Every year leans one way. We plan for the lean.
Counterpoise is an accounting practice in Mount Barker for business owners and families across the Adelaide Hills. Tax returns and BAS, company and trust structures, bookkeeping help, and plain advice right through the year.
Talk it throughFour things, kept level all year.
Each disc below is sized by how much of your year the work touches, not by what it costs. Hang another part up top and the rod takes the weight where it lands.
Tax returns
For you, your partner, and the trust or company behind you. Done together, so one return doesn’t surprise another.
BAS and GST
Your Business Activity Statement, monthly or quarterly, prepared and lodged, with a note ahead of each one saying what it will be.
Company and trust structures
Set up when they make sense, and kept up: the minutes, the returns and the decisions due each year.
Bookkeeping help, and advice through the year
Help getting the books in order, and a call when something changes: a new hire, a new vehicle, a quiet quarter.
The words, plainly.
Four terms you’ll hear from us. Here’s what each one means, once.
- BAS
- Business Activity Statement: the form a business lodges each month or quarter to report and pay its GST and tax instalments.
- GST
- Goods and services tax: one tenth added to the price of most things sold. You collect it for the tax office and pass it on, less the GST you paid on what you bought.
- PAYG instalments
- Pay-as-you-go instalments: part-payments of this year’s income tax, made through the year instead of in one lump after it.
- Trust distribution
- How a family trust shares out the year’s income among the family members it’s there for, decided by the end of the financial year.
A table, a window and your year.
We’re a small practice in Mount Barker: a few accountants and a bookkeeper. You’ll sit at this table, or talk to us on a call, and the same person looks after your year from one June to the next.
We work with business owners and families from Stirling to Strathalbyn, and from Nairne to Echunga.
What to put aside
Tax rarely arrives when the money does. A café takes most of its year between December and March. A builder can go quiet for all of January. Both owe on the same dates. So the question isn’t only how much tax there is. It’s how much to move across each week so the money is sitting there each time a payment falls due.
Drag the months to the shape of your year, and choose how often you lodge your BAS. The year here runs July to June, like the tax year.
Put aside $1,160 a week and the account never runs dry. It’s lowest, at $426, just after the payment on 28 April, and it never holds more than $28,192.
Lodging monthly wouldn’t change the weekly sum. It changes the most the account has to hold: $28,192 quarterly, $16,002 monthly.
| Month | Taken | Set aside | Paid | Left |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | $38,000 | $4,640 | — | $4,640 |
| August | $36,000 | $4,640 | — | $9,280 |
| September | $42,000 | $5,800 | — | $15,080 |
| October | $50,000 | $4,640 | $11,248 | $8,472 |
| November | $58,000 | $4,640 | — | $13,112 |
| December | $74,000 | $5,800 | — | $18,912 |
| January | $82,000 | $4,640 | — | $23,552 |
| February | $70,000 | $4,640 | $17,648 | $10,544 |
| March | $60,000 | $5,800 | — | $16,344 |
| April | $52,000 | $4,640 | $20,558 | $426 |
| May | $42,000 | $4,640 | — | $5,066 |
| June | $38,000 | $5,800 | — | $10,866 |
Illustrative: GST at one eleventh of takings, less a third of that for the GST on what the business buys; instalments at four cents in each dollar of takings before GST; due dates drawn for this page, with the last quarter paid the following July. A way to picture your year, not advice for it. That’s what the first talk is for.
Summer-heavy. Winter-quiet. Lumpy. Steady.
Which way does your year lean?
Orchards come in heavy in autumn. Cafés in Hahndorf fill up over summer. Builders go quiet in January, and a family trust has its distribution to settle before June.
Once we know which way yours leans, we set the put-aside around it and tell you ahead of each due date what’s coming, so nothing lands on you all at once.
Where the weight hangs.
Four ways a business can be held. Which one suits you depends on the whole picture. We talk it through before anything is set up, and you decide.
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Sole trader
You and the business are one. One tax return: yours.
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Partnership
Two or more people run it together. The partnership lodges its own return, and each partner reports their share.
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Company
A separate body that owns the business and lodges its own return. You’re paid by it, as wages or dividends.
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Family trust
A trustee holds the business or assets for the family, and each year decides how the income is shared among them.
A disc is painted in when you’ve hung that part up top. Nothing here is a recommendation.
Three rods, and you’re level.
Starting with us takes three things, hung in order. The mobile only balances once all three are on.
A first talk.
At the table or on a call: what you run, who’s in the family, and what’s on your mind. No papers needed.
Your papers, once.
With your say-so we collect your past returns and records from whoever did them, so you don’t have to chase them.
The year, planned.
What falls due when, what it will be, and what to put aside for it. Then we check in as the year goes.
Kitchen-table questions.
When is my BAS due?
That depends on whether you lodge monthly or quarterly, and whether we lodge it for you. Your dates go in your plan, and we tell you ahead of each one.
Do I need a company?
Not always. It depends on the business, the family and where you’d like to be in a few years. We lay out how each structure would work for you, and you decide.
What do I bring to the first talk?
Nothing, really. A rough idea of what you run and who’s in the family. Papers come later.
Can you take over from my current accountant?
Yes. With your say-so we ask for your past returns and records, so you don’t have to.
Do you do the whole family’s returns?
Yes: yours, your partner’s, and the trust’s or company’s, planned together so they line up.
