Tax time · 1 September 2026 · 8 min read
How Indi helps Australian sole traders stay ready for tax time
Income, receipts, invoices and kilometres in one place — how Indi keeps Australian sole traders ready for tax time, and how to estimate what you'll owe.
Most Australian sole traders do not fall behind on their records because they are careless. They fall behind because the information lives in five places at once: payments in the bank app, receipts in the glovebox, invoices in the sent folder, kilometres in your head, and a spreadsheet that was last opened in March.
Indi exists to pull those pieces into one place while the year is still happening, so tax time is a review rather than an archaeology dig. Here is what that looks like in practice.
1. Income and expenses in one running record
Every payment you receive and every business cost you pay goes into a single list for the Australian financial year — 1 July to 30 June. Expenses are categorised, and where something is only partly business (your phone, your laptop, the car), you set a work-use percentage instead of guessing at the end of the year.
Regular costs like software subscriptions and insurance can be set up once as recurring entries, so they keep appearing without you re-typing them.
2. Receipts attached to the expense they belong to
A receipt is only useful if you can find it later. In Indi you photograph the receipt when you get it and it is stored against that expense, so the record and the evidence stay together. If you want the detail on what to keep and for how long, our guide to sole trader record keeping covers it.
3. Invoices, quotes and who still owes you money
Create a quote, turn it into an invoice when the work is won, and share it with a link or a PDF. Indi keeps track of what has been paid and what is still outstanding, which is usually the number sole traders most want to see on a Monday morning.
- Your ABN, business details and logo on every document
- Shareable links you can expire or revoke
- Optional payment links so clients can pay you directly
- A clear list of unpaid invoices and how old they are
4. Business kilometres, without a logbook
Log a trip with the distance and the business reason, and Indi applies the ATO cents per kilometre rate for the financial year and watches the 5,000 km cap for you. More detail on that method lives on our cents per km page.
5. Knowing roughly what you will owe
Sole traders are taxed as individuals: your business profit is added to any other income, and individual resident rates plus the Medicare levy apply to the total. Nothing is withheld for you, so the money needs to be set aside as you go.
Our free sole trader tax calculator gives you an indicative figure and a weekly set-aside amount from your income, expenses and any tax already withheld. The catch is simple: an estimate is only as good as the numbers you feed it. If your expenses are half-remembered, so is the answer — which is exactly the gap Indi's day-to-day tracking closes.
Knowing what is deductible helps too. See sole trader tax deductions for what you can generally claim in Australia.
6. A Tax Pack your accountant can actually use
Indi scores how ready your records are — uncategorised expenses, missing receipts, unpaid invoices — and turns the year into a Tax Pack export: income, expenses by category, mileage and invoice history in one file to hand to a registered tax agent, or to work from yourself. Either path is fine; our post on DIY tax versus an accountant walks through the trade-offs.
A routine that keeps it honest
- Weekly, ten minutes. Add the week's income, photograph any receipts, log trips, chase anything overdue.
- Monthly, five minutes. Check your readiness score and clear whatever it flags.
- End of June. Review the year, re-run the tax estimate, export the Tax Pack.
What Indi is not
Indi organises your Sole Trader records. It is not accounting software, it does not give tax advice, and it does not lodge your BAS or tax return. Rates, thresholds and eligibility are set by the ATO — confirm your position with a registered tax agent.
Start where it is easiest
Run the numbers first with the sole trader tax calculator to see roughly what your year looks like, then try the Indi demo to see how the records behind that estimate come together.