Accountants for Creatives.

Your income doesn’t follow predictable patterns. Big months are followed by quiet periods. Client payments arrive late. Project work comes in chunks, not steady streams. Meanwhile, rent, subscriptions, and living costs continue regardless of whether you’re earning. This irregularity makes budgeting, tax planning, and financial stability challenging.

Walker Hill helps you forecast income based on your pipeline, plan for quiet periods, set aside money during good months to cover slow times, and structure tax instalments that account for variable earnings. We also advise on pricing to smooth income over time and whether retainer arrangements might stabilise your cash flow.

You’re using one bank account for everything. Client payments mix with personal spending. You pay business expenses from personal accounts and personal costs from business money. By tax time, separating what’s deductible from what isn’t becomes a nightmare that increases accounting fees and risks missed deductions or incorrect claims.

Walker Hill sets you up with proper separation from day one. You’ll have a dedicated business account, clear processes for recording expenses, and systems that make year-end preparation straightforward. Your personal finances stay separate from business operations, making everything cleaner and easier to manage.

Creative professionals often either under-claim because they’re unsure what’s deductible or over-claim things that don’t qualify, risking problems if the ATO reviews their return. Equipment used partly for personal purposes requires careful treatment. Home workspace claims have specific rules. Professional development blurs with personal interest when you’re consuming creative work to stay current.

Walker Hill explains what you can legitimately claim as a creative professional, how to document mixed-use assets properly, what percentage of home costs are deductible, how to claim equipment depreciation, and what records you need for different expense types. You’ll claim everything you’re entitled to without claiming things that create audit risk.

Many creatives price based on what they think clients will pay or what other creatives charge, not on their actual costs plus desired profit. You’re not factoring in all your time including admin and revisions, you’re not accounting for software and equipment costs spread across projects, you’re not including superannuation or leave, and you’re not building in profit margin after all costs.

Walker Hill helps you calculate your true hourly cost, understand what you need to charge to cover all business expenses plus personal drawings, analyse which types of work are actually profitable, and develop pricing strategies that make financial sense. You’ll know whether projects are worth taking before you quote, not after when it’s too late.

Tax instalments might be based on last year’s income, which bears no relation to this year’s reality. You’re either overpaying throughout the year or facing a massive bill when you lodge. Quarterly instalments don’t account for lumpy creative income, and you’re never quite sure whether you’re setting aside enough for tax.

Walker Hill manages your tax instalments, adjusts them when your income changes significantly, helps you set aside appropriate amounts during good months, and ensures you’re not caught short at tax time. We also advise on timing income and expenses to manage your tax position across financial years when large payments might straddle year-end.

You might earn royalties from books, music, or licensed designs. Income arrives months or years after work was created. Multiple licensing deals might pay for the same underlying work. Publishers or agents might handle money before passing it to you. This creates complexity around when to recognise income, how to track it, and what expenses relate to what income streams.

Walker Hill sets up systems that track rights-based income separately from project work, account for advances against future royalties, handle income that arrives long after creation, and ensure tax treatment is correct for different income types. Your accounting will properly reflect how creative income actually works.

The ATO requires records for five years. Receipts, invoices, bank statements, project documentation all need keeping. Many creatives either keep nothing or try to keep everything in systems they abandon after a month because they’re too time-consuming or complicated. You need record-keeping that’s simple enough to maintain but comprehensive enough to satisfy tax obligations.

Walker Hill implements systems suited to how creative people actually work. That might mean receipt scanning apps, cloud accounting with bank feeds, quarterly check-ins to catch up on filing, and processes that don’t require daily attention but keep everything organised. Your records will satisfy requirements without consuming time better spent on creative work.

Many creatives operate hand-to-mouth, project to project, without building reserves or planning beyond next month’s income. This makes it impossible to invest in your practice, take time for personal creative development, handle gaps between projects, or deal with unexpected costs. Building financial stability feels impossible when current income barely covers current needs.

Walker Hill helps you develop financial sustainability strategies, identify where money is leaking, advise on building business reserves when surplus occurs, plan superannuation contributions that build retirement security, and create budgets that support both business operation and personal financial goals. Financial stability strengthens your capacity to sustain creative practice long-term.