Certificate in Small Business Management

Everything an owner has to get right, in the order you meet it. You start by getting your business onto one page, then work through customers and competition, pricing and margins, cash flow and funding, setting up properly in Australia, records and tax, operations, sales, marketing on a small budget and hiring your first employee. It finishes with your plan for the year and a full business plan, stress-tested against a late payer, a cost rise and a lost fortnight, then pitched as if to a lender.

It covers the money every owner has to understand: pricing, margins, cash flow, records that stand up to the ATO, and how income tax, company tax and GST work. For doing the books day to day, take Bookkeeping & Payroll, and our Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks courses teach the software.

Yes. It's built on Australian rules: the ATO, ASIC, GST and the BAS, Single Touch Payroll, super and Fair Work, with the differences between states and territories pointed out where they matter. Rates and thresholds change, so you learn to look up the current figure on ato.gov.au or business.gov.au rather than memorise one that goes out of date.

No. The course works in Google Sheets or Excel and Google Docs or Word, and the free versions are enough. The official guidance and tools it uses, from business.gov.au to the ATO's online services, cost nothing either.

Freelancing if you're going solo with a service and want your first clients, your rates and your proposals sorted. Small Business Management if you run, or plan to run, a business with customers, stock, premises or staff, because it adds cash forecasting, Australian set-up and tax, operations and hiring. If you start solo and then grow, this is the natural next step.

No. You build your plan around your own business, one you're planning, the one you work in (with permission) or one of the course's case businesses, such as a mobile dog grooming start-up or a plumbing firm taking on its first employee. The Ballarat florist you follow all year gives you a worked example of every step.

As long as you need. It's self-paced, so it fits around running the business, and there's no deadline. Building your own plan alongside the lessons takes real time, so treat it as steady work rather than a weekend job.

Yes. Pass the final assessment and you get an industry-recognised OBA certificate of completion that an employer can verify online. The business plan you build is the other half of the proof, and it's one you'll keep using.

Download the free info pack first. It walks you through every module, what you'll build and what you need before you start, so you can enrol knowing exactly what you're getting. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch and we'll help you choose.