Financial Planning for Hospitality Business Owners

We’re invested in your long-term success. What we do is personal, and we take it personally.

Your financial decisions connect, so we consider the parts of your financial life that are relevant to the advice you need:

• Property & Investing
• Career & Income
• Tax Strategy
• Insurance & Protecting Your Family
• Super & SMSF
• Wealth & Investments
• Life Events & Changes
• Business & Wealth
• Legacy & Future Wealth
• Retirement Planning

This is how we help you make decisions today with your longer-term goals in view.

Everybody’s situation is different, so we listen first, understand what matters to you and explain your options clearly before we make a recommendation.

We start from the amount you can rely on, using your own figures, over a full year where you have one. That becomes the base for household bills, with a buffer above it for thinner weeks. Stronger weeks can then each be given a job:

• Tax, with an accountant estimating the amount
• Topping up your buffer
• Super or savings of your own
• A goal you’ve set for home or family

How much goes where is your decision, and we can work through it with you.

Your accountant and financial adviser bring different expertise to the same decisions. Your accountant can advise on tax reporting, structures and consequences; we help you plan how cashflow, debt, super, investments and protection work towards your goals. We can coordinate before important decisions.

What an accountant does

• Prepares and lodges tax returns, BAS and financial statements
• Advises on tax structures such as companies, trusts and partnerships
• Manages bookkeeping, payroll and ATO compliance
• Provides tax advice on the consequences of a transaction

What a financial adviser does

• Sets a long term strategy across retirement, investing and cash flow
• Builds wealth from early in a working life, starting with cash flow, a first home and super
• Recommends specific super funds, investments and personal insurance
• Operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required to give personal advice on financial products
• Handles retirement planning, Centrelink and aged care strategy, and estate planning considerations

Professional roles and authorisations matter. We provide financial advice within our authorisations and work with your accountant for specialist tax advice and lodgements.

Where they work together

• Tax position. Your accountant confirms your marginal rate, deductions and carried forward losses, which shapes decisions on super contributions, investment structures and the timing of asset sales.
• Business and entity structures. Your accountant advises on the structure itself and your financial adviser works within it for investments, insurance and succession planning.
• Cash flow. Your accountant’s figures can help us understand what’s available for debt repayment, protection and longer-term goals.
• Before key decisions. We can coordinate with your accountant on contributions, asset sales and other material choices in time to consider relevant tax consequences.

It depends on your structure. If you’re self-employed as a sole trader or in a partnership, you don’t have to pay compulsory super for yourself, so contributions are yours to plan. A company can have to pay super for a director, and if you pay yourself wages through payroll, your business must pay super on them.

An accountant or the ATO can confirm where you stand. We can then plan with you what goes in, how often and how it fits your budget.

A lawyer can read your personal guarantee and explain what it could mean for you, and can also read any new one before you sign.

From there, we can count what’s at stake in your plan: your savings, your home if it’s been used as security, and the life and TPD amounts you might weigh up. It can also shape your goals, such as how much you’d like to hold outside the business. We can work through that with you once you know what the document says.

Start with what a sale may leave behind. Selling a business may not end your obligations under a lease or a personal guarantee, and the rules can differ between states and types of lease, so a lawyer can read yours well before you sell.

Other points to plan:

• Staff entitlements when a business changes hands, with Fair Work where the national system applies
• Capital gains tax and the small business concessions, with an accountant
• What the proceeds could do for your super, your debts and your household

We can plan the money side with you, so your next stage doesn’t rest on one price.

If one business pays you both, a slow stretch or an illness can reach your whole household at once, so it helps to look at these together:

• One household budget, built on what the business can pay you both
• Each person’s own super, including who pays it under your structure
• Each person’s cover, if you hold it, and the work each of you does
• Any personal guarantee you’ve both signed, which a lawyer can explain

We can go through it with you both, and plan around what each of you would like.

Public liability, property and business interruption cover look after the business, and a general insurance broker is the person to explain them.

Our work is personal: what would happen at home if you couldn’t work. That means income protection, life and TPD cover, along with super, savings and the way the business pays you. We can compare suitable options with you from a wide range of insurers, and the insurer decides on any application.

Start at home: what the household needs each month, and the savings you’d have left after the purchase. Whether to buy is your decision, and we can help you see what it could ask of your budget.

• A broker can compare lenders and arrange any finance
• A lawyer can read the sale contract, the lease and any personal guarantee
• An accountant can look at the business’s figures and structure

Cover is worth looking at before you sign too, as your debts and who relies on you may change. The insurer decides on any application.

Yes. We can look with you at when you’d like to step back from service, whether a manager could run things for a while, and how any lease end date sits beside your retirement date. If you’re self-employed, what goes into your super may come from your drawings, so contributions are yours to plan.

We’d build the plan on super and savings rather than assuming the business will sell. You can read more about our retirement advice.

We’re a national service, so you can meet with us by phone or video from anywhere in Australia. We also have offices in three cities:

• Sydney: offices in Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Seven Hills, Ingleburn and Narellan, servicing areas including the City of Sydney, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, North Shore, Northern Beaches, Sutherland Shire, Blacktown, Liverpool, Campbelltown and all surrounding suburbs.
• Melbourne: our St Kilda Road office, servicing areas including the City of Melbourne, Port Phillip, Boroondara, Monash, Casey, Wyndham and all surrounding suburbs.
• Brisbane: our Eagle Street office, servicing areas including Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and all surrounding suburbs.

Yes. Someone buying their first cafe, a couple running a food van or the owner of an established restaurant can all start with us, from wherever things are now.

There’s no cost for the initial conversation. Any advice after that is a paid service, with its scope and fee agreed with you in writing first.

Before we talk, it’s useful to gather recent tax returns or financial statements, your super statement and the terms of any policy, lease or business loan.