Xero Bookkeeping & Payroll Services in Perth

Sound familiar?

You started doing the books yourself because it was easier than explaining your business to someone else. Now you're spending evenings reconciling Xero instead of quoting jobs or talking to customers

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Or you've got a bookkeeper, but they work alone. When they're on leave, nothing moves. When something goes wrong, there's nobody else across your file. You've outgrown the model but haven't had time to fix it

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Maybe you're across your bookkeeping but payroll is the headache - WA award rates, overtime calculations, STP Phase 2 reporting, and the constant worry that one mistake means an ATO audit

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Or you just got your BAS back from your accountant and the GST bill was a surprise. Nobody told you to set money aside. Nobody flagged that your cashflow would be tight this quarter. You found out too late

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These are the conversations we have with Perth business owners every week. If any of this sounds like where you are, we can probably help

A city that runs on project work and payment terms

Western Australia added 10,877 new businesses in 2024-25 - the fastest growth rate of any state at 4.3%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Perth is the engine room behind most of that number

Perth's business mix doesn't look like Melbourne's or Sydney's. Construction and mining services sit at the centre of the economy here - and they set the rhythm for everyone else. The construction workforce in WA is around 155,500 people, almost neck-and-neck with mining at 155,900. Those two industries compete for the same workers, push the same wages up, and create the same downstream pressure on every tradie, subcontractor, and supplier in their orbit

That pressure is real. WA builders completed more than 22,000 new homes in the 2024-25 financial year, a 25.1% jump on the year before. Metronet station fit-outs are shifting from civil works to finishing trades. A $145 million recreation facility is going up in Perth's north-east. The new Women and Babies Hospital at Murdoch will be a construction site until 2029. Work is not the problem

Getting paid for it is closer to the problem. The federal Payment Times Reporting Scheme data shows that nationally, only 66.5% of small business invoices get paid on time. Mining is the worst sector for small business procurement, sourcing just 21.1% of total procurement from small suppliers. Construction is better at 43%, but the tail-end invoices are brutal - it takes up to 64 days for 95% of small business invoices to be settled. Australian small businesses lose an average of 78 hours a year just chasing money they're already owed

If you run a trades business, a mining services company, or a professional services firm that sits in those supply chains, your cashflow doesn't follow a neat monthly cycle. It follows project milestones, retention schedules, and whoever picks up the phone at accounts payable

The two-speed economy is still a thing

Xero Small Business Insights data consistently shows WA leading the country on sales growth. In the June 2025 quarter, WA recorded the strongest small business sales nationally at 4.6% year-on-year. Jobs growth was also the highest in Australia at 3.9% in the September quarter. Construction sales grew 6.6% - a two-year high

But those are averages. The cafe owner in Leederville and the earthworks contractor in Karratha are living in different economies. One is watching rent go up while foot traffic stays flat. The other is turning away work because they can't find operators. Both need their numbers right, but for very different reasons

The cafe needs tight weekly reconciliation to know whether they're actually making money or just turning over cash. The earthworks contractor needs progress billing tracked against project stages, retention amounts held separately, and a clear picture of when the next lump of cash actually arrives. Same city, same Xero file, completely different requirements