Helping South Morang businesses hire, grow and stay on top of tax.

Next door to the City of Whittlesea

South Morang is home to the City of Whittlesea Civic Centre on Ferres Boulevard, which has been the council's home base from April 1993 onwards. For local owners that's convenient in a practical sense: the people who handle permits, local laws and business support are just down the road. Council counts more than 17,000 registered businesses across the municipality, and its Support for businesses programs include the Business Relocation and Growth Program and the B2B Grant.

Then there's the free City of Whittlesea Business Network, open to businesses with an ABN and a physical location in the municipality. It has more than 400 members and runs the annual Business Awards. Grant and award applications tend to ask for financial details, and current bookkeeping makes those forms far quicker to complete.

A suburb shaped by the railway

South Morang station opened in April 2012, and when the line pushed further north in August 2018, Middle Gorge and Hawkstowe stations were added within the suburb. The southern end of South Morang takes in part of the Plenty Valley Town Centre. Plenty of businesses here started small, perhaps a clinic, a cleaning round, a tutoring service or a one-person trade, and reached the point where the owner simply can't do all the work alone.

Hiring your first employee

Going from sole trader to employer is one of the largest steps a small business takes, and it comes with a list. You'll need to register for PAYG withholding, collect a tax file number declaration, work out which award applies, pay super for each eligible employee and report every pay run to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll. Miss one of those and the problem can linger for months.

We help South Morang owners put all of that in place before the first pay day, then look after payroll weekly or fortnightly so it stays correct. The tax you withhold from wages also appears on your BAS, so we make sure the two always agree.

Planning the next stage

Once there's a team, the decisions get bigger: a second van, a fit-out, a move into a shopfront or a new service line. Our business advisory work gives you regular, plain-English reviews of profit, cash flow and forecasts, so you can test an idea against the numbers before you commit. Questions worth asking include whether a new hire will pay for themselves, how much cash you need on hand to cover a slow month, and what your tax bill will look like if this year beats the last.

When the financial year closes, your tax return is prepared from those same figures by a registered tax agent, so there are no surprises in July. If the business has grown enough that its structure no longer suits it, that's a conversation we can start well before year end, rather than after the figures are locked in.

Meeting in South Morang

South Morang is about 9 km from our office, an easy run up Plenty Road for Brian. He can sit down with you at your premises, you can drop in to us on Grimshaw Street, and many regular catch-ups work just as well over video, which suits owners who spend their days at clients' homes or on site rather than behind a desk. However we meet, you can see your figures in your own software at any time.