Planning13 August 2026 · 23 min read

You've Found the Location. Now What? The Australian Small-Business Setup Checklist

Founder, Locatalyze

Empty commercial tenancy with glass partitions and a polished concrete floor, waiting on a fit-out

Most guides to opening a business in Australia are organised by department. Register this with ASIC, insure that, hire someone, apply for a licence. That ordering suits a government website. It is close to useless for a person sitting on a lease offer with a Friday deadline, because it tells you what exists without telling you what blocks what, what has a twelve-week lead time, and which decisions stop being reversible the moment you sign. This guide is ordered the other way around.

Business SetupPre-OpeningCommercial LeaseComplianceChecklist

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, Locatalyze may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. We only include products we believe are relevant to the business setup process, and none of the recommendations change if the links are removed. Nothing here is legal, accounting, tax or financial advice. Where a requirement can change, we link to the responsible Australian authority rather than restate it.

There is a moment in every opening where the project stops being a decision and becomes a schedule. Everything before that moment can be walked away from for the cost of your time and a few hundred dollars in professional fees. Everything after it is money you will not see again if the site turns out to be wrong.

That moment is the lease signature, and almost every expensive mistake in this process traces back to work that should have happened before it and did not. Not because operators are careless. Because the sequence published everywhere puts "choose a location" as step two of fifteen, as though it were one task among many rather than the constraint that sets your rent, your staffing, your break-even and your opening risk all at once.

The commitment curve. The first three stages are the only ones where new information can still change the decision cheaply.

So this is not a list of eighteen things to do. It is a sequence, built around two questions you should be able to answer at every point: what should I do next, and what could this cost me if I get it wrong?

Start here

Pick your entry point

You have found a site but not signed anything. Start at Does the site actually work?. This is where the money is. Do not skip to the registrations because they feel more actionable.

You have signed the lease. Start at Structure and registrations, then go straight to Licences and council, because that is the item most likely to push your opening date.

You are opening in under 30 days. Go to The last 30 days and the master checklist, then come back to whatever you find missing.

You are already open. What to watch in the first 90 days is the section that matters, and it is the one most operators never read until something is already wrong.

Does the site actually work at this rent?

A location is not a place. It is a set of constraints you are agreeing to operate inside for the next five to ten years. The rent sets your minimum viable revenue. The catchment sets your ceiling. The competition sets how long it takes you to reach it. The trading pattern sets how many staff you need on a Tuesday versus a Saturday, and that single fact will do more to your wage bill than any roster software ever will.

Which is why the first thing to do after finding a site is not to book a fit-out designer. It is to build the smallest honest model you can and see whether it survives.

Three numbers, before anything else

Answer these before you respond to the agent

1
What revenue does this site need to produce for you to break even? Total fixed monthly costs, including rent and outgoings, divided by your gross margin. If you sell coffee at a 70% margin and your fixed costs are $38,000 a month, you need roughly $54,000 in sales before you have earned a dollar.
2
What revenue can this site plausibly produce? Realistic customers per day, multiplied by a realistic average spend, multiplied by trading days. Use the average spend you will actually achieve in month three, not the one you hope for in year two.
3
What is the gap, and how long can you fund it? If the honest number is below the break-even number, you are not looking at a slow start. You are looking at a site that requires you to change something structural: the rent, the format, the trading hours, or the site itself.

Rent is usually the number people negotiate hardest and model most loosely. As a rough working band, occupancy cost above roughly 18% of forecast revenue starts to remove your margin for error, and above 22% the business generally only works if your revenue assumption is right first time. Those thresholds are Locatalyze's, not a legislated standard, and the right number varies by format: a high-margin cafe survives a rent ratio that would destroy a grocer. Use them as a trigger for more work, not as a verdict.

The mistake that costs the most

Modelling the location on your best case and then treating the lease as the thing you will negotiate down later. Rent is the one cost in the whole build that you cannot cut after you sign. Staff hours flex. Menu costs flex. Marketing flexes. Rent arrives on the first of every month for the full term, and the landlord has your bank guarantee.

Before you spend on the next step, check that the location itself works

Locatalyze runs the address you are considering against competitor density, catchment, demand signals and your actual rent, and returns a PROCEED, VERIFY or AVOID read with the numbers behind it. It is the cheapest step in this entire list and the only one that can save you the other ones.

Analyse the address

If you want to sanity-check the arithmetic yourself first, the free tools cover the same ground in a narrower way: the rent overpriced checker for the asking rent, the break-even foot traffic tool for the customer count you need, and the business viability checker for the whole picture. There is also a printable before-you-sign checklist for the site visit itself.

For a deeper read on how site economics fail quietly, the cost of choosing the wrong business location walks through what the loss actually looks like on a P&L, and high foot traffic, low sales explains why busy streets and profitable streets are not the same thing.

The lease: read it in this order

Get a commercial solicitor. Not a template, not a family friend who does conveyancing, and not the landlord's agent explaining what a clause "basically means". A lease review on a five-year term costs a fraction of one month's rent and is the highest-return money you will spend in this entire process.

Before they get it, though, you should read it yourself, because you are the only person in the transaction who knows what you actually plan to do in the space.

Retail lease or commercial lease? It changes your rights

Each state and territory has its own retail leasing legislation, and if your premises falls under it you get protections that a plain commercial lease does not carry. The most useful of those is the disclosure statement: in New South Wales and Queensland the landlord must give it to you at least 7 days before the lease is entered into, and in Victoria at least 14 days along with a copy of the proposed lease. Check your own state's rules with the relevant small business commissioner or fair trading body, because the consequences of a late or missing disclosure statement differ: in some states it gives you a right to end the lease, in others it simply delays when rent starts running.

Whether you are covered depends on the use, the location, sometimes the floor area, and sometimes the tenant. Do not assume. It is a five-minute question for your solicitor and it changes what you can push back on.

The clauses that decide whether the deal is good

Clause	What to actually check
Permitted use	Written narrowly enough that the landlord controls you, or broadly enough that you can change your offer? "Cafe" and "cafe and licensed premises" are very different futures.
Rent reviews	Fixed percentage, CPI, or market? A 4% fixed annual review leaves you paying about 17% more in year five than in year one. Model it across the full term, do not eyeball it.
Outgoings	What is included, what is estimated, and is there a reconciliation? Ask for last year's actual outgoings, not the estimate.
Incentive	Rent-free period, fit-out contribution, or both? An incentive is worth nothing if you cannot trade during the rent-free period because approvals are not through.
Make good	Return to base building, or to the condition you received it in? Base-building make good on a fitted hospitality site can run into tens of thousands.
Option to renew	How much notice, and what happens if you miss the window? Missed option dates are one of the most common and most avoidable losses in small business.
Bank guarantee	How many months, and when do you get it back? This is working capital sitting idle for the term.
Personal guarantee	If you are signing in a company name and personally guaranteeing, the company structure is not protecting you on the largest liability you have.

Check this before you sign, not after

That the use you plan is permitted by the lease AND by the council. These are two separate approvals and they do not automatically agree. A landlord can quite legally grant you a permitted use that the local planning scheme will not allow you to operate, and the lease will still be enforceable against you.

More on the lease specifically: before you sign that lease is the long-form version of the checks above, and why landlords want you to skip due diligence explains the timing pressure you will feel and where it comes from.

Structure and registrations

This is the step everyone starts with because it feels like starting. It should come after the site decision, for one specific reason: the entity that signs the lease is very hard to change afterwards. Moving a lease from your personal name into a company later is an assignment, it needs landlord consent, and the landlord has no reason to give it to you for free.

Sole trader, company, or trust

This is a decision for your accountant, not for an article, because it turns on your income, your risk exposure, whether you have partners, and what you plan to do with the business in five years. What we can say usefully is what drives it in practice: liability separation, how profits will be distributed, and whether you intend to sell. A sole trader structure is cheap and simple and puts your house behind the business. A company costs more to run and separates that liability, right up until you personally guarantee the lease and the equipment finance, at which point much of the separation is theoretical.

business.gov.au sets out the structures plainly, and if you land on a company, ASIC's steps to register a company covers the process itself. Read both before the meeting with your accountant so you are asking better questions.

The registrations, and what each one unblocks

Registration	Where	What it blocks until you have it
ABN	Australian Business Register (free)	GST registration, business bank account, supplier trading accounts, merchant facility
Company registration (ACN)	ASIC, or via a service provider	Signing the lease in the company name; opening accounts in that name
Business name	ASIC	Trading under a name that is not your own or the company's
TFN	ATO	Lodging returns; correct PAYG treatment
GST	ATO, via ABR or your accountant	Claiming GST credits on your fit-out, which on a $200,000 build is not a small number
PAYG withholding	ATO	Legally paying wages
Workers compensation	Your state scheme	Legally employing anyone at all

On GST: you must register once your GST turnover is $75,000 or more, and you must do it within 21 days of becoming required to. If you are opening a hospitality or retail site, you will almost certainly cross that in year one, and registering early lets you claim GST credits on fit-out and equipment. Check the current position on the ATO's GST registration page, because thresholds and timing rules are the kind of thing that gets adjusted.

Common mistake

Registering the company after signing a heads of agreement in your own name. The heads of agreement is often binding on the parties named in it. If that is you personally, the landlord is within their rights to hold you to it and to charge for the privilege of substituting an entity you have not yet incorporated.

Tool worth looking at

Lawpath

Best for. Company registration, ABN and business name in one flow, plus the standard documents every business needs and no business wants to draft: employment contracts, contractor agreements, supplier terms, privacy policy, website terms.

Why it belongs here. The paperwork around a business setup splits cleanly into two piles. One pile is standard and high-volume, and paying a firm hourly rates for it is money burned. The other pile is bespoke and high-consequence. An online legal platform handles the first pile well and cheaply, which frees up your budget for the second.

Check before you commit. That you are not using it for the second pile. Your commercial lease, any partnership or shareholder agreement, and any personal guarantee should go to a solicitor who has read your specific documents and knows your state's leasing legislation. If a platform's lease review is the only review your lease gets, you have saved a few hundred dollars against a liability measured in years of rent.

Worth comparing against. Sprintlaw operates in a similar space with fixed-fee advice from actual lawyers, which suits you better if you want the document and a conversation about it.

Explore Lawpath →

Accounting: set it up before the first invoice

Bookkeeping set up badly in month one takes about ten hours to unwind in month nine, usually during a BAS period, usually while you are also short-staffed. Set it up before the first supplier invoice arrives.

The part that matters is not the software. It is the chart of accounts. Most default charts are built for reporting to the ATO, which means they will tell you your total expenses and nothing about whether Tuesday is worth opening. Build yours so that the categories match the decisions you will need to make: wages split by front of house and kitchen, cost of goods split by the two or three lines that actually move, rent and outgoings separate from other occupancy, marketing separate from the general bucket where it always goes to die.

Set up in this order

Business bank account in the correct entity name, with a separate account for GST and PAYG that you actually transfer into weekly

Accounting software with bank feeds connected, before transactions start

Chart of accounts adjusted to your format, ideally with your accountant or bookkeeper in the room for an hour

Payroll set up and Single Touch Payroll enabled before your first pay run, not after

A standing weekly time to reconcile. Fifteen minutes weekly beats four hours monthly, and you will notice a supplier price rise in week one rather than at quarter end

Tool worth looking at

Xero

Best for. Australian small businesses that want bank feeds, GST-ready BAS reporting and payroll in one place, and who want their accountant to be able to log in without a conversation about file versions.

Why it belongs here. Xero is the default in Australian small business accounting for a practical reason rather than a marketing one: almost every accountant and bookkeeper you will hire already works in it, and almost every POS, rostering and payments tool you will choose already integrates with it. Integration coverage is worth more than feature lists when you are running a site and doing the books at 11pm.

Check before you commit. Ask your accountant what they use before you subscribe. If they work primarily in MYOB, the friction of you being in Xero is a real cost paid in their hourly rate. Also check the plan tier against your employee count, because payroll seats are where the pricing moves.

Worth comparing against. MYOB, which has deep roots in Australian practices and strong payroll, and QuickBooks, which is usually cheaper at the entry tier. All three do the job. The right one is the one your accountant will not charge you to work around.

Explore Xero →

Funding and working capital

Under-funded openings tend to be under-funded in the same way. The capital budget covered the build and the equipment. It did not cover the twelve weeks after opening where revenue is real but thin, wages are full, and the supplier accounts that were on 30-day terms have started arriving weekly.

So budget in two parts and keep them separate.

Bucket	What sits in it	Where people underestimate
Establishment capital	Fit-out, equipment, initial stock, signage, professional fees, bond or bank guarantee, licences	Contingency. A fit-out with no contingency line is a fit-out that will be funded from the working capital bucket.
Working capital	Wages, rent, stock replenishment and utilities from opening until the business covers its own costs	The duration. Three months is a hopeful number for a site with no existing trade. Six is a safer one.

On finance itself, we are deliberately not naming lenders. The right instrument depends on what you are buying and what you can secure it against, and the difference between a chattel mortgage on equipment and an unsecured working capital facility is significant enough that generic recommendations do harm. Talk to your accountant first and a broker second, and get the total cost of the facility in dollars over its life rather than a rate.

One tax note worth raising with your accountant rather than acting on alone: as part of the 2026-27 Budget the Government announced it would permanently set the small business instant asset write-off at $20,000 from 1 July 2026. As at the time of writing that measure had been announced but was not yet law, and the threshold applies per asset for businesses under the turnover cap. Check the ATO's instant asset write-off page for the current position. Never let a deduction drive an equipment purchase you would not otherwise make; a write-off returns you your tax rate on the spend, not the spend.

Insurance: the certificate the landlord wants before handover

Insurance shows up on most checklists as a task to do before opening. In practice it is usually a task to do before handover, because most commercial leases require you to hold public liability cover at a specified sum and to provide a certificate of currency before you take possession. Some fit-out contractors will want to see it too before they start on site.

What a fitted-out retail or hospitality site typically needs

Public liability, at the sum your lease specifies. Twenty million is a common requirement. Read the lease rather than guessing

Contents and stock, covering your fit-out and equipment, which the landlord's building policy does not

Glass, which sounds trivial until a shopfront pane is replaced at commercial rates

Business interruption, the cover most under-bought and most valuable. If a burst pipe closes you for six weeks, this is what pays the rent that keeps running

Workers compensation, which is not optional and is not part of a business pack. It runs through your state or territory scheme and must be in place before your first employee starts

Product liability if you serve food, and tax audit cover if you want it, though that one is genuinely optional

Check before you buy

The sum insured on contents. Insure your fit-out at replacement cost, not at what you paid or what it is worth on a depreciation schedule. Rebuilding a commercial kitchen in year four costs year-four prices, and under-insurance clauses can reduce a claim proportionally even when the loss is smaller than the sum insured.

Tool worth looking at

BizCover

Best for. Comparing business pack, public liability and professional indemnity quotes across several Australian insurers quickly, when your risk profile is straightforward and you mainly want to see the market.

Why it belongs here. Most first-time operators buy insurance the way they buy electricity: from whoever is in front of them at the moment they need it. Running a comparison takes twenty minutes and routinely surfaces meaningful differences in premium and, more importantly, in what is excluded.

Check before you commit. That the comparison covers the cover you actually need. A comparison site is a good way to buy standard risks and a poor way to buy complicated ones. If you have a liquor licence, a commercial kitchen with deep fryers, a heritage building, or anything unusual about your operation, use a broker who will read your lease and place the risk properly. Also confirm separately how you are arranging workers compensation, because that is a state scheme and sits outside a business pack.

Worth comparing against. A local insurance broker. They cost you nothing directly, they are paid by the insurer, and on a non-standard risk they will find cover a comparison engine will not.

Explore BizCover →

Payments and POS

Two things about payments catch people out, and neither is the transaction fee everyone compares first.

The first is lead time. A merchant facility needs approval, and hardware needs to arrive and be configured and tested with your actual menu or product file loaded. Start this six weeks out, not the week before. Businesses have opened on cash and a phone reader because someone assumed a terminal was a next-day purchase.

The second is that your POS is not a payment device. It is where your sales data lives, which means it decides how well you will be able to answer questions like which products carry the business, what the real average spend is by daypart, and whether that Tuesday you keep opening is covering its wages. Choose it for the reporting and the integration into your accounting, then check the fees.

Check before you commit

Total cost per transaction including any monthly fee, not the headline rate. On $60,000 a month, a 0.4% difference is $240

Whether it integrates with your accounting software natively, or whether someone will be keying totals in manually every week

What happens offline. If your internet drops on a Saturday, does the terminal keep taking payments

Contract length and hardware ownership. Renting a terminal on a 48-month term is a decision worth making deliberately

Current surcharging rules with your acquirer before you set a surcharge. The rules on card surcharging in Australia have been under active review, and getting this wrong is an ACCC matter

Tool worth looking at

Square

Best for. Cafes, small restaurants, market stalls and retail counters that want to be trading quickly, with no monthly minimum, hardware they own outright, and a straightforward per-transaction rate.

Why it belongs here. For a single-site independent, the value is that it is one decision instead of four. Terminal, POS, reporting and accounting integration come together, and the setup is measured in hours rather than in scheduled installation appointments. That matters more than a marginal fee difference when you are three weeks from opening.

Check before you commit. The per-transaction rate against your expected volume, because flat-rate pricing is excellent at low volume and stops being the cheapest option as you scale. Also check that it handles your specific operation: multi-course table service with course firing, split bills across many covers, and complex modifier structures are where a purpose-built hospitality POS earns its higher price.

Worth comparing against. Lightspeed and Impos are the ones to look at if you are running full table service or a venue with multiple revenue centres. If you are a counter-service cafe, that extra capability is cost without benefit.

Explore Square →

People: awards, payroll, and the change that landed in July 2026

Wages will be your largest controllable cost and your largest compliance exposure, and the two facts are related. Underpayment cases in Australian hospitality and retail rarely start with an employer deciding to underpay. They start with an employer who does not know which modern award applies, pays a flat hourly rate that looks generous, and misses penalty rates, casual loading, overtime and allowances that the award requires.

Get the award right first

Find your award before you make an offer, not after. The Fair Work Ombudsman's pay and conditions tool will identify it and give you the current rates, and the Restaurant Industry Award, Fast Food Industry Award, Hospitality Industry (General) Award and General Retail Industry Award cover most of the businesses reading this. They are not interchangeable and the differences are material.

Employer obligations that apply from the first employee

Give every new employee the Fair Work Information Statement before they start, or as soon as possible after, and give new casuals the Casual Employment Information Statement at the same time

Report through Single Touch Payroll from your first pay run

Keep time and wage records that satisfy the Fair Work record-keeping rules. A roster on a whiteboard photographed on a phone is not a record-keeping system

Pay superannuation at the current guarantee rate of 12% of qualifying earnings

Payday Super changed the cash flow of every employing business

From 1 July 2026, super guarantee must be paid on each payday rather than quarterly, and the contribution has to be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of paying the employee. Employers also report year-to-date qualifying earnings and super liability through STP each payday. If you were modelling super as a quarterly outflow you could time around, that assumption is gone. Build it into your weekly or fortnightly cash position from day one. See the ATO's Payday Super guidance for the detail.

That change matters more for a new site than an established one, because a new site is usually running its tightest cash position in exactly the period where it is hiring hardest.

Tool worth looking at

Employment Hero

Best for. Businesses hiring more than a handful of people who want employment contracts, onboarding, payroll, STP and award interpretation in one system rather than in four spreadsheets and a shoebox.

Why it belongs here. The compliance surface for an Australian employer is wider than most first-time operators expect, and it is front-loaded: contracts, statements, super, STP, records, all needed before the first shift. A platform that handles award interpretation reduces the specific risk that hurts small operators most, which is quietly underpaying for two years and finding out all at once.

Check before you commit. That the award interpretation actually covers your award and your classifications, and that you still review the output. Automated award interpretation reduces error, it does not transfer legal responsibility. Also weigh the cost against your headcount. With three casuals, the payroll module in your accounting software is probably enough.

Worth comparing against. Your accounting software's own payroll for very small teams, or an external bookkeeper who specialises in your award, which for a complicated roster can be better value than software.

Explore Employment Hero →

Tool worth looking at

Deputy

Best for. Rostering, shift swaps, clock-in and timesheets in venues where the roster changes weekly and wage cost needs watching against sales in close to real time.

Why it belongs here. Rostering is where hospitality margin is won or lost, and the operators who stay profitable are the ones who can see wage cost as a percentage of sales while the week is still running rather than after it. Doing that from a spreadsheet is possible and almost nobody sustains it past month four.

Check before you commit. That it feeds your payroll cleanly, so approved timesheets become a pay run without re-entry. If it does not integrate with what you already chose, you have bought a second data entry job. Also make sure the clock-in method suits your site; photo verification on a shared tablet works in a cafe and is friction in a large venue.

Worth comparing against. Employment Hero and several POS systems include rostering. If one of those covers you adequately, a separate rostering subscription is a cost without a corresponding gain.

Explore Deputy →

Licences, permits and council

This is the section that moves opening dates, and it is almost always the one started last. Planning approvals and licences run on the council's timetable, not yours, and no amount of urgency compresses them. If you are three weeks from your intended opening and have not lodged, you are not opening in three weeks.

Start here: ABLIS, the Australian Business Licence and Information Service, which takes your location and business type and returns the federal, state and local requirements that apply. Run it the same week you get the lease offer.

The approvals most likely to hold you up

Approval	Who	Why it bites
Planning / development approval	Local council	A change of use, even between similar businesses, can require a fresh application. Assume nothing transfers from the previous tenant.
Building and fit-out approval	Council or private certifier	Structural, plumbing, mechanical exhaust and accessibility works usually need certification before you can occupy.
Food business notification or registration	Local council	Required before you handle food. Often triggers an inspection you must pass before trading.
Liquor licence	State liquor authority	The longest of them all. Months, not weeks, and often with public notification periods.
Signage permit	Council	Illuminated or projecting signage frequently needs separate approval, and heritage overlays complicate it.
Footpath trading permit	Council	Outdoor seating is usually a separate annual permit with its own conditions.
Trade waste / grease trap	Water authority	Required for most commercial kitchens and needs to be designed into the fit-out, not added after.

If you handle food, Standard 3.2.2A applies

Food service, catering and retail businesses that handle unpackaged, potentially hazardous, ready-to-eat food have obligations under Food Standard 3.2.2A. Depending on your category, that means appointing a certified food safety supervisor, ensuring food handlers have completed training before they handle high-risk food, and in the highest-risk category keeping records that substantiate your critical food safety controls.

The timing detail that catches people: the food safety supervisor certificate has to be in place before you engage in the prescribed activity, and the certificate is valid for five years. Booking that course in the week you open is too late. See Food Standards Australia New Zealand for the requirements and your state health department or council for how they are administered locally.

The assumption that costs opening weeks

That because the site was a cafe before, it is approved to be a cafe now. Approvals can lapse, they can be conditional on the previous operator, and the current planning scheme may have changed since the last one was granted. Confirm the existing approval in writing with the council before you sign, and make the lease conditional on it if the answer is not clean.

Google, website and listings

In the order that actually generates trade for a physical site: Google Business Profile first, a simple website second, everything else after you open.

The Business Profile is what appears in Maps and in local search, and for a walk-in business it will send you more customers in the first month than a website will. Claim and verify it early, because verification can take days and occasionally requires a postcard. Fill in the hours, the category, the service options and the photos properly. A profile with ten real photos of the actual space outperforms one with a logo.

Before opening

Google Business Profile claimed, verified, with correct opening hours and a genuine photo set

Apple Maps listing, which is separate and frequently forgotten

A one-page website with address, hours, offer, and a phone number that someone answers. It does not need to be more than this on day one

Consistent name, address and phone number everywhere they appear, because inconsistency dilutes local search

Menu or product list published somewhere crawlable, not only as a PDF or an image

Most people building a physical site do not need an ecommerce platform on day one, and paying for one before you have anything to sell online is a subscription you will forget about. The point at which it becomes worth it is when you have a product that travels, or when online ordering is genuinely part of the model rather than an afterthought.

Tool worth looking at

Shopify

Best for. Retailers and food producers who will genuinely sell online, ship product, or run click and collect as a real revenue line rather than as a box to tick.

Why it belongs here. If online is part of the model, running it on a platform that handles payments, inventory sync with your in-store stock, and shipping is the difference between a channel and a chore. The in-person POS integration means one inventory count rather than two.

Check before you commit. Whether you actually need it yet. If you are a dine-in cafe with no product to ship, a one-page site and a strong Google Business Profile will do more for your first six months at a fraction of the cost. Come back to this when you have something to sell that does not require the customer to be standing in front of you.

Worth comparing against. Squarespace or a simple WordPress site if you need a brochure site rather than a shop. Your POS provider's own online ordering module if all you want is pickup orders.

Explore Shopify →

Suppliers, equipment and fit-out

Two pieces of advice here that are worth more than the rest of the section combined.

First, before you buy second-hand equipment from a closing business, search the Personal Property Securities Register. A search costs a couple of dollars. If the equipment is subject to a security interest, the financier can repossess it from your premises even though you paid for it in good faith and have a receipt. The register exists for exactly this reason, and a search is the only way to know before you hand over the money.

Second, do not accept a fit-out quote without a defects liability period and a retention. Holding back a small percentage until defects are rectified is normal, it is expected, and it is the only leverage you have once the builder has been paid and moved to the next job.

Worth getting right

Written scope and a program with dates, not a verbal understanding of what "about six weeks" means

Landlord's written consent to the works, in the form the lease requires. Verbal approval from a property manager is not consent

Lead times on the long-pole items before you set an opening date. Commercial refrigeration, exhaust canopies and custom joinery are the usual culprits

Supplier trading terms negotiated before you need them. A new business gets worse terms than an established one, and better ones once you have three months of payment history

At least two suppliers for anything you cannot trade without. Single-supplier dependency is how a truck breakdown becomes a closed day

Marketing before you open

The strongest pre-opening marketing for a local business is usually the least sophisticated. Being visible on the street while the fit-out happens, with signage that says what is coming and when. A local audience walking past a papered-over window for six weeks is a captive audience if you tell them something.

Resist the large launch. A packed opening day with a team that has never worked together produces slow service, wrong orders, and a first wave of reviews written by the exact local customers you most need to keep. Run a soft opening instead: limited hours, limited menu or range, invited guests or a quiet weekday, and use it to find what breaks. Then open properly.

The pre-opening list that earns its place

Hoarding or window signage with the opening date and what you are, visible from the footpath

Google Business Profile live with an opening date set, so you appear in search before you trade

Neighbouring businesses told in person. The cafe next door referring people to you is worth more than a paid campaign in your first month

A soft opening at least a week before the real one, with a menu or range deliberately narrower than your full offer

One clear reason for a local to try you that is not a discount. Discount-led openings attract discount-led customers

The last 30 days

By this point the decisions are made and the job is closing gaps. The failures in this window are rarely dramatic. They are a certificate that has not come back, a supplier account not opened, a staff member who cannot be paid because payroll was set up two days before their first shift.

30 days out

Everything here has a lead time. Nothing here can be done in the final week.

All licences and approvals granted, in writing, and on file
Certificate of currency for public liability provided to the landlord
Workers compensation policy active
Food safety supervisor certified, food handler training completed
Payroll configured, STP enabled, super fund details collected, first pay run tested
Merchant facility approved and terminals tested with the live product file
Supplier accounts open with delivery days confirmed
Utilities connected in the business name, including internet, and tested
Staff contracts signed, Fair Work Information Statement and Casual Employment Information Statement issued
Google Business Profile verified with correct hours

Opening week

The week itself is about rehearsal, not preparation.

Full service rehearsal with the real team, real equipment and real product
Opening and closing procedures written down and walked through, not explained verbally
Cash handling and end-of-day reconciliation practised by whoever will actually do it
Someone other than you knows how to open the site
Soft opening completed and the resulting fixes made
Waste, cleaning and pest contracts started
Emergency contacts, incident procedure and first aid kit in place

The first 90 days: what to actually watch

Opening is not the finish line, it is the point at which your assumptions start returning results. The operators who fix problems early are the ones tracking a small number of things weekly rather than waiting for a quarterly P&L to tell them something they could have known in week three.

Watch weekly	Why it matters	When to act
Wage cost as a percentage of sales	The fastest-moving controllable cost, and the one that quietly drifts	If it sits above your model for three consecutive weeks, the roster is wrong, not the week
Average transaction value	Tells you whether your offer is landing at the price you set	If it is below forecast while customer counts are on target, the problem is the offer, not the location
Customer count by daypart	Shows you which trading hours are earning and which are subsidised	A daypart that has not covered its wages by week eight probably never will
Occupancy cost against actual revenue	Your original assumption, now measurable	If actual revenue puts rent well above your modelled ratio, start the conversation with the landlord in month three, not month eleven
Cash position, forward eight weeks	Profitability and solvency are different problems	Any week where the eight-week forecast goes negative is a week to act, regardless of what the P&L says

The occupancy cost line is the one that connects back to where this guide started. If your actual revenue lands materially below the forecast that justified the rent, you have a location and lease problem wearing an operations costume, and no amount of roster tightening will fix it. Knowing that in month three gives you options. Knowing it in year two gives you a decision about how much more to lose.

If you are watching a site, or watching the market around one you already operate in, Location Watch tracks changes in competition and demand signals around an address over time rather than at a single point.

The master checklist

This is the whole sequence in one place, grouped by the phase you are in. It is designed to be printed or saved. If you can only tick one group honestly, make it the first one.

Phase 1. Before you sign anything

The only phase where changing your mind is free

Break-even revenue calculated from real fixed costs
Realistic revenue estimated from catchment, competition and format
Occupancy cost ratio checked against the revenue you can defend
Competitors within walking distance identified and visited
Council confirmation, in writing, that your intended use is permitted at this address
Whether the premises falls under your state's retail leasing legislation confirmed
Disclosure statement received within the required period
Lease reviewed by a commercial solicitor
Rent review mechanism modelled across the full term
Make-good obligation understood and costed
Personal guarantee exposure understood and accepted, or negotiated

Phase 2. Between signing and fit-out

Set up the entity and the obligations before the spending starts

Business structure decided with your accountant
Company registered, ABN and business name obtained
GST and PAYG withholding registered as required
Business bank account open in the correct entity name
Accounting software live with bank feeds and a chart of accounts that suits your format
Public liability cover bound and certificate of currency provided to the landlord
Contents, glass and business interruption cover arranged
Finance approved with total cost understood in dollars
Working capital reserve quarantined and not counted twice
All licence and permit applications lodged

Phase 3. During fit-out

Long lead times run in parallel here or they run past your opening date

Landlord's written consent to works obtained in the form the lease requires
Fit-out contract with a written scope, program, defects liability period and retention
PPSR searched on any second-hand equipment before payment
Long-lead equipment ordered with confirmed delivery dates
Trade waste and services approvals in progress
Merchant facility applied for and POS configured
Payroll and rostering set up and tested
Supplier accounts opened with terms and delivery days agreed
Award identified, rates confirmed, contracts drafted
Workers compensation policy active before the first employee starts

Phase 4. The last 30 days

Closing gaps, not making decisions

Every approval granted in writing and on file
Food safety supervisor certified and food handler training complete, if applicable
Staff hired, contracted, and issued the required information statements
Full rehearsal completed with real product and real equipment
Google Business Profile verified with correct hours
Soft opening run and the resulting fixes made
Opening and closing procedures documented
Utilities, internet, waste, cleaning and pest control all live

Phase 5. The first 90 days

Where your assumptions get marked against reality

Weekly wage cost against sales tracked from week one
Average transaction value compared to forecast
Customer count by daypart reviewed, and unprofitable hours identified
Actual occupancy cost ratio calculated against real revenue
Rolling eight-week cash forecast maintained
First BAS prepared without a scramble
Supplier terms renegotiated on the strength of three months of payment history
Option and rent review dates diarised with reminders well before the deadline

One last thing about sequence

Everything in this guide after the lease section is work that can be corrected. Choose the wrong accounting software and you migrate. Choose the wrong POS and you swap it at the end of the contract. Hire the wrong person and you manage it. These are real costs and none of them close a business.

The lease is different, and the site underneath it is different again, because you carry both for the full term whether the assumption that justified them holds or not. That is the whole argument for spending disproportionate effort on the first two steps and moving briskly through the rest.

Already chosen your location? Run the full analysis before the next payment goes out

Competitor density, catchment, demand signals and the numbers against your actual rent, for the specific address you are considering.

Run the location analysis

Last reviewed 13 August 2026. Requirements described here were current at that date and change regularly. Always confirm the current position with the responsible authority: ASIC, the ATO, the Australian Business Register, the Fair Work Ombudsman, business.gov.au, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, and your state, territory and local government. This article is general information only and is not legal, accounting, tax, insurance or financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

Model the site before you commit to it. Work out the revenue the site needs to produce for you to break even at the asking rent, then work out the revenue it can realistically produce given the catchment and competition. If those two numbers do not meet, no amount of good operating fixes it. Everything else, from registrations to insurance to POS, is correctable later. The rent is not.

Decide the entity before you sign anything, including a heads of agreement, because the party named in that document is often bound by it. Moving a lease into a different entity afterwards is an assignment requiring landlord consent, which is neither guaranteed nor free. The choice between sole trader, company and trust turns on liability, tax and your plans for the business, so it is a decision to make with your accountant.

The week you receive the lease offer. Planning approvals, food business registration, liquor licences and signage permits run on council and state timetables that urgency does not compress, and a liquor licence in particular is measured in months. Run your address and business type through ABLIS at ablis.business.gov.au to see what applies, and never assume the previous tenant's approvals transfer to you.

Most commercial leases require public liability cover at a specified sum and a certificate of currency before you take possession, so that one is a pre-handover task rather than a pre-opening task. Beyond it, a fitted retail or hospitality site usually needs contents and stock, glass, and business interruption cover. Workers compensation is separate, runs through your state or territory scheme, and must be in place before your first employee works a shift.

Super guarantee is now paid each payday rather than quarterly, and the contribution must be received by the employee's super fund within 7 business days of paying the employee. Employers also report year-to-date qualifying earnings and super liability through Single Touch Payroll each payday, and the guarantee rate is 12% of qualifying earnings. For a new site this matters most as a cash flow change, because super is no longer an outflow you can time around quarterly.

About the author

Prashant Guleria

Founder, Locatalyze

Prashant co-founded Locatalyze after encountering the difficulty of evaluating commercial locations for his own businesses. He leads the product around the practical questions independent operators need to answer before committing to a lease.