We would ask four questions on the first call, all with answers you can check: are you registered, which award are my staff on, how will you get my POS and delivery payouts into Xero, and how often will I see my numbers.
If they fail the first, we would stop there. The last is the one you will use every week.
Check the register before the call
Search the name on the TPB register, the Tax Practitioners Board’s list of registered tax and BAS agents. It also shows any sanctions on the public record and any conditions that limit the services they can provide.
Completing your activity statements, running payroll that applies the tax rules (including STP), and setting up GST codes tailored to your business are all BAS services, and there are significant civil penalties for charging for them while unregistered. An unregistered bookkeeper can still do your bank reconciliations and data entry that needs no tax judgement. If you want the same firm to do your income tax return, it has to be a registered tax agent.
Ask which award your staff are on, and why
A bookkeeper who knows venues should be able to tell you which of the Restaurant, Fast Food and Hospitality awards fits yours. Fair Work’s summaries draw the lines:
- Restaurant Award: restaurants, and cafes that mainly sell food and drink to eat on the premises or offer table service, but not restaurants run in or by hotels
- Fast Food Award: mainly takeaway, including cafes where the main food or drink is sold packaged to take away
- Hospitality Award: hotels, pubs, taverns and wine bars, and restaurants connected with a hotel
For a cafe with tables inside and a takeaway window, a good answer starts with questions back to you: what do you mainly sell, and do you offer table service?
They should also know these payroll rules without looking them up:
- New award rates usually start from the first full pay period on or after 1 July
- Pay slips go out within 1 working day of payday
- The STP report is due on or before payday
- Super generally has to reach the fund within 7 business days after payday
When we take over a venue’s payroll, one of the first things we check is whether last year’s STP finalisation was lodged. For some new clients it wasn’t, which is why their staff couldn’t do their tax returns.
POS and delivery payouts need a clearing account
Your POS records what customers paid. The card provider and each delivery app pay you less, later, after their fees and commission. Each one should run through a clearing account in Xero: sales go in at the full amount, fees go in as a cost, and the account comes back to zero when the payout lands.
Coding the payout straight to sales throws your percentages out. Take a venue doing $20,000 a week, with $6,000 of wages and $4,000 of delivery orders that the app pays out as $3,000:
- Sales should read $20,000, and wages 30% of sales
- Code the $3,000 payout as sales and the P&L shows $19,000
- Wages now read 31.6%, and the $1,000 of fees is missing from your costs
We have seen a Square clearing account blow out because Xero’s auto-reconcile matched the wrong lines. Ask how often they reconcile the clearing accounts. Weekly is the answer you want, because a short payout is easier to chase a week later than a quarter later.
Weekly numbers are what you are paying for
If your P&L comes monthly, you see it weeks after the month ends. Supplier price rises turn up on the invoice with no warning, and on a monthly cycle you might read about October’s in mid-November.
On a weekly cycle the rise shows in that week’s cost of goods, while the invoice is still on the bench. Ask which day the weekly report arrives and what is on it. The one page we send our venues shows what it can look like.
Switching takes an ATO nomination and your payroll history
If your business is a company, partnership or trust, you nominate the new agent yourself in Online services for business, under Profile and then Agent details, using their registered agent number. The ATO doesn’t tell the agent, and they have 28 days to add you before the nomination expires, so let them know once it’s done.
The records stay with you: employers have to keep time and wages records for 7 years. Before the old bookkeeper finishes, get each employee’s leave balances and year-to-date pay and super, and the list of unpaid supplier bills.
What we would do
- Search the name on the TPB register before the first call
- Ask which award covers your staff, and why
- Ask how they reconcile POS and delivery payouts, and how often
- Ask which day the weekly numbers arrive
- Put the fee, and what it covers, in the letter of engagement
Roger does payroll, supplier payments, reconciliation and a weekly P&L every week, in Xero.