Record keeping answers for Australian small business, with the source for each.

In every state and territory, building, electrical and plumbing licences are issued to a named person or company, and a buyer of the business assets does not take them over: the buyer needs its own licence, usually with a licensed nominee or supervisor, before it trades. If shares in a licensed company are sold instead, the regulator expects to be told about new directors and nominees within days, and the rules differ by state.

Read the full guide

• Who issues building, electrical and plumbing licences in each state and territory.
• What a buyer of the assets needs before it trades.
• The notice periods for new directors and nominees.

Keep one list of every licence, registration and insurance policy the business holds, with whose name each one is in, its number and the expiry date read off the document itself. Then put each date where you already look, a calendar or a weekly email, and set the reminder for when the renewal takes work, not for the day it runs out.

Read the full guide

• Six facts on every line, including whose name it is in.
• What a certificate of currency shows, and why the old one misleads.
• Three reminders: about ninety days, thirty days and a week out.

Give each kind of record one home, name every file for what it is, who it involves and its date, and write down the dates a document does not show on its front page. Your records are organised when somebody other than you can find any of them in ten minutes without ringing you. Keep general business and tax records for five years, and anything touching employment for seven.

Read the full guide

• One document, one place, and a name written for the person who has not seen it.
• Record the date the document does not announce: the option window, the expiry, the service.
• The test: could someone other than you find it in ten minutes, without ringing you?

Write a procedure while you do the job, cover one whole job from what starts it to what done looks like, spell out every decision and who to ask, date it, then hand it to someone who has never done the job and add every step where they get stuck.

Read the full guide

• Start with the job only you can do.
• Write one whole job, end to end, including the forks.
• Ask the person who does the work whether it matches reality.

Keep employee time and wages records for seven years. That is the Fair Work rule, and it runs longer than the ATO's five-year rule for other business records. Employee records also have rules about their form, and they are somebody else's personal information. Here is what that means in practice.

Read the full guide

• Seven years under the Fair Work Act, and it is not the ATO's five.
• Pay slips are a separate obligation with a separate clock.
• Keep people records out of anything that goes to a buyer.

Buyers commonly ask early for eleven documents: three years of tax returns and financial statements, this year's management accounts, the lease with its option dates, a staff schedule with leave accruals, employment and contractor agreements, an asset register, a current PPSR search, a dated stock count, the top ten customers by share of revenue, one job written down end to end, and a named holder for every system.

Read the full guide

• The nine asked for first, and the two that matter more.
• Whose name each account and licence is actually in.
• The lease option window, and the fact that the date does not move.

To hand over a business, list what stops first if you are uncontactable, write down every system with whose name it is in and where its reset code goes, catch the unrecorded know-how over a fortnight, and agree how the new person reaches you until week four.

Read the full guide

• Start with what stops, not with what is important.
• Systems and logins, before anything else.
• Write down where the reset goes, never the password.