Melbourne/Naarm stylist Juvelle Behrendorff loves fashion, and has a particular weakness for handbags. But before she discovered Solo by MYOB, her designer totes were also being used as a complicated tax filing system (complete with crumbs and bits of lint) which any qualified accountant will tell you is, “Not super optimal… oh god, please don’t do that”. 

“Often I’d just pull all the receipts out of my bag and dump them somewhere,” Juvelle laughs, “so come tax time it was always this last-minute scramble to find everything and track my expenses for the year.”

Thanks to our mates at Solo by MYOB, we sat down with Juvelle to chat all things EOFY panic mode – and how you can also avoid ever having to cram tax again.

GET YOUR REVENUE STREAMS FLOWING Like a lot of solo operators and small-business owners, Juvelle has multiple revenue streams. In fact, it’s more like a revenue river delta. “I work as a fashion stylist, both in the personal styling space as well as photo shoots and editorials, so it's quite fluid,” she says. “No week is ever the same, and there’s lots of different invoices coming in from different aspects of the business, or different clientele. Content clients, paid UGC (user-generated content), personal styling jobs.” Juvelle says Solo has been a game-changer here, because it pulls all those diverse streams into one handy dashboard and uses AI to smart-match categories of invoices and expenses, which makes tax time way more simple.
ON THE DAILY When Juvelle started her business, she tried to do everything herself. Because money, right? But she found that juggling Excel spreadsheets, especially at tax time, was a false economy: the money saved didn’t make up for the stress incurred. “I didn’t want to pay for a platform, so I used to email all my invoices as attachments. I was that person at tax time trying to pull everything together at the last minute. And eventually I got a stern talking to from my accountant – they told me I was making life more stressful than it needed to be.”

This is the hidden benefit to accounting software: mental health. Instead of a looming EOFY crisis, book-keeping becomes more like brushing your teeth. A small daily habit that prevents fillings (i.e. ATO audits) down the track. 

GET SNAPPY As a stylist, Juvelle’s always on the move, which means she needs a tax solution that’s fast and flexible and mobile. No more end-of-month, late-night laptop sessions. “The biggest thing with Solo is the fact that you can snap receipts on the go, so I don’t have to worry about losing them, or now the ink's faded or whatever. 

“My expenses are a lot more accurate now, and I can actually send invoices on my phone. Laptop work is probably the smallest percentage of my week. So not having to do that, and the fact I can sit in a carpark between clients, or do 30 minutes on the train and get a few invoices sent off. It’s just so much easier.” PROCRASTINATION? NEVER HEARD OF HER Putting off your tax stuff till EOFY doesn’t work, for the same reason procrastinating anything doesn’t work. What’s the old saying? Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can legally expense today. “When it came to admin, I used to be like, ‘I’ll do that at the end of the week’,” Juvelle laughs, “and then when the end of the week would come, I'd be like, ‘Yeah, nah’. I had absolutely no energy for that stuff. And then weeks would go by, and before you know it, another tax year rolls around and I have no answers for my accountant.”

Juvelle says Solo has made procrastination almost irrelevant, because she uses it in small doses all the time. As part of normal working life. There’s nothing to ‘put off’ because the app just automates all the boring bits of running a business. Come July, she just hands Solo access over to her accountant. Job done. 

ADMIN, BUT WITHOUT THE COLD SWEATS Juvelle says Solo isn’t about ditching admin (please, please don’t forget your admin – we promise it hasn’t forgotten about you) but more about staying on top of it, so you have more time to actually be creative. It’s like a financially-responsible sidekick, just quietly working away in the background. “I’m the face of the business. I’m doing the bookings, the hustling, the social media, the PR. And I'm really good at doing the work. I'm just not good at the admin – and I never have been. 

“But that’s okay, because Solo makes it more digestible in my weekly schedule. I don’t feel like I need to carve out time for admin anymore, or waste time at home instead of playing with the kids. It’s about making those little moments in life work harder for me.” 

This handy article was put together in partnership with our pals at Solo by MYOB. Check out its special offer for $1 a month and the new app and never cram tax time again.*

*Base subscriptions only. T&Cs apply.