Accountants Near Brighton – Supporting Bayside Small Businesses

East Brighton accountant

At Gartly Advisory, we’re local accountants proudly supporting businesses across Brighton, Hampton, Elsternwick, Bentleigh and the wider Bayside area.

While our office is based in Ormond, we work closely with many Brighton clients and regularly meet over coffee at the area’s fantastic local cafés.

We specialise in helping small business owners not just stay compliant but grow with confidence. From tax and accounting to business strategy, our focus is on providing practical advice you can actually use.

Why Brighton Clients Choose Gartly Advisory

Our clients value:

  • Clear, actionable business and tax advice
  • A proactive approach to small business growth
  • Over 25 years of experience supporting local businesses

A friendly, down-to-earth team who understand Bayside

We’re not on Bay Street—but we’re only minutes away, with easy parking, great coffee, and professional service that keeps clients coming back.

Local Knowledge. Practical Advice.

Being lifelong locals, we understand the Brighton business landscape. We work with a wide range of clients—from retail and medical practices to property investors and family businesses.

Many of our Brighton clients trust us with:

  • Family trusts and SMSFs (Self-Managed Super Funds)
  • Commercial and residential property structuring
  • Tax planning and wealth strategies
  • Estate planning and succession planning

As your business grows and your priorities shift, we help you plan ahead—so you can make informed decisions with clarity before you act.

A Nearby Brighton Accountant

We make things easy:

  • Visit us in Ormond (easy parking guaranteed)
  • Meet for coffee in Brighton
  • Or we can come to your business

We believe good advice starts with a conversation.

Let’s Talk

If you’re looking for a Brighton accountant who understands small business, we’d love to help.

Join us for a coffee and see how Gartly Advisory can support your business journey.

Here are some questions we get asked about Gartly and Brighton Accountants

1. How often would you expect to speak with an established business client during the year? Our clients are used to personal contact and advice. At least tax planning plus annual accounts, with additional quarterly or ad-hoc contact for larger clients. They should be contacting clients rather than waiting for the phone to ring.

2. How do you help clients understand whether their business is actually performing well? Small businesses need commercial advice, our client discussions focus on profit, margins, wages, cash flow, debtors, working capital and comparisons with prior periods/budgets.

3. What does your tax-planning process look like? One of the major value points for established clients. Planning occurs before 30 June, looking at expected profit, tax, super, trusts, Division 7A, CGT issues and cash requirements—not discovering the result nine months later.

4. How would you help a business that is growing rapidly but constantly short of cash? A very common small-business problem. Cash-flow forecasting, debtor/stock management, margin analysis, tax provisioning, funding requirements and understanding the difference between profit and cash.

5. How do you help an owner decide whether to employ someone, buy equipment, borrow money or expand? We help test their commercial capability. Model the decision first—cost, break-even point, cash-flow impact, finance and tax implications—rather than simply saying the expenditure is deductible.

6. Do you prepare budgets and forecasts, and do you then review actual results against them? A forecast that is never revisited is fairly useless. Yes. They should be able to build a simple meaningful forecast and then discuss why actual performance differs from it.

7. How do you deal with the owner’s personal position as well as the business? Most SME clients have companies, trusts, property, super and family considerations intertwined. Advice should consider the whole group rather than treating each entity independently.

8. What happens when a client rings with an urgent commercial or tax question? Service responsiveness will affect client retention after a sale. They have access to someone who knows them and can provide an answer or escalate it quickly—not “we’ll get back to you in three weeks.”

9. How comfortable are you as Accountants dealing with more complicated SME matters? Our clients can have trusts, SMSFs, property, CGT, Division 7A and succession issues. Strong in-house capability plus a network of specialists where necessary using external Experts . We the accountant coordinating the advice rather than sending the client away. Geoff has delt with many complicated and messy client situations to help find a practocal solution.

10. How do you help clients using Xero/MYOB and bookkeeping systems? Good data is increasingly the foundation for advisory. Clean bookkeeping, reconciled accounts, useful reporting and systems that allow the accountant to see problems during the year rather than after year-end. We also have external bookkeepers for those long term roles.

11. How do you help a business owner who wants to sell or retire in five years? Particularly important for older clients. Start early: profitability, business value, dependence on the owner, systems, succession, structure and CGT concessions—not begin planning once a purchaser appears.

Any further questions just reach out!