Books and Admin

14/10/2026

Tradies, how much of your money is sitting in retentions?

$5,000?

$20,000?

$50,000?

And more importantly, do you know when you're supposed to get it back?

Retentions are easy to forget about when you're busy quoting, managing jobs and chasing the next payment.

But it's money you've earned.

If you're not tracking it properly, you could be missing payment dates or leaving money outstanding longer than necessary.

Know what's owing.

Know when it's due.

And follow up when it's time to get paid.

You've done the work. Don't forget to collect the rest of your money. 💰

12/10/2026

Payroll. How hard can it be? 😂

Enter the hours.

Process the pays.

Pay your staff.

Done! Easy, right?

Haha, I wish!

Now let's throw in annual leave, public holidays, sick leave, alternative holidays, average weekly earnings and ordinary weekly pay.

Still easy? 😅

Payroll is one of those jobs that looks simple until something goes wrong.

And the tricky part is that you can be making mistakes for months without even realising it.

We work with businesses using different payroll systems.

But even good software needs to be set up correctly, with someone who understands what they're processing.

Your staff rely on being paid correctly. And you need to know you're getting it right.

11/10/2026

You are a tradie. You have had a bloody busy month.

The phone hasn't stopped ringing.

Your team has been flat out.

You've invoiced plenty of work.

Great! But here's my question.

Did you actually make any money?

Do you know how much each job cost you?

How much you spent on materials, labour and subcontractors?

And what was left after all those costs?

Being busy and making money are two different things.

This is why I like job management systems such as Fergus. You can track job costs, keep an eye on your margins and see which jobs are actually making you money.b

And when Fergus and Xero are working together, we can help you make better sense of the numbers.

Because what's the point of being flat out if there's nothing left to show for it?

04/10/2026

Quick one for any of you edging toward $60k in sales this year.

That's the point you need to register for GST. Not profit, turnover. Doesn't matter what you've spent, it's what's come in.

I see people miss this one all the time, then panic when they realise. Wrote up exactly what the threshold means and what happens once you cross it.

https://booksadmin.nz/gst-registration-nz-60k-threshold/

07/09/2026

I love our community and the wonderful people in it. 💛

"It's like a glowing fire, and different people come along and stoke it." 🔥

That's how Tanya Nock describes Cultural Conversations Nelson, the Nelson organisation she drives. It works alongside people to help them see the skills they already have, and to earn their own money.

Mandy Waraich does their books, for free.

Mandy runs Books and Admin in Nelson. She knows what a good bookkeeper can do for someone, because she changed careers after watching one turn a friend's life around.

When we asked if we could share her story, her first move was to point us at Tanya instead.

"For me, donating my bookkeeping skills is simply my way of stoking the fire."

Thank you both. 💛

27/08/2026

Can I afford it?

I get asked this question quite a lot.

Can I afford another staff member?

Can I buy the new equipment?

Can I increase my drawings?

Can I take a couple of weeks off?

Can we move into a bigger space?

The answer isn't sitting in today's bank balance.

We need to look at what's coming in, what's going out, what tax is coming up and what the next few months actually look like.

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Sometimes it's not yet.

And sometimes it's, "Yes, but let's do this first."

Those are good conversations to have before the money is spent. ☕

25/08/2026

Sometimes the best business improvements are really boring.

This week I've been looking at systems, subscriptions and processes across a few businesses.

Things like:

Are we entering the same information twice?

Are we paying for software we're barely using?

Could two systems actually talk to each other?

Is someone spending an hour doing something manually that could take five minutes?

As businesses grow, little inefficiencies grow with them.

Ten minutes here and twenty minutes there doesn't sound like much.

Until you're paying someone to do it every week for the next five years.

Sometimes saving money isn't about cutting costs.

It's about making better use of what you're already paying for. 📘👩‍💻

20/08/2026

I don't think a business owner should have to become an accountant to understand their own business.

You should be able to ask:

"Can I afford another staff member?"

"Why is cash tight?"

"Are we actually making money?"

"Where has all the money gone?"

And get an answer that makes sense.

No accounting language for the sake of sounding clever.

Just good numbers, explained properly.

That's what I think bookkeeping should be.

18/08/2026

When I review a client's accounts at month end, I'm not just checking whether the bank reconciles.

I'm looking for things that have changed.

Why are wages higher?

Why has income dropped?

Are customers taking longer to pay?

Have expenses slowly crept up?

Is there enough cash for GST and PAYE?

Is the business actually making money?

Getting the accounts reconciled is the bookkeeping part.

Understanding what happened is the useful part.

16/08/2026

Seeing money in the bank is always a good feeling. But how much of it is actually yours to spend?

There might be GST sitting in there.

PAYE might be due next week.

Suppliers still need paying.

Or you might have a big month coming up with three pay runs instead of two.

I always encourage business owners to look a little further ahead than today's bank balance.

What's coming in?

What's going out?

What's already spoken for?

Cashflow gets much easier to manage when you can see what's coming. ☕