Four regulators, one subbie. Five places to keep the record.
A subcontractor is a supplier the ATO treats a lot like a worker. You need their ABN checked, their licence and insurance current, their payments reported on a TPAR by 28 August, and in some cases their super paid. Each lives in a different system. What we build is one contractor record that all of them read from.
What the ATO asks of you before the subbie is paid
Check the ABN. If a supplier does not quote one, you generally have to withhold 47% from any payment over $75 excluding GST and remit it (ATO, Statement by a supplier not quoting an ABN, checked September 2026; ATO, Withholding if ABN is not provided, checked September 2026). The exceptions are narrow — a private hobby, a supplier under 18 paid $350 a week or less — and a written statement from the supplier covers them.
Then decide whether super is owed. A contractor working under a contract "wholly or principally for their labour" is an employee for super guarantee purposes, ABN or not; if you contract with their company, trust or partnership rather than the person, you do not (ATO, Super guarantee employer obligations course, module 2, checked September 2026). The rate is 12% (ATO, Super guarantee, current rate), and from 1 July 2026 it has to reach the fund within 7 business days of payment (ATO, Payment deadlines for Payday Super, checked September 2026).
Then report. Building and construction, cleaning, courier and road freight, IT, and security, investigation or surveillance services all have to lodge a Taxable Payments Annual Report by 28 August; for mixed businesses the test is whether those services are 10% or more of income, except building and construction, which reports regardless (ATO, Work out if you need to lodge a TPAR, checked September 2026). Paper lodgments have not been accepted since 28 August 2025 (ATO, Lodge your TPAR, checked September 2026).
What Queensland asks
Building work valued over $3,300 including labour and materials needs a QBCC licence, and some work needs one at any value — plumbing and drainage, gas fitting, fire protection — with hydraulic services design licensed from $1,100 (QBCC, When you need a licence, checked September 2026). Engaging an unlicensed subbie on licensed work is your problem as much as theirs.
Payment is regulated too. Under the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act a payment schedule has to be given within 15 business days of a payment claim or earlier if the contract says so, the default due date for a progress payment is 10 business days after the claim, and business days exclude 22 December to 10 January (QBCC, Business days and the holiday period (Security of Payment), checked September 2026). A subbie's invoice is a payment claim, and the clock does not wait for your bookkeeper's Thursday.
For context on how the rest of the chain behaves: large businesses paid small suppliers in 26.2 days on average and only 68.1% within agreed terms in the July–December 2024 cycle (Payment Times Reporting Regulator, update, July 2025). Your subbies are comparing you to that.
Where each system keeps the contractor, and what it leaves out
Every system we build against holds part of the record. None holds all of it, and the gaps are where the risk sits.
| Xero | MYOB Business | QuickBooks Online | ServiceM8 | Simpro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Send work to the contractor | No Accounting only. No work order. | No Accounting only. No work order. | No Accounting only. No work order. | Partly ServiceM8 Network sends a request the contractor converts to a job in their own account; you cannot set the scheduled booking. | Yes Contractor work orders and a contractor portal are documented features. |
| Contractor invoice against the job | Partly As a bill. No job link unless the job system sends one. | Partly As a bill or spend money. Job link depends on the export. | Partly As a bill. Job link depends on the export. | Partly The contractor bills you, not your client, from their own account; the invoice arrives by email or the Supplier Invoice Import add-on. | Yes Contractor invoices are a documented feature and transfer to Xero alongside supplier invoices. |
| TPAR | Yes Contact groups or account rules; bill and spend-money payments; excludes credit notes, foreign currency and non-Australian addresses; Lodge to ATO button. | Partly Flag the supplier as reportable; generates a TPAR file you lodge yourself through ATO online services. | Partly Toggle "Show TPAR option for supplier" and flag suppliers; runs the report. | No Not an accounting system. Payments reach TPAR through the accounts. | No Not an accounting system. Contractor invoices reach TPAR through Xero. |
| ABN validity check | Partly Stores the ABN. Validity is your check before lodging. | Partly Stores the ABN. Validity is your check. | Partly Stores the ABN. Validity is your check. | No Contractor is a separate account or a staff record; no ABN field is documented. | Partly Contractor record holds details; validity is your check. |
| Licence and insurance expiry | No Not held. | No Not held. | No Not held. | No Not documented. | Partly Contractor forms can capture documents; expiry alerts are not a documented feature. |
Where the join is, and what we build
The join is the contractor record. One table — name, entity type, ABN and its last lookup date, licence class and expiry, insurance expiry, TPAR flag, super-owed flag — that the job system and the accounts both read. ServiceM8 is honest that a contractor is either a staff record or a separate business on its Network, "the contractor bills you, not your client" (ServiceM8 Help, subcontracting with ServiceM8 Network, checked September 2026); neither holds a licence expiry.
From that record: a payment is held if the ABN fails a lookup or the licence has lapsed; a TPAR flag is set on the Xero or MYOB contact automatically rather than remembered in August; and every invoice from a contractor is date-stamped as a payment claim so the 15-business-day schedule and the 10-business-day default due date are visible, not remembered (QBCC, Business days and the holiday period (Security of Payment), checked September 2026).
On Simpro most of the job side exists and the build is the compliance record and the alerts. On ServiceM8 the build is larger because the contractor is a separate account, and we will say when a third-party product is the cheaper answer.
What it will not do
Three things stay with people, and we will not quote for a version that pretends otherwise.
- KNDR·01Decide contractor or employeeThat is a legal question with its own test under the Fair Work Act and a separate one for super. The software records the answer you and your adviser reach; it does not reach it.
- KNDR·02Lodge the TPARXero has a Lodge to ATO button; MYOB generates the file for you to lodge through ATO online services (Digit, How to lodge TPAR from Xero, updated 16 March 2026; MYOB Business help, Reportable contractor payments, checked September 2026). You or a registered agent presses it.
- KNDR·03Make the phone call when a licence lapsesIt sends the alert 30 days before expiry. What happens after that is a relationship, and it should be.
The arithmetic
Average weekly ordinary time earnings for Australian full-time adults were $2,083.70, seasonally adjusted, in May 2026 — about $55 an hour over a 38-hour week before on-costs. Add 12% super and the loaded figure is about $61 an hour before leave, insurance or a vehicle (ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026; ATO, Super guarantee, current rate).
Count the subbies you paid last financial year and the hours someone spent in August assembling ABNs, addresses and totals for the TPAR. Ten subbies and a day of work is about $490 at that rate — small. Now add the hours spent chasing a certificate of currency before a job could start, per job, and the one time a payment schedule was late and a subbie stopped work. The second list is the real number and the calculator will take it.
What we have not measured, and what we would measure for you
There is no reliable published Australian figure for how long onboarding, checking and paying subcontractors takes in a small business, and we are not going to borrow one from a vendor whitepaper to make this page more persuasive. Most numbers you will see quoted for this were produced by companies selling the fix.
What we would do instead is count it on one of your jobs. Follow a single job end to end, note every time a human touches this step, and multiply by what that person costs loaded. That is a real number about your business and it takes an afternoon.
You can run the arithmetic yourself first — the leak calculator uses ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026 for the wage default and ATO, Super guarantee, current rate for super, and returns a range rather than a single confident figure. If the range comes back under our minimum engagement, that is a real answer and you should stop there.
The questions people actually ask.
01Our accountant does the TPAR — why would we need this?
They lodge it. Someone still assembles it, and the assembly is where the ABN with a typo and the subbie who was never flagged live. If your accountant tells you the August file arrives clean every year, you do not have this problem.
02Is it legal to hold a subbie’s payment because their licence lapsed?
That is a contract and legal question we will not answer for you. What the system does is make the lapse visible before the payment run rather than after, so the decision is yours and it is made on time — including against the payment schedule deadlines under the BIF Act.
03Where are your case studies?
Not published, because we do not have measured before-and-after numbers we can stand behind yet, and a case study without them is a story. Kindra AI was founded in 2025. When the measurements exist they will appear here with the sample size attached.
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