Accountants for GPs, specialists and medical clinics
Medical practice accounting has its own rules and its own traps: the service entity arrangement between the practice and the practitioners, payroll tax on practitioner payments, the difference between a doctor who is a contractor and one who is an employee in the eyes of the revenue office, and the fact that most of the practice’s value sits in rooms, systems and a patient base rather than on the balance sheet. A general small business accountant can lodge the returns. Getting the structure and the reporting right takes a team that works with practices every week.
New Wave works with GP clinics, specialist practices, dental groups and day surgeries across the Gold Coast and Australia, from a single principal with two rooms to multi-site groups with a dozen practitioners. The allied health page covers physios, chiros, psychologists and similar practices, where the structures are simpler and the growth path is different.
The questions medical practice owners bring us
Service entity or employment
How the practice entity, the practitioners and the service fees are arranged decides the payroll tax exposure, the GST treatment and how much of the practice income the principal can actually keep. State revenue offices have been active in this area, and arrangements that were standard five years ago need to be reviewed. We set them up properly and review them annually.
What each practitioner actually earns the practice
Billings by practitioner are easy. Margin by practitioner after service fees, room costs and support staff is the number that decides whether to add a room, change the percentage or recruit. We build the reporting so the principal sees it monthly.
Payroll tax
Whether practitioner payments are caught, what the threshold position is across a group, and how the contracts and the flow of money affect the answer. Getting this wrong produces back-assessments with penalties, so it is the first thing we check on a new practice file.
The next room, the next site, the next partner
Valuing the practice, structuring a new partner’s buy-in, modelling the cash flow of a second site and the fit-out with the virtual CFO team, and deciding whether the practice property should be owned personally, in super or in the group. New Wave SMSF, Financial Planning and Law sit in the same building for the parts that go beyond accounting.
What the work looks like
- A designated team that handles the practice entity, the service entity, the principal’s personal and family entities and the SMSF together, on one monthly package agreed up front.
- Bookkeeping that reconciles practice management software, Medicare and private billing to Xero, and reports revenue and margin by practitioner.
- Tax planning in May with real numbers across the whole group, not a tax return in October.
- Annual review of the service entity and payroll tax position.
- Advisory for the practice’s next move: a new partner, a new site, a sale or a step back.
Who we work with
GP clinics, specialist and surgical practices, dental practices and groups, radiology and pathology-adjacent businesses, day surgeries and the companies that provide rooms and services to them. Many are around the Southport, Robina and Gold Coast University Hospital precincts; a growing number are interstate and work with us entirely by video.
Getting started
Book a FREE discovery call, 30 minutes with a New Wave team member. Bring the practice structure as you understand it and the questions you have never had answered properly. If it is a fit, a proposal follows within the week with the monthly package set out.
A doctors clinic went from seven to eight figures of revenue in twelve months
Scaled from seven to eight figures of revenue inside a year with our unit economics and growth services.
Read the case study →