EOFY Prep for Australian Tradies: A Practical Checklist

End of financial year is a strange one for tradies. The work doesn't change — you're still on the tools — but suddenly there's a deadline hanging over the admin you've been putting off all year. The Australian financial year ends on 30 June, and the difference between the tradies who breeze through it and the ones who lose a weekend to it comes down to one thing: whether their records were kept along the way, or whether they're now reconstructing a year from a glovebox full of faded receipts.

I'm not an accountant, and nothing here is tax advice — always confirm the specifics with your accountant or the ATO. But I've watched enough tradies go through EOFY to know what makes it painless versus painful. This is the practical, on-the-tools version: what to get sorted, in what order, so you can hand your accountant a clean set of numbers instead of a shoebox and an apology.

Start with your receipts and expenses

Every dollar you spent running the business this year is potentially a dollar you don't pay tax on — but only if you can prove it. No receipt, no claim. That's the rule that quietly costs tradies the most money, because the materials run you paid cash for in September is long forgotten by June, and the receipt went through the wash months ago.

The fix is to capture the receipt at the moment of the spend, not at tax time. In Projects Plus, recording an expense takes a few seconds: enter the amount, snap a photo of the receipt, and it's attached to the job for good. You can even back-date an expense if you're catching up on a few you missed — useful right now if you're tidying up before 30 June.

Common deductible expenses for tradies and service businesses include:

• Tools and equipment — purchases and repairs, with rules differing for higher-value items.
• Materials and consumables — anything you bought to do the work.
• Vehicle and fuel — running costs for work use, kept with proper records.
• Phone and internet — the work-use portion.
• Protective gear and work clothing — boots, hi-vis, safety equipment.
• Insurance, licences and union or association fees.
• Software and subscriptions — the tools you run the business on.

Exactly what you can claim and how depends on your situation — that's a conversation for your accountant — but the universal part is this: if it's not recorded with a receipt, it can't be claimed at all.

Get your GST and BAS in order

If your business turns over $75,000 or more a year you're required to register for GST, and once you are, you're lodging a Business Activity Statement (BAS) — monthly or quarterly — reporting the GST you collected on your invoices and the GST you paid on your expenses.

EOFY is the moment to make sure those numbers actually tie out. That's far easier when your money in and out has been logged consistently all year rather than rebuilt at the last minute. Your cash in (deposits and payments) and your cash out (expenses with receipts) are the raw material your BAS and your tax return are both built from.

Check your ABN, TFN and staff records

EOFY is also a good prompt to make sure your records on people are clean — your own, and your crew's. Missing or wrong details here turn into delays and headaches at exactly the wrong moment.

If you employ or sub-contract anyone, you need their details kept properly and securely. Projects Plus stores staff records in one place — phone, email, address, emergency contact, TFN and ABN — so when your accountant asks for them, you're not chasing people for paperwork in the last week of June.

1. 1Confirm your own ABN and TFN are current and registered correctly for how you operate.
2. 2Check each staff member's record is complete — TFN or ABN, contact details, emergency contact.
3. 3Separate employees from sub-contractors clearly, since they're treated differently for tax and super.
4. 4Reconcile what you paid each person against your records, using the actual paid dates.

Because Projects Plus records staff pay separately and colour-coded, with the work-done date and the actual paid date both captured, you can see exactly what landed in the financial year — which is the number that matters for your return. There's more detail in how to track staff payments and pay dates.

Export clean reports for your accountant

Here's where the year of good habits pays off. Your accountant charges for their time, and a lot of that time can be spent making sense of disorganised records. Hand them a clean, complete set of numbers and you save money, save back-and-forth, and get a better result.

Projects Plus lets you export a PDF of total project expenses and filter payments, so you can pull exactly what your accountant needs — by job or across the year — and email it straight through. No spreadsheet wrangling, no transcribing receipts. The receipt photos are already attached to each expense, so the evidence travels with the numbers.

Your accountant's job is to save you money on tax. They can't do that with a shoebox of receipts. Give them clean records and they've got room to actually help you.

If you've been running the business on spreadsheets and you're feeling the pain right now, EOFY is a natural moment to rethink the setup — there's an honest comparison in spreadsheets vs a job management app.

Projects Plus keeps every expense, receipt and payment tagged to the job — then exports a clean PDF for your accountant. Free to download on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Your EOFY checklist before 30 June

Pull this out in the last couple of weeks of June and work through it. Most of it is quick if your records are in order — and a good reminder of what to keep on top of next year.

1. 1Catch up any missing expenses — back-date and attach receipts for anything not yet recorded.
2. 2Reconcile your cash in — confirm every deposit and payment is logged with its date and bank reference.
3. 3Tidy your GST records so your final BAS for the year ties out.
4. 4Check ABN, TFN and staff details are current and complete.
5. 5Note any planned purchases — talk to your accountant about timing before or after 30 June.
6. 6Export your reports — a PDF of project expenses and a payment summary for your accountant.
7. 7Book your accountant early — they get slammed in July, so the organised tradies get seen first.

EOFY doesn't have to be the dreaded part of the year. When your money in and out has been tracked job by job, with receipts attached and payments dated, the end of June is just a matter of pressing export and sending it on. Get the habit right and you'll wonder why it ever felt like a big deal.

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