Practice
administrator
The engine room of the firm — onboarding, engagement letters, ATO correspondence, billing, deadline tracking and the endless document chase — run properly by one person instead of squeezed between everyone else's client work.
Admin is everybody's job, so it is nobody's job
In most small and mid-sized practices, administration is distributed: whoever picks up the phone, whoever notices the letter, whoever remembers the client has not signed. It works until the practice grows, and then things start slipping quietly — an unsigned engagement letter, a client not onboarded properly, a lodgement deadline nobody was tracking.
A dedicated practice administrator makes it one person's job with a visible system behind it. Not a receptionist — an operations person who runs the workflow and tells you what is late.
This is usually the highest-leverage first offshore hire for a practice, because it frees fee-earning time across the whole team rather than just one person's.
What they run
- Client onboarding — Engagement letters prepared and chased, ID and TFN details collected, client set up in your ledger and workflow systems, ATO agent linking requested.
- ATO correspondence — Mail and portal correspondence sorted, logged against the client, actioned or escalated — instead of accumulating in a shared inbox.
- Deadline tracking — A rolling schedule of lodgements, ASIC dates and internal review deadlines, with weekly reporting on what is late and what is waiting on the client.
- Document chasing — Following up clients for the information your accountants are waiting on, persistently and on a cadence, so your seniors stop doing it.
- Billing and WIP — Invoices raised against completed work, WIP reports prepared, debtor follow-up run on a schedule.
- ASIC and company admin — Annual statements tracked, changes lodged through your system, registers kept current.
- Workflow hygiene — Jobs moved through your practice management system, statuses accurate, so your capacity reporting is worth reading.
Where the line sits
A practice administrator runs process, not positions. Anything a client would rely on as advice, and anything requiring registration, stays with your registered staff.
- Lodgement and adviceNo lodgement, no advice, no explaining a position to a client. Registration requirements are personal to your agents.
- Agent portal accessNo access to ATO Online services for agents. Correspondence is worked from your own systems.
- Client relationship decisionsFee discussions, scope changes and difficult conversations stay with the partner.
- Signing anythingEngagement letters and statutory documents are prepared for signature, never signed on your behalf.