Bookkeeping for tradies, from the ute to the BAS

Trade businesses are our bread and butter. The pattern is almost always the same, and so is the fix.

The usual state of things

Receipts in the glovebox and the centre console. Invoices raised on a Sunday night, sometimes. A BAS that arrives as a surprise every quarter despite arriving on exactly the same schedule for the last nine years. Money in the account that might be yours or might be the tax office's, and no reliable way to tell which.

None of that means anyone is bad at business. It means the admin was never the job, and it grew while nobody was looking.

Capture the paperwork at the source

The single biggest improvement in a trade business is photographing the receipt at the counter, once, and never touching it again. Modern software reads it, codes it and files it against the transaction. Ninety seconds of habit at the servo removes an entire Saturday of sorting in July.

Invoice the day the job is done

An invoice raised on site gets paid earlier than one raised a fortnight later, because it arrives while the customer still remembers the work and is pleased with it. Mobile invoicing exists for exactly this and most tradies already have the app and have never set it up.

Keep the GST separate from your money

The GST you collect is not income. Neither is the PAYG you withhold from your staff. A separate account that this money moves into every week turns the quarterly BAS from a shock into a transfer. It is the least sophisticated advice we give and the one that changes the most lives.

Know your TPAR obligations

If you are in building and construction and you pay contractors, you almost certainly have to report those payments annually through the Taxable Payments Annual Report. Businesses that track contractor payments properly through the year barely notice it. Businesses that do not spend a miserable August reconstructing twelve months of subbie invoices.

Where a bookkeeper earns their fee

Not by entering data. By making sure the quarter is reconciled before it is lodged, catching the supplier who has been double billing you since March, telling you that job type is running at half the margin of the other one, and answering the ATO letter so you do not have to sit on hold at seven in the morning.

General information only. Every trade business is different, even in the same trade, which is why we quote after a chat rather than off a price list.