A tradie file looks simple from the street: quote, do the work, get paid. Inside the file it is deposits, variations, materials sitting in a yard, subcontractors who want cash Friday, a retention nobody has scheduled, and a head contractor who pays when the head contract pays. The original Bookkeeping Centre worked across industries of different sizes. The site hut was always the same test: can you open a job and see the claim, the cost and the cash without a séance.
This is that test, written for a small builder, a civil crew, a sparky with three apprentices, or a fit-out company in Sydney or Perth. Security of Payment rules differ by state. Award rates move. Confirm Fair Work, your state SOP act, and the ATO. Then keep a job file a QS could sit beside.
The job file is the books
Software project tabs do not replace a file. For each job, keep:
- the quote and the accepted scope
- the contract or the email that is pretending to be a contract
- every progress claim, numbered, dated, GST-inclusive and GST-exclusive
- every variation, with the yes
- purchase orders or, if you do not raise them, the supplier invoices coded to the job
- subcontractor invoices and evidence you will need for TPAR
- photos or delivery dockets for materials that matter
- the retention clause and a diary note for the release date
Phone photos are fine if they are complete and findable. A leading hand’s camera roll is not a system. The source-document habit still applies: who, what, which entity, which tax treatment.
Name the job the way the site is named, plus a number. “Smith kitchen” becomes two Smiths by Easter. “2026-014 Smith kitchen, Marrickville” survives a new bookkeeper.
Progress claims without the optimism
A progress claim is a request under a contract. It is not a vibe about percentage complete, and it is not a bank deposit.
Raise the claim in the books when you raise it in the world. Use a numbering sequence the head contractor can match. Show labour, materials and variations the way the contract schedules them, or you will spend the next month arguing about headings. GST is 10% on most taxable building supplies — confirm any GST-free edge cases (certain medical-related work, some exports) rather than assuming. Show GST as a separate line if the contract wants it. Job-cost the exclusive figures.
If the claim is certified for less, you have a conversation and a credit note or a revised claim — not a silent write-off in “discounts”. If you do not record the haircut, your job-cost report still thinks you are owed the full amount and your thirteen-week cash is a children’s story.
Do not raise next month’s claim in this month to “help the P&L”. A controller who asks you to do that is not a controller. They are a novelist.
Deposits and mobilisation payments are usually unearned until you have done the work they attach to. Put them on the balance sheet. Spending the deposit on a different job’s materials is how two files go wrong at once.
Retentions are a register, not a memory
Retention held against you is a receivable with a padlock. Retention you hold on a subcontractor is a payable with a padlock. Both need a register: job, counterparty, amount, withholding date, release date, defects status.
If you leave retention in ordinary debtors, you will chase money that cannot be paid yet and you will overstate cash in the forecast. If you leave subcontractor retention in ordinary creditors, you will look more liquid than you are and you may pay it early in a panic.
Release is a dated event. So is a defects claim that reduces it. Write both. The original firm’s month-end “meaningful statistics” included the padlock. A board pack for a builder that hides retention in trade debtors is not a pack.
State SOP and contract terms decide how much you may hold and for how long. This journal will not invent a percentage. Read the contract and, if needed, your adviser.
Materials: the yard, the site and the swipe
A Bunnings swipe is not a job cost until you say which job. A delivery to site is easier. A delivery to the yard is inventory or a holding job. Transfer it when it leaves. If you do not transfer it, job A pays for job B’s leftover and neither margin is true.
Returns need credit notes coded to the same job. Stolen or “walked” stock is a control issue, not a costing variance you bury in WIP. See pricing, WIP and whether the job made money for the monthly review.
Large materials billed to you but not yet on site still belong to someone. If the supplier has invoiced you, you have a payable and either inventory or a job cost. If you have billed the client for materials not yet bought, you have unearned income or a very short conversation with your accountant.
Fuel, the ute and the trailer are usually overhead unless you have a disciplined plant-recovery rate. Do not pretend every litre is job 14. Do not hide a new tool in “materials — Smith”. Capital items are capital. Confirm current write-off settings with your agent; this desk will not invent a threshold.
Labour, apprentices and the true hour
Timesheets are not bureaucracy. They are the only way a quoted hour can be compared to a spent hour. Apprentices, labour hire and the owner’s Saturday all belong on the job if they stood on it.
Cost the hour as wages + Super Guarantee + the on-costs you can actually calculate. SG is 12% from 1 July 2025 — confirm the ATO. Payday super from 1 July 2026 changes when the cash leaves, not whether the job wears the cost. Confirm Fair Work for ordinary hours, overtime and allowances. Do not copy a mate’s casual rate.
Owner labour is the line tradies skip. If you do not put a reasonable recovery on the owner’s hours, every job looks more profitable than a file that had to hire you. Put a rate in the job-cost report even if you do not journal it through payroll. Know which view you are looking at.
Subcontractors and TPAR
Pay subcontractors on invoices, to the entity on the invoice, with a job code. Cash to a first name on a Friday is how you fail TPAR, fail a job-cost report, and fail an ATO query in the same year.
The Taxable Payments Annual Report is an ATO report of payments to contractors in building and construction. If you are in the industry and you pay contractors for those services, you generally report. Confirm the current inclusion rules, due date and lodgement method on the ATO site. Do not assume a “small jobs only” exemption you heard at the pub.
Keep ABN, name, and the year’s payments in a form you can total. Software can help if the coding was right. Software cannot invent a contractor you paid from the owner’s card and coded as materials.
GST credits on subcontractor invoices require a proper tax invoice. A text message is not one.
Variations, defects and the last 5%
Variations need a yes before they are income. Defects need a cost before you call the job closed. The last 5% of a job is where margin goes to die: the extra visit, the missing fitting, the retention argument, the weekend that was “just finishing”.
At month-end, open jobs get the five-step review in the WIP essay. Closed jobs get a lock. Recoding a finished job because the next quote is due is how you never learn.
The tradie close
The month-end close, site-shaped:
- Banks, cards, and any equipment-finance accounts reconciled to statements.
- Claims raised this month matched to the job register.
- Retentions register rolled forward.
- Supplier invoices and yard transfers coded to jobs.
- Timesheets versus pay run; super clearing checked.
- TPAR-ish list of contractor payments year to date — do not leave it for August.
- Aged claims: who is late, who is in dispute, who is waiting on a head-contract pay.
- Three sentences: which job is thin, which claim is late, what you will not price the same.
If you still think profit is “what is in the bank after I pay the boys”, you do not have books. You have a weather report. The bank is in the cash forecast. The job is in this file. Both have to be true on the same Wednesday.
The Rosebery desk used to say the books should free you to run the business. On a site, that means knowing whether to take the next house. The industry guides are the rest of that question. Price from a true last job. Claim what the contract allows. Hold the padlock on a register. Lodge the TPAR without a hunt. Then go back to the work that actually pays.
