back-pay, super, interest and penalties together.
TPAR started in the last week of August
The Taxable Payments Annual Report is due 28 August and needs each subcontractor's ABN, name, address and the gross amount paid including GST. Where subbie payments have been dropped into one catch-all expense code with no contact record behind them, that report becomes a reconstruction job out of a shoebox. Coded properly through the year, it builds itself out of Xero in minutes.
Materials on the personal card
The 6.40am trade counter run goes on whichever card is in the wallet. Half of those never reach the books, so the GST is never claimed and the job reads as more profitable than it was. The other half get entered twice when the supplier statement is reconciled. One card for the business, one for you, and a receipt app that catches the docket before it goes through the wash.
Busy jobs mistaken for profitable jobs
Without labour hours and materials allocated to the job they were spent on, the only feedback you get is the bank balance, and that lags by a month or two. The job that ran three days over and absorbed two variations agreed on the phone looks identical to the one that went to plan. Job costing tells you which was which while there is still time to price the next one differently.
What the first month looks like.
No drawn-out onboarding project. Job data and subbie records come first, because that is where the money and the ATO risk both sit.
- 01
Look at the file
A free health check across your Xero file and whatever is feeding it. You get a straight account of what is wrong, what it takes to fix and what it costs, before you sign anything. If the answer is 'not much', we say that too.
- 02
Get the job data flowing
Simpro, ServiceM8, Tradify, AroFlo or the spreadsheet that has held up so far. Connected to Xero properly, quotes, invoices, purchase orders and labour hours land against the job instead of a general sales account. Receipt capture goes on your phone the same week.
- 03
Sort out the subbie side
Contact records completed with ABN and address so TPAR builds itself in August, ABNs checked as current, and anyone who looks more like an employee than a contractor flagged early rather than found by an audit. Retentions get their own ledger with release dates attached.
- 04
Keep it running
Reconciliation on a set rhythm, BAS lodged on agent deadlines, TPAR done well before 28 August, and a monthly report showing margin by job and who still owes you. Same bookkeeper every month, so you are not re-explaining the business.
Xero plus the tools tradies actually use.
Job management apps, receipt capture and payments connected properly to Xero, so quoting, invoicing and the books all talk to each other. Set up once by our cloud integration team, reconciled by your bookkeeper forever after.
Frequently asked questions.
I'm on the tools all day. How does this actually work?
Photos of receipts from your phone, invoicing from the ute, and a bookkeeper handling everything behind the scenes. Your part takes minutes a week; the books stay perfect anyway.
What is TPAR and does it apply to me?
The Taxable Payments Annual Report - if you pay subcontractors in building and construction, you almost certainly must lodge it with the ATO each August. We prepare it straight from your Xero data as part of the service.
Can you track profit per job?
Yes - job tracking set up in Xero (or connected to your job management app) shows margin per job while it is still running. Quoting gets sharper fast.
Do you handle my BAS and subbie payments?
Yes. BAS prepared and lodged by registered BAS agents, and accounts payable runs so subbies and suppliers get paid on time - which keeps them turning up.
Do I still have to lodge a TPAR if my subbies all have ABNs and charge GST?
Yes. The report covers who you paid for building and construction services, not whether they were doing the right thing at their end. If your business is in building and construction and you paid contractors for that work, it is due 28 August. Cleaning, courier, IT and security services have their own reporting obligations, which catches out trade businesses running a second arm.
Can I write off the new ute and tools straight away?
Sometimes, and it depends on the year you bought them. The instant asset write-off threshold has moved several times and applies per asset for eligible small businesses, so anything over the current limit gets depreciated across its effective life instead. Cars carry their own separate cost limit for depreciation. And a vehicle that also does the school run needs its business use substantiated, which a logbook does far better than a guess in April. We record the purchase properly and tell your accountant exactly what is sitting there.
My 30-day invoices actually get paid in 60. Can the books do anything about that?
They can make it visible and harder to ignore. Ageing split by client shows who is genuinely slow instead of one average that hides them. The rest is structural: deposits before you order materials, progress claims tied to stages rather than the end of the month, reminders that go out automatically so you are not the one making the call, and retentions tracked separately so a held-back amount is not mistaken for a late payment. Most trade cash flow trouble is timing, not margin.
We are taking on an apprentice. What changes in payroll?
Apprentice rates sit in the relevant award and step up by year of the apprenticeship, with different rates again depending on whether they came straight out of Year 12 and whether they are an adult apprentice. Super applies from the first pay run and Single Touch Payroll reports to the ATO every time you pay them. We set the pay template against the award once, so the increase happens on the anniversary instead of being missed for a year and paid back later.
What does it cost?
Simple trade businesses often fit Basic Books from $80 a week. Bigger operations get a tailored fixed fee - use the estimator for an indicative range.
No cost, no obligation
Knock off when the job's done - not after the books.
One call and your paperwork problem is ours. 07 3899 8311, or book a free chat.