Transparent pricing
Fees published. Quotes fixed. No hourly surprises.
Every accounting engagement is scoped and quoted upfront. In most residential lending scenarios, the lender pays broker commission — we explain remuneration in our Credit Guide.
Retainer packages
Three monthly tiers, all in Australian dollars + GST.
Essentials
from $1,000
/month + GST
- Quarterly BAS preparation and lodgement
- Xero reconciliation — up to 2 bank accounts
- Annual tax return (individual or sole trader)
- Annual financial statements
- Unlimited email support on engagement matters — typically within two business days
- Annual tax planning review (30 minutes)
Most common fit
Growth
from $1,500
/month + GST
- Monthly BAS preparation and lodgement
- Xero reconciliation — up to 4 bank accounts
- Payroll for up to 5 employees
- Company or trust tax return + financials
- Quarterly management reports
- Up to 2 entities included
- Priority email support — usually by the next business day
- Bi-annual tax planning sessions
Premium
from $2,500
/month + GST
- Weekly Xero reconciliation
- Payroll for up to 15 employees
- Up to 4 entities included
- SMSF compliance + financials + audit coordination
- Investment property schedules and CGT modelling
- Div 7A loan monitoring
- Monthly strategy call
- Same-day where possible, and direct mobile access
Packages are starting prices and are scoped against your actual complexity. Final fees confirmed in the engagement letter before any work begins.
One-off engagements
Starting-from fees for ad-hoc work.
All one-off fees are GST inclusive. Complex engagements may be quoted higher and are always agreed in writing before work begins.
Fee schedule
Individual tax return
from $550 incl. GST
Individual with investment property or shares
from $880 incl. GST
Sole trader tax return
from $990 incl. GST
Company tax return + financial statements
from $2,200 incl. GST
Trust tax return + financial statements
from $2,200 incl. GST
SMSF annual compliance + financials + audit coordination
from $3,300 incl. GST
BAS preparation (quarterly)
from $440 incl. GST
Bookkeeping (monthly)
from $660/month incl. GST
How quoting works
Scoping call. Fixed quote. Engagement letter.
Three steps, always in that order. No accounting work starts — and nothing is invoiced — until all three are done.
Scoping call
A 20-minute conversation about what you actually need: which entities exist, what state the bookkeeping is in, which lodgements are outstanding, and what deadlines apply. We ask the awkward questions here so the quote is right the first time.
Fixed written quote
You receive a written quote itemising each piece of work — return by return, entity by entity — with what is included and what would be extra. Starting-from prices on this page become an exact figure at this step.
Engagement letter
The quote is locked into an engagement letter stating scope, fee, timeframe and each party's responsibilities. You sign before we start. If anything material changes later, the letter is varied in writing — never silently.
What moves the price
Why one client pays the starting fee and another pays more.
Starting-from pricing is honest only if we tell you what pushes a quote above the floor. In practice it comes down to three things.
Entity count
Each structure is its own lodgement
A family with a trading company, a discretionary trust and two individual returns has four lodgements, inter-entity transactions to reconcile and distribution decisions to document. Every additional entity adds real work, so it adds real fee — visibly, on the quote.
State of the books
Clean feeds vs shoebox recovery
A reconciled Xero file with matched bank feeds is quick to work from. Months of uncoded transactions, suspense balances or a carton of receipts is a bookkeeping rebuild before tax work can even begin — and it is quoted as one, upfront, not discovered on your invoice.
ATO history
Arrears, payment plans, prior-year gaps
Overdue lodgements, existing ATO debt or unresolved prior-year positions mean catch-up returns, ATO correspondence and sometimes remission requests before the current year is straightforward. That remediation is scoped as its own line, separate from the ongoing work.
Included in a quoted fee
- The lodgements and statements named in the engagement letter
- Reasonable questions by email and phone during the engagement
- Routine ATO lodgement correspondence for the work we prepare
- A walk-through of the finished return or financials before lodgement
Quoted and billed separately
- Catch-up bookkeeping or prior-year returns discovered after scoping
- ATO audits, reviews, objections and payment-plan negotiations
- New entity setups, restructures and one-off advisory projects
- Third-party costs — ASIC fees, SMSF audit fees, deed providers
Payment terms, in plain language: one-off engagements are invoiced on completion, generally before lodgement. Monthly packages are billed in advance each month. Terms and any variation process are stated in the engagement letter and repeated on every invoice, so there is never a surprise between the quote and the bill.
A worked example
How a real quote comes together, line by line.
The fastest way to understand starting-from pricing is to watch one engagement being scoped. The figures stay in the quote — but the reasoning looks like this.
The situation
Suppose — as a purely hypothetical example, not a client — a Hills District couple run a trading company owned by their discretionary trust. Both draw wages, they hold an investment property jointly, and two quarters of the company's Xero file are unreconciled. On a scoping call, all of that surfaces in the first ten minutes — because we ask.
How it scopes
Four lodgements: the company return with financials, the trust return with financials, and two individual returns — one carrying the rental schedule. The unreconciled quarters are quoted as their own catch-up line and sequenced first, because tax work built on unreconciled books is guesswork. Distribution minutes and a Div 7A check sit inside the company and trust work, not as hidden extras.
What the letter says
Each line maps to an item on the schedule above, with the catch-up work first, the invoice point for each stage, and the specific events that would trigger a variation. The couple can see exactly what they are paying for and in what order — before signing anything. The full engagement sequence is on our process page.
If a variation does become necessary mid-engagement, the affected work pauses — but nothing else does. Lodgements unaffected by the change still proceed on schedule, deadlines are protected, and you can decline the additional scope entirely. A variation is an option we put to you, never a decision we make for you.
Fee timing
When fees actually fall across a typical year.
A fee you can predict is only half the picture — the other half is knowing when it arrives. Four patterns cover almost every engagement.
Monthly retainers
Billed in advance, spread evenly
The same figure lands each month, whether it is a BAS quarter or a quiet one. The annual return and financial statements sit inside the retainer, so there is no year-end spike — the point of a package is that fee timing stops being a surprise.
One-off returns
Invoiced on completion, before lodgement
For most individual clients this means a single invoice in the months after 30 June, once the return is finalised and walked through with you. The figure itself was fixed in the engagement letter, often months earlier — completion only sets the date, never the amount.
Quarterly BAS clients
Four invoices, aligned to the BAS cycle
BAS-only engagements are invoiced as each activity statement is completed, so the fee dates track the lodgement dates you already know. Nothing accumulates silently across the year to arrive as one large bill.
Third-party costs
External timetables, flagged in advance
ASIC annual review fees, SMSF audit fees and deed provider charges follow their own calendars, not ours. We flag each one before it falls due and show it separately, so an external cost is never mistaken for one of our fees.
Comparing quotes
Seven questions to put to any firm — including us.
The cheapest quote is frequently the least scoped one: it looks smaller because it has quietly left things out. Before comparing totals, make sure you are comparing the same engagement. Take our written quote to another firm if you wish — an itemised quote survives comparison, and we would rather lose on a fair comparison than win on an unfair one.
The checklist
- Is the quote genuinely fixed, or an hourly estimate that can drift upward once work starts?
- Does it name every lodgement, entity by entity — or bundle "the tax work" into a single vague line?
- Are questions during the year included, or billed separately in timed units?
- Is the person quoting the work the person who will actually do it?
- Are catch-up bookkeeping and prior-year returns priced as their own lines, or absorbed into a total you cannot unpick?
- Is GST stated explicitly on every figure, so quotes are compared on the same basis?
- What triggers a variation — and does the variation require your written approval before extra work proceeds?
The fee over time
What happens at renewal, and how GST is shown.
A fixed fee is a promise for one engagement. Two further things deserve plain answers: how the fee is revisited when the engagement renews, and how GST sits on every figure you see.
Fee reviews at renewal
Re-scoped against the year that actually happened
When an engagement letter comes up for renewal, the fee is reviewed against the year just finished — not indexed by default. If your affairs grew more complex, the renewal quote says so and explains why. If they simplified, the fee comes down, and we raise that ourselves. Either way, the new figure is put to you in writing before the next period begins, and nothing renews silently.
GST, in plain terms
Stated on every figure, never implied
One-off fees on this page are shown inclusive of GST — the figure quoted is the figure payable. Monthly package prices are shown before GST, with the cadence marked plainly beside each tier. Every written quote and every invoice shows the GST component as its own line, so two quotes can be compared on the same basis. Whether GST on our fees is recoverable in your situation depends on your circumstances, and we confirm that as part of the engagement.
The boundary between the fixed fee and separately billed work follows one principle: the fixed fee buys the outcomes named in the engagement letter, together with the ordinary conversation it takes to deliver them. Anything billed separately is genuinely new work with its own quote — it is never the same work taking longer, and never a routine question dressed up as an extra.
Mortgage broking
Remuneration disclosure.
In most residential lending scenarios, the lender pays broker commission on settlement.
Full remuneration disclosure is provided in our Credit Guide and Credit Proposal Disclosure at the start of every engagement, as required by the National Consumer Credit Protection Act.
Who we work best with
Long-term partnerships.
- Hills District families with one or more investment properties
- Small business owners with company or trust structures
- SMSF trustees buying or holding property
- Self-employed professionals coordinating tax + lending
- Property investors building multi-entity portfolios
We may not be the right fit if
Be honest about it.
- You’re shopping purely on price, not relationship
- You need a financial planner — we do not give financial advice
- You expect 24/7 turnaround on routine work
- Your records are months behind and you want them done overnight
- You need audit services — we are not registered SMSF auditors (we coordinate external auditors)
Frequently asked questions
Fees — common questions.
Common questions
Why fixed fees instead of hourly billing?
Hourly billing rewards slowness and punishes the client for asking questions. A fixed quote forces us to scope the work properly before we start, and it means you can email or call during the engagement without watching a meter run. If we misjudge the time a job takes, that is our problem, not yours — the quoted fee stands unless the scope itself changes.
What happens if the scope changes mid-engagement?
We stop and re-quote before doing the extra work. Common examples: a second rental property surfaces after we have started, a prior-year return turns out to be unlodged, or the bookkeeping is in worse shape than the scoping call suggested. In each case you receive a written variation with the additional fee, and nothing outside the original engagement letter proceeds until you approve it. You will never see an unexplained line on an invoice.
Are accounting fees tax-deductible?
Generally, yes. The cost of managing your tax affairs — including fees paid to a registered tax agent for preparing and lodging your return, and for tax advice — is generally deductible in the year you pay it. Fees for work that is not about managing tax affairs (for example, some purely commercial or private matters) may be treated differently, so we confirm the treatment for your specific engagement rather than assuming. This is general information, not personal advice.
Do you charge for the first call?
No. The initial scoping call carries no charge and no obligation. Its purpose is for both sides to work out whether the engagement makes sense — what entities you have, what state the records are in, and what it will cost. Formal advice and chargeable work begin only after you sign the engagement letter.
How is mortgage broking paid for, compared with accounting?
Differently. Accounting and tax work is quoted and invoiced to you directly, as set out on this page. In most residential lending scenarios, the lender pays broker commission. We explain remuneration in our Credit Guide, and a Credit Proposal Disclosure sets out the specifics for your loan before you commit to anything.
Can I move between monthly packages, or step off one?
Yes, in both directions. Packages are re-scoped whenever your circumstances change — a new entity or more employees moves you up a tier, but selling an entity or simplifying your affairs moves you down, and we will say so without being asked. Any change is a written variation to the engagement letter, and the notice terms for ending a package are stated in that letter, not buried in fine print.
Do fees rise automatically each year?
Our practice is to review rather than index: at each renewal the fee is looked at against what the engagement actually involved — the entities, lodgements and state of the records over the year just finished. If a change is warranted in either direction, it is proposed in writing with the reasons, and the existing fee stands until you accept the new one. A renewal is a fresh agreement, not a rollover.
If the ATO asks questions after lodgement, does that cost extra?
It depends on what arrives, and we tell you which category a letter falls into as soon as we have reviewed it. Routine lodgement correspondence connected to work we prepared is generally handled within the original engagement — your engagement letter sets the scope. A formal review, audit or objection is a different engagement entirely — it is scoped and quoted in writing before any response work begins, exactly like the original job.
General advice warning: The information provided on this website is general in nature and does not constitute personal financial advice. Before making any financial decisions, you should consider your own circumstances and seek professional advice.
Book a discovery call
20 minutes to confirm which package suits you.
A scoping call before any engagement letter. Honest answers.