Your Watsonia bookkeeper, one stop down the line.

The strip beside Watsonia station

Watsonia's shopping centre runs along Watsonia Road next to the station, between Richards Avenue and Tennyson Drive. More than sixty businesses trade there, a practical mix of food, personal services, health and small professional offices that locals walk to on the way home from the train. The Watsonia Traders Association represents the strip, and the new Watsonia Town Square has given the centre an open space for people to stop and linger.

The suburb takes its name from Frank Watson, who subdivided land here in 1924, and it has kept that everyday, neighbourhood feel. Most of the businesses on Watsonia Road rely on regular customers rather than passing trade. That tends to mean dependable but modest margins, and not much room for surprises.

When roadworks reach the till

Traders here have had plenty of construction to put up with. North East Link works have been rebuilding Greensborough Road and reinstating the station car park, and changes to parking and access usually show up in the takings well before anyone has had a chance to plan for them.

That's exactly when current books pay for themselves. With bookkeeping reconciled every week, you can line this month up against the same month last year and tell whether a quiet patch is the roadworks, the season or something else. You can then decide early whether to trim rostered hours or hold back on a stock order, instead of finding out at the end of the quarter.

Our business advisory service takes that a step further with a straightforward cash flow forecast. If a tight quarter is coming, you see it in advance and can talk to your bank, landlord or suppliers while you still have choices.

And if a lean stretch has left a quarterly statement unlodged or a debt building with the ATO, we lodge what's outstanding, speak to the ATO on your behalf about a payment arrangement where that suits, and get your BAS and GST back onto a regular rhythm.

Small crews, weekly pay runs

Plenty of Watsonia shops run with a handful of casuals: a student after school, someone covering Saturdays, a relative helping out at busy times. Each of them needs to be paid correctly under the right award, have super paid on time and appear in a Single Touch Payroll report every pay day. Our payroll service looks after the pay run, leave balances and STP lodgement, and we'll mention it when a casual's hours have quietly become regular enough to need a conversation. Award rates usually change each July, so we check your pay settings then and let you know what the new rates will cost before the first pay run.

Close enough to call in

At about three kilometres, Watsonia is among the closest suburbs to our Grimshaw Street office, so meeting in person is simple. Brian can call into your shop before you open, or you can come up the road to Greensborough and work through a backlog across the desk.

Once you're set up, the routine work runs through your cloud accounting software, with a phone call or email whenever something needs a decision. You can check your Watsonia business figures from the back room or your phone at any time, and when it's time to lodge your tax return, Brian prepares it as a registered tax agent from records that are already in order.