Bookkeeper for Tradies in Geelong: BAS, TPAR and Job Costing

The short answer: a bookkeeper for tradies covers the same core ground as any small business bookkeeper, bank reconciliation, BAS and GST, payroll, but layered with trade-specific requirements a generalist regularly misses. That means the Taxable Payments Annual Report for subcontractor payments, job costing that separates materials from labour per project, and cash flow support that accounts for the feast-and-famine rhythm most trade businesses actually run on.

Why Trade Bookkeeping Is Genuinely Different

A generalist bookkeeper can reconcile a bank account for any business, but trade businesses carry a specific set of obligations that get missed more often than you'd expect. Subcontractor payments trigger annual TPAR reporting most service businesses never have to think about. Job costing has to separate materials, labour and margin per project, not just track total revenue and expenses. Vehicle and tool costs need correct treatment for depreciation and GST. And cash flow moves in a rhythm tied to job completion and progress payments, not a steady monthly retainer. A bookkeeper for tradies who doesn't build for this from day one tends to get the compliance basics right while missing the numbers that actually help you run the business.

TPAR and Subcontractor Payments

The Taxable Payments Annual Report is mandatory for businesses in building and construction, and a growing list of trade-adjacent industries, that pay contractors for services. If your trade business pays subcontractors, a TPAR obligation is very likely sitting alongside your normal BAS lodgement, and it's an area we see missed entirely by owners managing their own books, usually not from carelessness, simply because it's not an obligation that comes up anywhere else in general small business advice.

Do You Owe Your Sole Trader Subcontractors Super?

This is the one that catches out more trade businesses than almost anything else in this article, because the instinct is completely reasonable and completely wrong: "they've got an ABN, they invoice me, they're not my employee, so I don't pay them super." An ABN and an invoice tell you nothing about whether superannuation is actually owed. What matters is a specific legal test, and a genuine sole trader subcontractor can still be an "employee" for superannuation guarantee purposes even while correctly operating as a business for every other purpose.

Under section 12(3) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act, a person working under a contract that is "wholly or principally for their labour" is treated as an employee for super purposes, regardless of their ABN, their invoicing, or how the arrangement is described on paper. The ATO applies a three-part test to work this out. First, there needs to be a contract, written or verbal. Second, the person has to actually work under that contract personally, if they can send someone else to do the job instead, this part of the test isn't met. Third, and this is the part that trips up trade businesses specifically, the contract has to be mainly for that person's labour rather than for a result or an outcome, meaning more than half the dollar value of what you're paying them for is their personal work, not materials, equipment, or subcontracted labour of their own.

In practice, this means a sole tradesperson you engage who turns up personally, supplies mostly their own labour, uses your materials or basic hand tools, and can't send a substitute, very often meets this test, even though they invoice you monthly with an ABN on the invoice. A subcontracting business that quotes a fixed price for a defined job, supplies its own materials and equipment, and can put any of its own staff on the job, generally doesn't, because the contract is for a result, not specifically for one person's labour. The difference isn't how the relationship is labelled, it's how it actually operates day to day.

The ATO Test vs the WorkCover Test

Here's where it gets genuinely confusing for trade business owners, and it's worth being precise about it rather than assuming one answer covers everything: the ATO's superannuation test and WorkCover's test for who counts as a worker are two separate tests, for two separate purposes, and a subcontractor can pass one, both, or neither.

The ATO's "wholly or principally for labour" test, covered above, exists purely to determine superannuation guarantee obligations. WorkCover Victoria applies its own separate "deemed worker" test under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, which exists to determine workers' compensation coverage and premium obligations, a completely different question about a completely different risk. Under that test, a contractor, including a sole trader, company, trust or partnership, can be deemed a worker if the work they perform is directly related to and benefits your core business activities, rather than being a genuinely separate, independent operation.

The two tests often point the same direction in practice, a sole tradesperson personally doing labour that's core to your business tends to trigger both, but they're legally distinct, assessed separately, and having one sorted (say, a solid contractor agreement for WorkCover purposes) doesn't automatically resolve the other. A subcontractor relationship genuinely worth reviewing against both tests, not just whichever one happened to come up in conversation with your accountant last time.

New Rules: Payday Super and How Often Super Must Be Paid

If a subcontractor does meet the ATO's employee-for-super test, the next question is how often you actually need to pay it, and this changed significantly in 2026. Payday Super legislation passed federal Parliament in November 2025, with the new regime commencing 1 July 2026, meaning it's already in effect. Under the old system, superannuation guarantee only needed to reach a fund quarterly, up to three months after the work was actually done. Payday Super replaces that entirely: super now has to be paid within seven business days of each payday, aligned to however frequently you actually pay that person, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, not on a separate quarterly cycle.

For a trade business paying a sole trader subcontractor who meets the labour test, this means treating each payment to them the same way you'd treat a wage payment for super timing purposes, super calculated and paid within seven business days of that payment, not bundled up and dealt with at the end of the quarter along with everyone else. The ATO's stated position on non-compliance is genuinely strict: penalties can reach 60% of the shortfall on top of the missed super itself, plus daily interest for every day the payment sits outside that seven-day window. This is a materially bigger consequence than the old late-payment penalty regime, and it applies from the moment Payday Super started, not from some future phase-in date.

The practical takeaway for a trade business running subcontractors is straightforward but easy to miss: don't assume an ABN and an invoice ends your super obligation, and if a review does find you owe super to a subcontractor, that obligation now runs on the same seven-day clock as it does for a direct employee, not the old quarterly cushion.

Job Costing: Knowing Your Real Margin

Being busy and being profitable are not the same thing, and job costing is what actually tells the difference. Proper job costing tracks materials, labour and overheads against each individual job, so you know which jobs, which clients and which types of work are actually making money, and which are quietly costing you once every input is counted. Without it, pricing decisions get made on gut feel, and it's common for a trade business to discover a job type they assumed was profitable has actually been running close to breakeven for years.

Not sure your current setup is tracking real job margins, or handling TPAR correctly? Book a free call and we'll take a look. No obligation, no lock-in contracts.

Cash Flow for a Feast-and-Famine Job Cycle

Trade income rarely lands evenly. A big job finishes and pays out, then there's a quieter stretch before the next one ramps up, and that rhythm makes standard monthly cash flow habits less useful than they are for a business with steady recurring income. A bookkeeper who understands this builds reporting around it, tracking committed work and expected payment timing, not just what's already landed in the bank, so a quiet month doesn't feel like a crisis when it's actually just the normal cycle.

What It Costs

Watch: Super for Subcontractors Explained

Bookkeeping by Trade

The fundamentals above apply across every trade, but each one has its own specific quirks worth a closer look. We've written a dedicated guide for each of the following:

• Bookkeeping for Electricians
• Bookkeeping for Plumbers
• Bookkeeping for Builders
• Bookkeeping for Carpenters
• Bookkeeping for Tilers
• Bookkeeping for Concreters
• Bookkeeping for HVAC Technicians
• Bookkeeping for Painters
• Bookkeeping for Glaziers
• Bookkeeping for Landscapers
• Bookkeeping for Roof Plumbers
• Bookkeeping for Solar Installers
• Bookkeeping for Fencing Contractors
• Bookkeeping for Pest Control