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Recipient Created Tax Invoices (RCTIs) are a quietly important compliance area for AU construction operators. When a builder generates the tax invoice on behalf of a subcontractor (instead of the subcontractor invoicing the builder), the transaction is technically a "Recipient Created Tax Invoice" — and it's only valid under specific ATO conditions documented in GSTR 2000/10. Get the RCTI process right and you streamline subcontractor payment workflow, smooth GST reconciliati

Insurance and indemnity arrangements are a significant cash and accounting line for AU construction operators. A mid-tier commercial builder typically pays $150-400k per year in premiums across professional indemnity, public liability, contract works, equipment, and worker's compensation. Get the accounting treatment right and the impact on management accounts and bank covenants is clean. Get it wrong and you're either prepaying revenue or recognising expenses in the wrong pe

The ATO doesn't audit randomly. It audits patterns. For Australian construction operators, the ATO runs sophisticated data-matching across BAS lodgements, Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR) submissions, contractor payments, asset purchases, and PAYG withholding. When patterns deviate from industry benchmarks or your own historical norms, the system flags you for review. This guide walks through the 10 most common audit triggers we see for AU construction, EPC, and trade-bu

Capital structure is the architecture of how a business funds itself. For project-based operators in construction, EPC, solar and renewables, the right capital structure is the difference between scaling smoothly to $50M+ revenue and getting stuck at $5-15M revenue with chronic working-capital pressure. This is the practitioner's playbook for capital structure decisions across the operator lifecycle. It covers the four sources of capital, the working-capital optimisation fram

Discretionary trust structures are the backbone of most AU family construction, EPC, and trade-business arrangements. Done well, they enable income splitting, asset protection, and structural flexibility across multiple generations. Done badly — particularly post the ATO's 2022 ruling on Section 100A — they create audit risk that can crystallise years after the distribution decision. This guide is for family-run construction operators using a discretionary trust as the primar

The R&D Tax Incentive is one of the most generous tax programs available to Australian operators — and one of the most under-claimed by EPC, solar and renewables businesses. The program offers a 43.5% refundable offset on eligible R&D expenditure for entities with aggregated turnover under $20M (or a 38.5% non-refundable offset above that threshold). For a solar installer running genuine R&D on battery integration with $200k of eligible expenditure, that's an $87k cash refund

Running a single project well is one thing. Running a portfolio of 8-25 active projects with disciplined margin visibility across all of them is another. Most builders we engage with have decent visibility on each project individually but no rolled-up view at the portfolio level — meaning they can't answer questions like "which client / segment / project manager is most profitable?" or "where should I focus business development next quarter?" This guide walks through multi-pr

The GST margin scheme is one of the highest-leverage tax decisions an AU property developer makes — and one of the most commonly mis-applied. Apply it correctly and you can reduce GST on a $5M residential sale from $454,545 (1/11th of the sale price) to as little as $80,000-$150,000 (1/11th of the margin). Apply it incorrectly and you're carrying audit risk that can crystallise years after the development is sold. This is the practitioner's guide to the margin scheme for deve

The choice between a Cost Plus and a Lump Sum (fixed price) contract structure is usually framed by builders as a risk question — who carries the cost overrun risk? It's also a margin question — which structure pays better? Both framings miss the operational and financial-accounting dimensions, which are at least as important. For an AU builder choosing between contract structures, the right framework considers risk, margin, AASB 15 revenue recognition, GST treatment, cash fl

Every six months we run a discovery call with a founder doing $4M-$8M revenue who's worried that "the books don't tell us what's actually happening." Same conversation each time. Their bookkeeper is doing a great job within scope. Their tax accountant lodges on time. But there's a gap between the operational reality of the business — projects, retention, variations, sub-contract spend — and what the management accounts show. That gap is the finance function maturity gap. The

Every construction or EPC project should be its own P&L. If you can't show me last month's gross margin on Project #7, broken down by labour, materials, sub-contract, plant hire and overhead — and what that margin was forecast to be at quote time — your finance function is missing the most important visibility there is. This guide walks through the structure of a properly-built project P&L, what each line means, how to read margin trends, and the 8 numbers every project owner

This is a living map of TechEdge's content library. If you're an AU construction, solar, EPC or carbon-credit operator looking for practitioner-grade accounting guidance, start here. We organise everything by reader intent — what you're trying to figure out — rather than by topic taxonomy. The library is built around five pillars, each with multiple cluster posts that drill into specific operational questions. Pillar 1 — Construction & Civil Accounting (AASB 15) The pillar fo

Net Zero compliance is rapidly moving from aspiration to contract clause in Australian design-and-construct projects. By 2026 a growing share of D&C contracts — particularly government-funded, education sector, healthcare, and ESG-aligned commercial — include explicit embodied-carbon obligations: maximum kg CO2e per square metre, retirement of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) at practical completion, or carbon-offset purchase commitments built into the bill of quantitie

For project-based operators — construction, EPC, solar, renewables — the bank facility is usually the single most important commercial relationship in the business. Get it right and you have headroom for growth, retention drawdowns, equipment finance, and project working capital. Get it wrong and a single covenant breach or a tightening review can constrain operations for two quarters at minimum. The mistake we see most often: operators treat the bank renewal as a 30-day even

The 2025-26 financial year ends Tuesday 30 June 2026. For construction, solar and EPC operators, EOFY is a six-week window where the right structural moves can save $15k-$150k+ in cash tax — and where the wrong ones bake in painful July-September cash crunches that take two quarters to recover from. This is the practitioner checklist we run for TechEdge Finance Office clients in the weeks leading up to 30 June. It's organised by week so you can sit down each Sunday afternoon

If you're a solar installer, EPC subbie or carbon-credit broker operating as a sole trader, partnership, trust or one-person company, the Personal Services Income (PSI) rules under Part 2-42 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 may apply to your business — and if they do, the ATO can re-attribute your income to you personally, deny most of your deductions, and audit historic returns. What we see in first-quarter engagements: at least one in four sub-$5M installer or subbie c

Why 13 weeks is the right window for construction cash forecasting Most construction businesses run cash forecasting in two unhelpful modes. Either they forecast 12 months out at the start of every financial year and never touch the file again — useful for the board pack, useless for daily cash decisions. Or they reconcile yesterday's bank balance against today's payment commitments — useful for survival, useless for planning ahead. The middle ground that works for AU constru

Why bank covenants make or break AU construction businesses Construction businesses live and die on credit. Overdraft for working capital. Project-finance facilities for major builds. Equipment loans for plant. Performance bonds for principal contracts. The cost of credit is small relative to the value it unlocks — but the cost of LOSING credit at the wrong moment is catastrophic. What sits between you and continued credit access is the covenant package. Three or four key tes

The GST traps that cost AU builders cash flow they didn't budget for Most Australian construction operators get GST broadly right at the BAS level. The 10% comes in, the 10% comes back out, the net is paid. Where it goes wrong is the timing — and in construction, timing is everything. GST on a variation that was recognised in March but invoiced in April. GST on retention you've recognised but won't collect for 18 months. GST on dayworks performed Monday and billed Friday thre

The compliance load most builders underestimate Construction businesses in Australia don't just run jobs and BAS. They also run a stack of statutory obligations around how they engage and pay subcontractors — and the regulatory bar has lifted hard in the last three years. The big four: Payment Times Reporting Scheme (PTRS) — reporting on how fast you pay your subbies, with publicly searchable results. Security of Payment Act (SoPA) — the state-level scheme controlling progres

The reporting layer that makes the books defensible Accurate revenue recognition under AASB 15 depends on accurate job-cost data. If your job-cost system is broken — costs miscoded, allocation rules drifted, project register stale — your revenue numbers are broken too. Period. This is the layer that separates a construction business with defensible monthly close from one that's flying blind. Founders who know which project is making money. Bookkeepers who know which costs bel

What WIP reconciliation actually means (and why monthly matters) WIP — Work in Progress — is the bridge between cost incurred and revenue recognised in your construction GL. It's where unbilled work sits, where cost-to-complete estimation lives, and where the auditor focuses most of their year-end attention. Most AU builders we onboard run a WIP reconciliation annually — usually three weeks before year-end audit, in a panic. By then the gap between job-cost reality and GL rec

The construction accounting problem that costs builders $40k–$150k per quarter Most Australian construction businesses can run a project. Fewer can tell you which one is making money. Almost none can show a bank a 13-week cash forecast that separates progress claim receipts from retention release windows, or a margin-by-project report that survives audit scrutiny. The gap between "we built it" and "we know what it earned" is where money quietly disappears. Approved variations

Head of Finance for the renewables operator going from development to financial close Renewables developers operate on long timelines and non-trivial capital stacks. The finance function has to do capex tracking against project stages, LGC accounting against the REC Registry, Safeguard Mechanism compliance where baselines apply, capital-raise-grade financials for equity and debt rounds, and board-grade reporting. We run all of it. Head of Finance tier scope for renewables Cap