A leak is money that leaves the business without buying anything the business needs at that price. Most leaks are small, which is why they last. Twelve of them at $150 a month is $21,600 a year, enough to pay a part-time employee.
Start with the export
Download twelve months of your business account as CSV from online banking (most Australian banks offer it under statements or transaction history). A spreadsheet is enough. Add a column for “who” and one for “what for”.
The eight leaks to look for
1. Subscriptions nobody uses
Filter for the same amount to the same payee every month. Software, memberships, listing sites, a second accounting app from a migration years ago. For each one ask who uses it and what it would cost to stop.
2. Duplicate and double payments
Sort by amount and look for the same payee and amount within a few days. Suppliers are paid twice more often than owners think, usually once by card and once by bank transfer.
3. Bank, card and merchant fees
Add up every fee line. Merchant fees for card payments are commonly 1–2% of card sales; if you are well above that, your plan or terminal is worth renegotiating. Add account fees, overdraft fees and dishonour fees, which are pure leaks.
4. Supplier price creep
Take your top five suppliers by total spend and compare what you paid per order in the first three months with the last three. A supplier who has raised prices 12% while your own prices stood still has taken a slice of your margin.
5. One supplier taking too large a share
If more than half your stock or materials comes from one supplier, you have no leverage on price. Getting a second quote is often worth more than any other single fix.
6. Cash with no receipt
ATM withdrawals and transfers to “petty cash” that no record explains. Some of it is real business spending; some of it is not. Either way, unrecorded cash cannot be claimed and cannot be controlled.
7. Personal spending through the business account
Fuel, groceries and subscriptions for the household paid from the business account are drawings, not costs. They make the business look less profitable than it is and the owner’s pay look smaller than it is.
8. Penalties and interest
Late lodgement penalties, ATO general interest charges, late fees from suppliers. Every one is a cost of cash being short at the wrong moment.
See where your business sits, from your bank statement
Upload a CSV or PDF of your business bank account (3 to 12 months). The health check rebuilds what you really earn, compares each cost with businesses like yours, and shows where money is leaking and who owes you. Free to run: you see how much is at stake before you pay anything.
Any bank, any currency. The file is read once and not kept. Full report from $149.
Turn the list into money
For each leak, write the yearly amount and what it would take to stop it. Sort by amount. The top three are usually worth more than everything else together. Then compare the bigger cost groups (stock, wages, rent) with the ATO benchmarks for your industry: a leak inside a large cost line, such as wages a few points above range, is worth far more than a forgotten subscription.