A cafe bookkeeper in Sydney who knows what icare and your lease cost you.

A cafe's icare premium starts at 2.25% of wages and super

A cafe with staff needs a workers compensation policy with icare unless it meets all three exemptions: it pays $7,500 or less in wages a year, hires no apprentice or trainee, and isn't part of a group of businesses. Two weekend casuals pass $7,500 inside a couple of months.

The premium starts with your wages multiplied by your industry rate. icare puts cafe operation in class 573000, Cafes and Restaurants, rated at 2.25% for 2026-27. A business that mainly sells food in takeaway containers goes in Takeaway Food Retailing, at 2.37%. This year's reforms held the 2025-26 rates for 2026-27.

The wages icare counts include employer super and working directors' pay. If your cafe is a company and you draw a wage from it, you're a worker for icare and your pay is in the count.

The premium on a cafe paying $6,000 a week in wages

Take a cafe with $20,000 a week of sales and wages at 30% of sales:

• Wages: $6,000 a week, or $312,000 a year
• Super at 12%: $37,440
• Wages icare counts: $349,440
• Cafes and Restaurants rate: 2.25%
• Starting premium: $7,862.40 a year, about $151 a week

That's under icare's $30,000 line for small employers, so claims won't change the premium. Discounts and incentives adjust it from there, and the minimum premium is $240.

What a cafe controls is the wage declaration. You have four months after each policy year to declare actual wages, and if you don't, icare loads the next renewal's wages by 30%. On this cafe that's $104,832 of wages it never paid and $2,358.72 more premium. A late declaration can also cost you the Safe Employer Reward, a discount of up to 7.5%.

The actual wages come straight out of the pay runs in Xero. We'd put the declaration date in the diary the day the policy renews.

Your lease is covered by NSW law, and it sets your outgoings

A shop under 1,000 square metres that sells goods and services, on a lease of six months to under 25 years, is covered by the Retail Leases Act 1994. A shop in a retail shopping centre can be covered even if its business type isn't on the list of retail businesses in the regulations.

Before you sign, the landlord has to give you a disclosure statement at least seven days ahead, covering the term, the rent and how it's reviewed, and the outgoings. Undisclosed outgoings might not have to be paid, so read that part twice.

Each year the landlord gives you an estimate of outgoings beforehand and an audited statement within three months after, and the difference gets settled. Land tax can only be passed on as if the shop's land were the only land the landlord owned. We code the rent and outgoings bills as they arrive, so you can hold the statement up against what you've paid.

If your lease has an option with a market rent review, you can ask for an early determination of the market rent between 6 and 3 months before the deadline to exercise the option. We'd ask for it, so the new rent is known before you commit to another term.

If you and the landlord can't agree, retail lease disputes have to go to mediation through the NSW Small Business Commissioner. Applying costs nothing, and if a mediator is appointed, each side pays a share. The Commissioner's Retail Tenancy Guide is worth an hour before you sign anything.

Easter Sunday costs a Sydney cafe public holiday rates

Your award is national. Eat-in cafes are usually on the Restaurant Industry Award, which covers restaurants and cafes throughout Australia, and takeaway-led cafes go on the Fast Food Award. Our piece on which award covers your cafe sets out the test.

NSW sets the days. Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday are both public holidays in NSW, so a cafe open on Easter Sunday pays 225% to full-time and part-time staff and 250% to casuals under the Restaurant Award, instead of its usual Sunday rates of 150% to 175%. In 2026, Boxing Day is a Saturday and Monday 28 December is an extra public holiday.

Payroll tax counts every business the same owners control

NSW payroll tax starts above $1.2 million of wages a year, with super counted as wages. The cafe above pays about $350,000. Payroll tax can reach it once it's grouped with other businesses the same people control, because a group gets one threshold. Our restaurant accounting in Sydney page works that sum through for a second site.

Sydney cafes, done from Bella Vista

We work remotely from our office at Colab in Bella Vista. A cafe in the Inner West, the Eastern Suburbs, the CBD, the North Shore, the Northern Beaches, Parramatta or the Hills sends its supplier invoices to one capture email, and we run payroll, pay suppliers and reconcile the bank in its Xero file every week. The numbers arrive on one page on Friday.

Our piece on cafe wage cost shows where workers comp and payroll tax sit in that page's wage line. If you take payments through Square, check the clearing account: we have seen one blow out because Xero's auto-reconcile matched the wrong lines, and our piece on Square payouts in Xero shows how to find it.

We look after over thirty venues in every state and territory this way, and our hospitality bookkeepers page sets out what changes when a venue is interstate.

What cafe bookkeeping costs with us

Core is $499 a month, about $115 a week, for payroll, supplier payments, reconciliation, the weekly P&L and a monthly call with Amit, who started Soul Burger and has spent 15 years in hospitality. On a $20,000 week that's about 0.6% of sales. Essentials, at $599, adds monthly IAS and quarterly BAS, and Foundation, at $799, adds company and personal tax returns.

The national version of this page is our cafe bookkeeping page, and every package is on our pricing.