Answer five quick questions about the function you're weighing up. We'll give you a clear recommendation and an indicative cost comparison you can build from your own figures.
~2 minutes · 5 questions · No login to start
Clear recommendation
Hire, outsource, or hybrid
Cost comparison
Indicative, on your numbers
Resilience check
Single point of failure?
Beyond the salary
Total cost of ownership
Every growing Australian business hits the same fork in the road with its back office: do you hire someone in-house to handle finance, payroll or IT, or do you outsource it to a provider? Get it wrong and you either over-invest in a full-time salary the workload doesn't justify, or you under-resource a critical function and create a single point of failure. The honest answer depends on more than gut feel or headline salary — it turns on how many hours the work actually needs, how complex and regulated it is, what happens if your one person is off for a fortnight, and what your realistic budget is. This tool walks you through those factors in about two minutes and gives you a clear, reasoned recommendation rather than a sales pitch.
The tool asks five questions about one back-office function at a time — which function you're weighing up (finance and bookkeeping, payroll and HR, IT and cybersecurity, or all three), how many hours a week it needs, how complex the work is (from straightforward data entry through to multi-entity, multi-state, regulated work), how exposed you'd be if the person doing it were unavailable for two weeks, and your annual budget. It weighs those answers to land on one of three recommendations: hire in-house, outsource, or a hybrid of both. It then shows an indicative cost comparison: you enter the fully-loaded annual cost of doing the function in-house — salary plus superannuation, leave and overhead, not just the base wage — and it models an indicative outsourced range against your own figure so the two options sit side by side. The numbers are framed as estimates to structure the decision, never as quotes, and the cost side runs entirely on the figures you supply.
Australian small and medium business owners and operators deciding whether to bring a back-office function (finance, payroll and HR, or IT and cybersecurity) in-house or hand it to an outside provider.
The short answers are here. For anything else, ask below or get in touch.
Cost matters, but it shouldn't be the only test. The tool deliberately weighs complexity and resilience alongside budget, because the cheapest option on paper can be the riskiest in practice. A part-time in-house bookkeeper might look affordable until they resign mid-BAS and no one can cover, or until the work turns out to need multi-award payroll or multi-entity reporting they aren't equipped for. Compare on fully-loaded cost (salary, super, leave and overhead), then weigh that against how critical the function is and how exposed you'd be without cover.
These tools work together to give you a clearer picture of your business.
Use these results to make better decisions. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on them, an advisor can walk through what they mean for the business.
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