Pendragon Straight Talk: Episode Six

 
TRANSCRIPT
 
JOHN GLOVER: Hello and welcome back to Pendragon Straight Talks. This week’s question is one from the contractor world – it’s what do contractors need to consider to either become a contractor or if they are a contractor already, what they’ve got to consider about being a contractor.
 
One of the biggest things, I think is compliance. You’ve got to be compliant, you’ve got to have the right insurances, you’ve got to pay the ATO correctly, you collect and pay the right GST – because you don’t want to have a bill at the end of the year or two years’ time and someone coming after you.
 
Superannuation. You’ve to think of putting some money away for when you retire, it’s just one of those things. You’ve got to look at, got to think about it and work out how to do it.
Time is a big thing. Time for invoicing, time chasing outstanding debts time to source new contracts or projects. Which really leads you on to a cashflow situation. You’ve got to make sure you have a cashflow between those projects or different contracts and then you really want to work out from that, with your cashflow, what is your cost, what your value. So, have you costed yourself correctly, so when you’ve got those gaps between contracts you’ve got the cashflow to cover you.
 
Do you want to be a sole trader with an ABN or do you want to set up a PTY. limited and run behind that for your first line of protection, which helps with your own compliance.
You’ve got to think are you looking for freedom to control your money, make sure you have not just given yourself a job, you don’t want to do that because we’ve all got jobs and you may take yourself out of a job to become a contractor so think of that seriously
 
So, the big issues, or the big ones, are make sure your compliant, have the cashflow and give yourself time, time for your family, time for yourself and a bit of time over here to go and do those things you’ve got to do
 
Thanks for listing, I look forward to next time, have a good week.