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[ Professional Services ]
Accountants for professional services businesses on the Gold Coast.
Professional services businesses can grow quickly without needing large amounts of equipment or stock, but that does not make the financial decisions simple.
People, utilisation, pricing, owner remuneration, tax and cash become increasingly important as the team and client base grow.
A firm in Mermaid Beach, working with firms.
[ Hiring ]
Another employee needs to create more than another salary cost.
The salary is the visible number. It is rarely the whole one, and it is almost never the first cost the business carries.
- Salary
- The number everyone quotes
- Superannuation
- On top of it
- Other on-costs
- Leave, insurance, software, a desk
- Recruitment
- Paid before any revenue arrives
- Ramp-up
- Weeks or months at partial contribution
- Supervision
- Someone senior spends time, not billing
The question is not whether the hire is affordable in a good month. It is what utilisation and revenue contribution the role has to reach, by when, and what the cash position looks like until then.
What Does Another $1m of Revenue Actually Give Me? →[ Capacity ]
Sometimes the constraint is people, not demand.
A firm turning work away is not necessarily short of clients. It is short of the capacity to deliver at the standard it wants to be known for.
- How much of the delivery still runs through the owner
- Where the team is genuinely at capacity and where it only feels that way
- Utilisation across the team rather than the average
- What could be delegated, and what the delegation would cost
- Which revenue is worth protecting when capacity is short
- Whether the next hire is a delivery hire or a support hire
[ Owners ]
More than one owner means more than one view of what should happen next.
These conversations are easier with the numbers on the table. They are much harder when they are had for the first time under pressure.
- What each owner takes, and whether that still matches contribution
- How much profit is reinvested rather than distributed
- Whether to hire ahead of the revenue or behind it
- How growth is funded — retained profit or debt
- What happens if one owner wants to slow down
- Whether anyone new is joining the ownership
- What succession looks like, before it is urgent
[ Cash ]
No stock, and still a gap between profit and cash.
A services firm holds no inventory, so the assumption is that profit and cash should track together. They frequently do not.
Work sits in progress before it is invoiced. Invoices sit with clients before they are paid. Wages are paid fortnightly regardless. Tax instalments are based on last year, distributions are taken through the year, debt is repaid out of cash, and any investment in systems or people happens ahead of the revenue it supports.
- Senior hires, who arrive before the work they will do
- Support staff, once the seniors are the bottleneck
- Premises, when the team no longer fits
- Software and systems priced per seat
- A management layer that does not bill
- Marketing and business development
- Working capital, while all of the above sits ahead of the revenue
[ Selected work ]
Owner-led services business · Gold Coast, QLD
From $1.5M to a ~$10M trajectory — one long-term advisory relationship.
Read the case study →An owner-led services business on the Gold Coast, over years rather than a quarter. The case study sets out what changed and in what order.
[ The work ]
Compliance underneath, advice on top.
Financial statements and returns across the group, BAS where scoped, structure, remuneration and distributions — prepared together so the positions are consistent.
On top of that: reporting the owners actually read, forecasting built from the firm’s own numbers, and a cadence through the year rather than one meeting at the end of it.
[ Useful resources ]
Work through the numbers.
Firms often stay with an accountant long after the relationship stopped matching the size of the business. Changing is a process, and we run it.
Thinking about changing accountant? See how switching works →[ Questions ]
What firm owners ask us.
What should a professional services business monitor?
+
Usually revenue and margin by service line or client type, the cost of the team against the revenue it supports, work in progress and debtor days, and the recurring versus project split of the income. What is worth measuring depends on how the firm bills — a fixed-fee firm and an hourly firm are watching different things.
How do we know when we can afford another hire?
+
By working out the full cost — salary, superannuation, other on-costs, recruitment and the ramp-up period before the person is productive — and then what they have to contribute for the hire to pay for itself. We can model it with you. The judgement about the person is yours.
Can you help us understand owner distributions?
+
Yes. How profit reaches the owners — wages, dividends, trust distributions or a mix — affects tax, loan accounts and how much stays in the business. It is worth revisiting when the profit changes shape or the ownership does.
Can you help several owners plan together?
+
Yes, and it is some of the more useful work we do. Where there is more than one owner, a structured conversation with the numbers in front of everyone tends to surface differences about reinvestment, drawings and growth earlier than they would otherwise appear.
Can you help with forecasting?
+
Yes. Forecasting for a services business is mostly about people and timing — when a hire lands, when the revenue follows, and what the cash looks like in between. We build it from your actual numbers rather than a template.
Can you help with tax planning?
+
Yes, before 30 June rather than after it. For services firms the planning conversation usually covers remuneration, distributions, structure and what should be set aside.
Do you work with businesses outside the Gold Coast?
+
Yes. Our office is at 1/3 Atlantic Ave, Mermaid Beach QLD 4218, and we work with professional services businesses across South East Queensland and elsewhere in Australia.
Do you provide bookkeeping?
+
We work from the accounting information in your business and can work alongside your internal team or external bookkeeper where required.
[ Start here ]
Tell us what the business is trying to do next.
Hiring, capacity, distributions, another owner or the next stage of growth.
Talk to us →1/3 Atlantic Ave, Mermaid Beach QLD 4218
1300 974 768 · hello@wakpac.au