Advisory

Two days a week I do something other than make coffee and photograph other people’s children. I sit down with people who own small businesses — mostly hospitality, occasionally a florist or a physio or a bloke who repairs bicycles — and help them make the technology decisions they have been putting off. Technology advice for people who did not want to think about technology.

Before Rosetti Lane I spent fourteen years in IT, the last few running infrastructure for a freight company out in Laverton. A depot and a café have more in common than either would care to admit. Both run on systems nobody chose on purpose, held together by one person who happens to still know the password.

I take four clients at a time. Four is what I can keep properly in my head while also running a room that feeds people. When it is four, it is four.

What I take on

This is advice, not labour. I help you decide, then make sure the thing you decided actually got done. It is usually one of five problems.

The card terminal. What you are paying and what you are paying it for. Zeller is 1.4 per cent a tap including GST with no monthly rental; Square is 1.6 per cent in person and sells you a reader for $65. If you are on a bank plan with a monthly rental and a rate you have never actually read, that is worth an afternoon.
Who owns your domain. Nine times in ten it sits in the personal account of a web person who left in 2019 and no longer answers email. Sort that out before it is a crisis rather than during one.
Getting off a contract. Three-year terms, automatic renewal, and an exit fee at clause fourteen. I read the clause so you are not guessing at it.
Backups. Whether you have one, whether it has run since the day you set it up, and whether anyone would notice if it stopped.
The Saturday morning problem. What happens when the NBN drops out at nine. Whether the terminal falls back to mobile data on its own, whether the till is sitting on the guest wifi, and who you ring.

I will also give you a second opinion before you sign something a salesperson has told you is urgent. Nothing in technology procurement is ever as urgent as the person selling it.

Backups are not hypothetical. At the freight company I inherited a nightly job that had been failing silently for eleven months. The alert emails were going to a mailbox nobody had opened since the man who set it up resigned, and we found out in the week we needed it. I have not trusted a backup I have not watched restore since, and neither should you.

Payments are the live one this spring. Until the end of September a surcharge is legal so long as it does not exceed what accepting that card actually costs you, and the ACCC enforces that. From 1 October the card networks’ no-surcharge rules apply to prepaid, debit and credit transactions on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, following the RBA’s conclusions paper in March. The fee stops being a line you hand the customer and starts coming out of your margin. Interchange caps come down on the same day, and again for foreign cards on 1 April 2027, so the figure on your November statement will not be the one you budgeted on in June. Anyone pressing you to sign a three-year terminal deal this month is quoting you arithmetic with three weeks left in it.

What I do not do

I am not a helpdesk. I do not answer the phone at eleven at night because the receipt printer has jammed, and if that is what you need, you want a managed IT provider on a support plan. I am not a web developer, I will not build your site, and I will talk you out of the app you think you need. I am not your accountant either. Once your turnover reaches $75,000 you have to register for GST and start remitting one-eleventh of your sales to the ATO, and the person to plan that with is your bookkeeper. I will say so rather than charge you to hear me say it.

The first session

It is paid, about ninety minutes, and it is a conversation rather than a pitch. I sell nothing and I take no commission from any vendor, which is the only reason my opinion on vendors is worth having. A few days later you get a written summary: what you are running, what it costs, what I would change and in what order, what I would leave alone, and a plain-English note you can hand straight to whoever does the work. Nothing in it needs me to translate it back to you afterwards.

What it costs

$1,400 a day, or $2,200 a month on retainer, which is roughly a day and a half. No lock-in, thirty days notice either way, and the first session is charged like any other.

Often that summary is the whole job. Plenty of people do not need a retainer, and a few do not need me at all: the setup is fine and they should stop poking at it. I would rather say that than invoice you every month to watch a system that already works. If all four seats are taken when you write, I will give you a real date instead of a maybe. I have never been much good at pretending to be busier than I am.