The arithmetic, before you pay anyone for it.

What can I afford?

Bounded by two separate things: the deposit you hold and what the earnings will service once you have paid yourself. It names which one is holding you back, because that decides what to do next.

Adjusted EBITDA

Reported profit rebuilt into adjusted earnings, one add-back at a time, with the evidence each line needs to survive a credit review. It stops at earnings and applies no multiple.

ATO benchmark check

The ATO publishes what businesses in 100 industries actually spend, drawn from real tax returns. This puts your figures against it and says what the gap usually means.

Serviceability

Can the business carry the debt? Adjusted earnings against every commitment, tested at an assessment rate above the one you were quoted, with cover, headroom and a maximum facility.

BAS surplus

For facilities under $1.5m a lender will often assess straight from your quarterly BAS. This works the surplus the way they do, and shows the check most returns quietly fail.

True cost of finance

An overdraft, invoice facility or stock line quoted at 8% almost never costs 8%. This adds up every dollar of interest and fees and divides by what you actually drew.

Equipment finance

What a balloon actually costs. The lower monthly payment is real, and so is the sum still owing at the end and the extra interest you pay to defer it. Both halves, side by side.

Compare two offers

You cannot tell which is cheaper from the rates. A deposit paid today and a balloon paid in five years are worth very different amounts, and a rate captures neither.

Break-even

Three lines rather than one: covering the costs, paying a market wage for whoever runs the place, and carrying the debt on top. Most break-even sums stop at the first.

Startup reserve

Not what it costs to open, but what it costs to keep going until the business pays for itself and for you. Modelled month by month, because the money runs out at the trough.

Working capital

Profitable, and no money in the bank? Profit counts a sale when you make it, cash counts it when you are paid, and this works out exactly where the difference went.

Profit and cash levers

Seven things move a business. Put one per cent on each and see what it does to profit, to cash, and to what a lender would lend against the result. Price beats volume, and it is not close.

Real profit

What is left once someone is paid to do your job. Reported profit walked to real profit line by line, banded against published guidance that is named rather than asserted, and tested against a two-month cash reserve.

Labour efficiency

For every dollar of wages, how much gross margin comes back? Tracked across your own periods, split between the people who do the work and the people who run it. The 2.0 everyone quotes is named, attributed, and left off your figures for reasons the page gives.

What has to change

The levers calculator run backwards. Name the profit, the margin or the facility you want to carry, and read what each lever alone would have to do, against the one small move on all four that gets there instead.

Would it survive a buyer?

Ten questions on owner dependence, customers, revenue quality, earnings and records. Returns a score, the weakest area, and for every soft answer the question a buyer would actually put to you. No value and no multiple, ever.

Cash allocation

Split the money as it arrives instead of hoping for a surplus at the end. Takes GST and subcontract off the top first, because neither was ever yours, then pays profit, you, tax and debt before the business gets what is left.

Covenant check

Serviceability decides whether you get the money. Covenants decide whether you keep it. Six tests, run every quarter for the life of the facility, that most owners never read.