End of Financial Year Checklist for Tradies — What to Sort Before June 30

June 29. The EOFY panic is real — I've seen grown tradies spend the last two days of the financial year digging through gloveboxes, ute door pockets, and the bottom of their toolboxes for receipts they swore they'd file "next week" back in October. Here's the thing though — a couple of hours of organised prep between now and tomorrow lunch can save you thousands in missed deductions and save your accountant's marriage. And if you don't have an accountant? Even more reason to get your act together.

This isn't a tax lecture. It's a checklist — the stuff you actually need to do, in the order you should do it, without the accounting jargon.

If you've been chucking receipts into a shoebox or the passenger footwell, today's the day. Grab everything — Bunnings, Reece, Tradelink, Total Tools, Autobarn, the servo, every single thing you've bought for the business — and get it into a single pile. Paper, digital, doesn't matter. Just get it together.

Digital receipts are easier than you think. If you're using Trade Track, every job already has its materials tracked and costed against it. But if you're still on paper, take a photo of each receipt and email it to yourself or dump them into a Google Drive folder. The ATO accepts electronic records these days. You don't need the physical bits of thermal paper that'll be blank by August anyway.

Pro move: Sort them into categories — materials, tools, vehicle, subcontractors, other expenses. Your accountant will appreciate it more than you realise.

Super guarantee is 11.5% for the 2025-26 financial year. If you've got employees — including yourself if you're paying through a company structure — you need to make sure all contributions have been made and on time. Late super payments aren't tax deductible and come with a penalty.

Here's the bit that catches tradies out. If you're a sole trader, you don't have to pay yourself super. But you can, and it's one of the most tax-effective moves in the book. Personal deductible contributions — sometimes called salary sacrifice, though that's not quite the right term for sole traders — reduce your taxable income dollar for dollar. The cap for concessional contributions this year is $30,000. If you've got the cash, putting some into super before June 30 saves you at your marginal tax rate. That's 32 cents for every dollar for most tradies (including the Medicare levy), or 47 cents if you've had a cracker of a year and you're in the top bracket.

The catch: Your super fund needs to receive the money by June 30, not just have you send it on June 30. Some funds take a few business days to process. Don't leave it for tomorrow afternoon — do it this morning.

The ute is usually the biggest single deduction a tradie claims — and the area the ATO scrutinises hardest. You've got two methods, and picking the wrong one costs you money.

Logbook method — you kept a logbook for 12 consecutive weeks (good for 5 years). That gives you a business-use percentage, and you claim that percentage of all your vehicle costs. Fuel, rego, insurance, servicing, tyres, even depreciation.

Cents-per-kilometre method — you claim a set rate per business kilometre, capped at 5,000 km. Simpler. Less paperwork. Almost always less money back.

If you haven't done a logbook this year and you're on cents-per-km, you're leaving money on the table. Start one on July 1 — first job of the new financial year — and commit to the full 12 weeks.

What counts as business travel: Driving from your workshop to a job site. Driving between job sites. Driving to the supply shop. Driving to the tip with demolition waste. Driving home from the last job of the day does NOT count — even if the ute is full of tools. That's personal travel.

The instant asset write-off is still around for small businesses under $10 million turnover. Any tools, equipment, or machinery costing less than $20,000 that you bought this financial year — the full amount comes off your taxable income in one hit. That compressor you grabbed in March, the thermal imaging camera, the new scaffold planks, the battery platform you switched to — all of it.

But here's the flip side. If you sold any gear this year, that needs to be accounted for too. Sold your old welder on Facebook Marketplace for $1,500? That's a disposal. If you claimed it as an asset in previous years, the sale proceeds need to be declared. Your accountant handles this, but they can't handle what they don't know about. Tell them.

This one matters more than most tradies realise. If you're on an invoice basis for GST — which most tradies are — you've already paid GST on every invoice you sent, even the ones the customer hasn't paid yet. The ATO doesn't give you a refund on that GST just because the client is slow.

Get on the phone today. Not an email. A phone call. "G'day mate, just checking in on invoice 4872 — $3,400 from that bathroom Reno in April. It's end of financial year and I'm getting my books sorted. Can you get that through by tomorrow?"

If they can't pay, at least you know where you stand. And if they're genuinely not going to pay — you've argued, they've stalled, you know the score — you can write it off as a bad debt before June 30 and claim back the GST you already paid. But you have to do it before the clock ticks over. After July 1, that GST is gone.

If you've got employees, your PAYG withholding from their wages needs to match what you've reported on your activity statements. The ATO cross-checks this. If you've been reporting $3,000 a quarter but actually withheld $4,000, they'll notice — and you'll have some explaining to do.

And if you're on PAYG instalments for your own income — the ATO estimates what you owe based on your last return. If you've had a bigger year this year, your instalments might be too low and you'll cop a bigger bill when you lodge. You can vary them online through myGov or ask your BAS agent to do it. Takes five minutes and saves you a nasty surprise in October.

If you've got one, call them today. Not next week. Not "when I get a minute." Today. Accountants are drowning in June — every bit of head start you give them before July 1 is time they can actually spend finding you deductions instead of rushing through your return.

Ask them three things:

1. 1"Should I make a super contribution before June 30?"
2. 2"Am I better off buying that new gear now or after July 1?"
3. 3"Is there anything obvious I'm missing that I should be claiming?"

If you don't have an accountant — get one. A good tradie accountant pays for themselves five times over in deductions you didn't know existed and ATO headaches you never have to deal with.

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What to Do Right Now

Open your job management software — Trade Track or whatever you're running — and run the reports. What did you actually invoice this financial year? What's still outstanding? What did you spend on materials across every job? Export it all as a PDF or CSV, send it to your accountant, then close the laptop. You've done the work.

The tradies who spend two hours on this today are the ones who get a tax refund. The ones who say "I'll sort it out later" are the ones who get a letter from the ATO in November wondering why their numbers don't add up.

Your call.

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