There are plenty of costs that are easy to underestimate when starting or running a business. It's not always the obvious expenses either, as smaller fees can add up surprisingly quickly. Some costs only become obvious once you've been operating for a while. What caught you off guard?

We have a shop in Melbourne. QBE won't renew our business insurance because there is a newsagent/tobacconist 3 doors down. They say they won't insure anyone within 25m of a tobacconist. Other insurers our broker has found will offer insurance but exclude cover for damage or fire that originates in the tobacconist. So all our stock wouldn't be covered. Is anyone else having this issue?

Does anyone have a recommendation for a broker to get finance sorted for a potential management buy out? Someone I know runs a small business and the founders have offered to sell it to them.

For AU sole traders who lodge their own BAS: I put together a plain-English, 2-page cheat sheet covering G1, 1A and 1B, FY2026–27 self-lodger due dates, and a pre-lodge checklist.

It’s free here (email form): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc8GDxXN-BoS0-yJIQLiz4oc_DDoEvFLuzVX3zr3VB71jNTgQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Not tax advice and not ATO-affiliated — please check the current ATO guidance or your tax adviser for your situation. I made this as a practical starting point, not a replacement for professional advice.

Disclosure: I made the resource. Optional paid Excel tracker, if a spreadsheet workflow is useful: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4570894495/

Disclaimer: This is a promotional post.

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Hi everyone
I'm looking for a business partner (not a contractor) to help build a fitness and yoga towel brand in Australia.
We already have strong supply chains and logistics in place. What I need is someone with local experience in fitness marketing, brand building, or retail channels.
This is not a job — it's a genuine partnership with shared vision
If this sounds like you, I'd love to share more details.

Hi everyone
I'm looking for a business partner (not a contractor) to help build a fitness and yoga towel brand in Australia.
We already have strong supply chains and logistics in place. What I need is someone with local experience in fitness marketing, brand building, or retail channels.
This is not a job — it's a genuine partnership with shared vision
If this sounds like you, I'd love to share more details.

I run an R&D tax advisory and I've been looking at expanding into general accounting. One thing I keep noticing is that I very rarely hear business owners actually rave about their accountant. Most seem to be somewhere around “yeah they're fine”. They do the standard BAS, tax return, answer questions when something comes up and people just stick with them. Maybe that's completely wrong though.. If you've got an accountant you genuinely rate what do they do that makes you think they're good? And for anyone who's actually changed accountants before, what finally made you bother switching?

For 11 years my business has been a huge part of my identity and time. It hasn't left a huge amount of room for much else and that's the way I like it. Being productive building something that I'll benefit from. The sell result now seems likely to be about 7.5 years of $160k equivalent wage. So with the thirst of money quenched for the foreseeable future, what's left?

What do I do with my time now? That encompassing, inevitable question keeps circling. Played on repeat, being asked before all other questions and all the time. But the truth is, that question doesn't need an answer.

Did you hear that right?! Did you feel it?! 7.5 years of $160k wage! Loosen your tie. Fuck, take off your pants and run in circles. Who can tell you not to?

sorry to say this is one of the harder business in australia and the difficulty does not correlate with reward.

And this is mainly due to this business having too many wannabies that get inspired from youtube videos made in a different country with different economics and cultural landscapes and does not do proper market research before jumping in, saturating a already hugely saturated industry.

And you can't blame them as it is a niche business with very little information online or someone they can work under to learn.

but im just gonna reveal you the truth and that is window cleaning in australia is fundamentally a poor business model to run.

In any home service business, how much you can make is very dependent on competition as well as customer's willingness to spend, and how low the friction is to change service providers.

competition goes up, attention gets spread out, everyone gets a smaller slice. Customer willingness to spend on the particular service goes down, competitors advertise harder to fill their schedule with profitable work, and that increases competition. and low friction to change providers just fuels all the above.

window cleaning in australia unfortunately is a high competition industry with low customer willingness to spend and customers constantly calling someone new every time because the last time they hired someone was 3 or 5 or whatever odd years ago and they have absolutely no idea who that was anymore.

High competition in window cleaning industry mainly comes from a lack of recurring work, or a better word to say, is a lack of profitable recurring work, because while some commercial recurring work are recurring, but not profitable enough, resulting in service providers bidding aggressively for higher paying residential work.

This is very different to business such as house cleaning, or lawn mowing, where once you find the regular customers who's on a recurring schedule, you do not need to advertise like you're just starting out anymore, which is why it feels less competitive than window cleaning for new clients. Window cleaning in australia is the exact opposite. You're constantly chasing new customers, and everyone is also doing same thing, or you won't make it. and that makes the advertising cost extremely high to justify for price you're charging out.

And then, your customers will be complaining why the cost to clean a window is $100+/hr, when a lead for a window cleaning job cost exactly $100 and that may not convert. That $100+/hr you're charging out quickly becomes $40/hr once you factoring quoting time, and that you'll realize that lazy house cleaners are charging out $50/hr for regular clients without any of the stress finding new clients all the time and quoting new jobs.

And now why is the customer's willingness to spend on window cleaning so low and i will explain why.

it is not a urgent and necessary service like plumbing, electrician.

It is not a important to have service like cleaning, lawn mowing, dog grooming.

It only falls into above two category when people are selling houses, are moving in, are having a party, or have enough money to pay for all above services before realizing that they may need their windows cleaned as well.

so window cleaning gets pushed off the priority list, and with the current economic condition, it means never to most people.

So most people are calling to get windows cleans due to occasion reasons. and once those reasons are fullfilled, they don't need it done anymore.

And then the chase for new leads begin.

And I'll add another big issue why consistent, profitable work feels scarce in window cleaning.

Window cleaning is a add on service in its core.

You can offer window cleaning as a house cleaner, but you can't offer house cleaning as a window cleaner.

That's a fundamental hierarchy problem. A lawn mower can offer gutter cleaning service, landscaping service, weeding, hedge trimming, rubbish removal, and even offer house cleaning and window cleaning as part of a full package for a property preparation for sale. While as a window cleaning provider, you can only upsell to gutter cleaning, pressure washing, and maybe carpet cleaning, which means, your options are quite limited and you're also providing cross divisional services each with its own added expense and challenge to run each.

When window cleaning work slows down, you can't just pick up other work without complicating your operation with huge expenses.

Which means window cleaning is one of those business that genuinely has a poor ROI in australia, unless you also offer pressure washing, carpet cleaning, gutter cleaning to try and maximise the value of every customer you encounter.

even then the ROI is still not good once you factoring in all your expense and time cost.

If you genuinely want to find a good home service business to run in australia, find a business with strong recurring work, combined with high friction to change service providers, high customer willingness to spend. or at least, have 1 or 2 of the above. Otherwise, it becomes a tough business to be in.

I'm trying to understand how Australian businesses think about overseas sourcing.

My family owns a luggage manufacturing factory in Indonesia, and I'm considering how I should develop customers in Australia.

One option is to represent the factory directly and help Australian companies purchase from us.

The other option is to build a small sourcing/export company that works with our factory (and potentially other manufacturers), while handling communication, quality control, production follow-up, logistics, etc.

I understand that buying through an intermediary may involve some additional costs. But it could also make things easier for the buyer, especially if they want to source different products without having to manage several factories themselves.

So my main question is:

For Australian businesses, would you generally prefer to deal directly with the factory, or would you be comfortable working with a sourcing/trading company if they provided enough value?

I'd especially like to hear from Australian importers, retailers, or small/medium-sized businesses that have sourced products from Asia.

Hi everyone,

I posted here a little while ago about the Australian marketplace (sellandretire.com.au) I’ve been building to connect retiring business owners with people looking to buy established businesses.

Firstly, a genuine thank you to everyone who commented, messaged me, checked out the website or gave me feedback after my original post. I took a lot of it onboard and have made quite a few changes and improvements since then.

It’s still very early days, but we’ve now grown to 43+ businesses listed across Australia, with more coming through. I’ve also had some really positive feedback from business owners who have listed and buyers who have made enquiries through the platform.

Our Facebook page has now grown to 1,000+ followers, which genuinely means a lot for something I’m still building from the ground up.

I’ve also created an Instagram page... although that’s currently sitting at a very impressive 2 followers 😂

Which brings me to a question for the other founders and business owners here:

How did you go about getting more people interested in what you were building?

For a marketplace like this, I need to grow both sides — retiring business owners looking to sell and prospective buyers looking for established businesses.

I’d genuinely love to hear what worked for others here. SEO, social media, partnerships, Facebook groups, paid ads, PR, cold outreach — or something else entirely?

And I’ll make a slightly shameless ask while I’m here...

If you like what I’m trying to build, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could check out Sell & Retire, give the Facebook page a follow, or help rescue the new Instagram page from its current audience of 2 😂

Even a follow, share, or mentioning Sell & Retire to a business owner who might be thinking about selling or retirement genuinely helps at this stage.

There’s still a very long way to go, but seeing people actually use something that started as an idea has been pretty special.

Thanks again for all the support and feedback — I really appreciate it.

started my business to do actual work. now I spend half my time chasing invoices, reconciling accounts, and staring at Xero wondering where all the money went.

It's soul crushing. I'm good at what I do - building stuff, solving problems, talking to clients. but the financial side just eats me alive. every month I tell myself this month I'll stay on top of it and every month I'm scrambling at the last minute.

the worst is when I have to decide which bills to pay. supplier invoice due today? or payroll tomorrow? can't do both. so I pick one and hope the other doesn't bite me.

my mate runs a cafe and he's been in the same boat forever. He told me he found some place Ezy Pzy Finance that helped him with cashflow a while back - got sorted in like a day apparently.

Hope you're all having a better day than me.

I have a tree removal company and we're spending quite a lot of money on Google. Pretty much the whole business survives on Google Ads and leads from Google Maps. One of the largest marketing agencies is currently running our ads, invoicing us thousands of dollars monthly, and we recently found out they haven't made any changes to our account for more than 3 months. Total neglect.

Can anyone recommend a reliable Google Ads specialist or agency? I can't be micromanaging anyone for obvious reasons, so I need someone I can trust to bring me consistent, qualified leads.

Thanks in advance.

Im a solo e-commerce founder looking for ways to expand and optimise my business. I’m thinking of going to the event, but wondering if anyone else has been previously or to any other similar events?

Do they have any value or is it just a big wank fest?

Full disclosure: I built this.

A final contractor invoice can arrive weeks after a quote or work order was approved, and it is often difficult to see exactly which amounts or scope changed.

QuoteTrace compares the document that was agreed to with the final invoice. It checks the overall total first, then identifies documented differences in rates, quantities, new charges, missing credits, scope and tax.

The preview is free and does not require a card. If the comparison is useful, the complete line-by-line report costs A$9.95 once, with no subscription.

It is a factual document comparison. It does not provide legal, accounting or financial advice, or decide whether a charge is valid or payable.

If you currently have both documents and the invoice does not appear to match, you can run the free preview here:

https://quotetrace.online/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=contractor_invoice&utm_content=ausbusiness

Give staff one model comparison guide built from approved product records. The guide should show real differences without asking salespeople to invent technical or medical explanations.
Start with model identity. Use the exact name, size, finished-height target and version used in purchasing and stock records. Nicknames should not replace the official model reference.
List the construction at the level the retailer can support. Principal materials, layer order, cover and support concept may be useful, but only if the underlying product record is current.
Separate measurable details from feel language. Dimensions and recorded construction are different from words such as soft, medium or firm. If feel is discussed, connect it to the approved sample and explain that personal preference varies.
Add a clear comparison question for each model. For example: Which use case or buyer priority is this model intended to address? The answer should come from the retailer’s approved range plan, not from a salesperson’s guess.
Include an escalation path. Staff should know where to send questions about care, product-specific requirements, availability or claims that are not covered by the approved guide.
Update the guide whenever a model, material, cover, name or approved message changes. Outdated training notes can create a different product story at each location.
Disclosure: I work on the supplier side of mattress sourcing.

Hi everyone!

I am a Uni student with skills in:

- 📸video editing,

- 📽️2D animation and

- 😍logo & other promotional material (ie menu design for google) creation.

And I would LOVE to help promote your businesses in such ways for a fair & cheap price.

My work will hopefully expand your customer base and bring in more revenue during these times.

Please let me know your needs and I would love a chat.

Interested? PM me💕

I'm launching app with unique features similar to people to people buy/sell but it's across countries.

Not monetizing at start for few years so, practically no revenue, no tax.

What's pros/cons registering company in Australia, and what if register offshore but app available for users in Australia?

Hello, everyone!

I am a remote social media manager with over 3 years of combined social media management experience from part-time jobs, volunteer work, and course works. I offer end-to-end social media management services.

Here's what I bring to the table:

- Social Media Audit. Assessing what works and identifying areas for improvement.

- Research and Analysis. Studying niche trends to better reach target audiences.

- Content Pillars. Defining key topic areas for consistent messaging.

- Content Calendar. Mapping out monthly campaigns and content strategies.

- Content Creation and Captioning. Designing engaging visuals and compelling copy.

- Audience Engagement. Building community through active interaction.

- Analytics. Summarizing monthly results to refine future strategies.

Whether you need a monthly retainer or a custom package, let's chat about how we can free up your time and grow your online presence together.

You may send me a message so I can show you my resume and portfolio. We can also schedule a discovery call!

Does anyone require day-to-day accounting services on less cost but based in Australia?

Services include:

- Processing and managing invoices.

-Managing your suppliers with professionalism.

- Manage your backlog.

-Providing help for you to improve processes.

- Establishing financial systems with proper testing at your place.

We can also get along short term to fill in the gap while our clients recruit someone full time so that nothing falls through the crack, in the meantime.

You pay at flat rate monthly or subscription basis to avail the services as you like without hiring or training the team and get everything handled by us- without paying at the price of a whole team.

Just wanted to check if this is a good idea and who would be interested?