You take care of children. SBAAS takes care of the organisation around them. Policies, payroll, compliance, governance, funding and growth, delivered by a team of specialists who turn up and do the work.
We have supported everything from start-up ideas to enterprises with thousands of staff. Right now, our sector focus is yours.
The February 2026 child safety reforms made safety the paramount consideration in every decision, and backed it with a worker register, mandatory training and real penalties. Regulators now make thousands of monitoring visits every quarter. The Worker Retention Payment pays your team more, and asks more of your payroll. Fees are capped while wages, food, energy, insurance and rent are not, and national occupancy has drifted towards the viability line.
And somehow you are still the HR manager, the bookkeeper, the compliance officer and the marketer. One owner. Seven jobs. No head office.
That is the gap SBAAS fills. Around 78 per cent of Australian providers run a single service, and the rules assume they already have corporate capability. We work with providers across the country, community-run and private, from one service to a growing group. You get one team across every business function, with the depth to support many clients at once and the structure to make each one feel like the only one.
Regulators now make more monitoring visits than rating visits, and compliance actions across the sector have more than doubled in a year. The Commonwealth has begun cutting subsidy funding from services that fail to lift. We keep you ready for the knock, and we have successfully guided new centres through provider and service approvals, from fit-and-proper declarations to opening day. Our scope covers:
We have written more than 500,000 words of Child Safe policy since the Australia-wide regulatory updates. Every word reflects two things: the exact regulations of your state, and the actual activities of your service. A device policy for a service that does bush kinder cannot read like one written for a CBD long day care centre, and ours never do. Our scope covers:
The $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, state kindergarten and capital programs, inclusion funding and fee-cap variation applications all reward the same thing: a submission with clean evidence and a credible budget. Ours are written by people who win government work, because they have done it for years. Our scope covers:
Child safety is now board business. Persons with management or control, including directors and committee members, carry personal obligations under the National Law, and even board members must complete mandatory child safety training where they help control the service. Many committee-run services are governed by volunteers doing their best without a framework. We give them one. Our scope covers:
Childcare pay is now layered: award classifications that changed in March 2026, the 15 per cent Worker Retention Payment uplift, annual wage review increases and gender undervaluation adjustments, all at once. Getting people decisions wrong now carries regulatory and legal risks. Our IR experts interpret the awards that cover your team and make every layer reconcile to the cent. Our scope covers:
Subsidy income, session reports, gap fees, grant conditions and a fee cap you must not breach. Childcare bookkeeping is a distinct discipline, and we treat it as such. Pay runs are right the first time because, in this sector, a payroll error is never just a payroll error. Our scope covers:
Mandatory child safety training now has hard deadlines, refresher cycles and records that must survive an audit. Generic slides do not build a child-safe culture; training built on your actual policies does. Our team has designed curriculum for TAFEs and delivered compliance training for government agencies. Our scope covers:
Floods, fires, storms, outbreaks and the days you hope never come. Services now have 24 hours to report serious incidents, and families expect answers faster than that. In Queensland, we treat severe weather as a certainty to plan for, not a maybe. Our scope covers:
The market is splitting. Some catchments are oversupplied while a quarter of Australians live in childcare deserts, and the 3-Day Guarantee has changed demand again. Strategy now starts with your numbers, not a vision statement. We will tell you honestly when an idea does not stack up, and that honesty has saved clients from expensive leases more than once. Our scope covers:
In an oversupplied catchment, occupancy is won at the tour, and trust is won long before it. Families check quality ratings on Starting Blocks, read reviews and judge your website before they ever call. Our scope covers:
The sector is consolidating, and both sides of every deal need help. Sellers lose value through messy financials and owner-dependent operations. Buyers inherit other people’s problems when due diligence skips the compliance file. We support both, at a scale and price built for operators of one to five services, with the experience to handle much larger transactions when they come. Our scope covers:
You get a full bench, not a lone adviser. SBAAS brings specialists across policy, governance, IR, finance, training, marketing, and transactions, working to a single plan for your service. That depth is how we support single-service owners and multi-site groups simultaneously, without either waiting in line.
You get experience across the whole spectrum. We have worked with start-ups finding their feet and with enterprises employing thousands of staff, across not-for-profit and commercial organisations for more than 20 years. Committee-run kindy or private group, we have sat where you sit.
And you get leadership that is plugged in. Our team is led by a Managing Director who advises the Small Business Association of Australia and government, and holds postgraduate qualifications in Business, Law and Education. You hear about regulatory change before it lands on your doorstep, from people who helped shape the response.
Tell us what is keeping you up at night. We will tell you, in plain language, how we would fix it and what it costs. No lock-in retainers, no hundred-page reports, just actual support.
Straight answers to the questions providers are searching for right now. General information only: always confirm current requirements with ACECQA, your regulatory authority or the Department of Education, or ask us.
Three, in practice. You need provider approval under the National Law, which requires a fit-and-proper person test and is recognised nationally. You then need a service approval for each premises. To administer the Child Care Subsidy, you also need CCS approval under the Family Assistance Law, which since 2025 includes providing a Statement of Tax Record. Regulators must decide a complete provider application within 60 days. SBAAS has guided new centres through all three.
Regulations 168 and 169 set out the minimum policy suite that every service must hold, covering health, safety, staffing, governance, and more. Following the 2026 reforms, your policies must specifically address how you provide a child-safe environment, and inadequate policies are grounds for a regulator to refuse a service approval. The folder is not the test. Practice and evidence are.
Anyone working or volunteering at a service before 14 August 2026 must complete the foundation modules by 27 August 2026. New starters must complete them within 14 days. Advanced modules for people in leadership roles became available from July 2026. Only training completed on the Government’s Geccko platform counts, and completion must be recorded against your Worker Register entries.
Everyone employed, engaged or appointed at your service: educators, the cook, the cleaner, volunteers, students on placement and contractors. You must update the register within 14 days of someone starting, finishing or changing details. Entries are automatically checked against the prohibited persons register, which does not replace your own screening obligations before someone starts.
Yes. The grant requires you to pass the payment on to all eligible employees at no less than the Department’s minimum rates, through a compliant workplace instrument. That applies even if you already pay above the award rate. The minimums also move when wage reviews and gender undervaluation adjustments land, so your pay structure needs to be checked, not set and forgotten.
Fee growth is capped as a grant condition. The cap was 4.4 per cent in year one, 4.2 per cent in year two, and 5.8 per cent for the period from August 2026 to August 2027. Exceeding it puts your eligibility at risk unless you apply for an Alternative Fee Growth Cap, which requires evidence of financial viability concerns at both provider and service level. We prepare those evidence packs.
Not while working directly with children. Since the 2026 reforms, personal devices are restricted, and only service-issued devices may capture, store or transmit images of children. You need a documented device policy, a register of issued devices and consistent enforcement across every room and shift. A phone in a pocket is now a compliance question, not a habit.
Responses escalate: compliance directions, notices, conditions on your approval, suspension or cancellation, and the Commonwealth can now remove CCS funding from services that fail to lift standards. Most services placed on notice have improved and kept their funding, which is the real lesson. Early, evidence-based remediation works, and we build the remediation plan and the evidence.
From 5 January 2026, the activity test was abolished. Eligible families are guaranteed 72 hours of subsidised care per fortnight, with 100 hours for First Nations children. That expands the number of families who can afford more days. It does not guarantee those days come to you. In competitive catchments, converting new eligibility into enrolments is a marketing and experience question.
Typically as a multiple of adjusted earnings, shaped by occupancy, quality ratings, compliance and training records, lease terms and how dependent the service is on its owner. Buyers now put the compliance file near the top of due diligence. Documented systems and clean records lift the multiple, which is why exit preparation should start one to two years before the sale.
Before a deadline, a notice or a transaction forces the issue. If the owner is doing corporate jobs at night, if a grant condition is unclear, or if the last fee increase was a guess, the cost of getting it wrong now comfortably exceeds the cost of help. The first conversation with us is free, and we will tell you honestly if you do not need us yet.
At SBAAS, we focus on delivering clear, practical solutions that produce real results. Our experienced team works closely with you to understand your business challenges and goals. We provide advice that is easy to apply and helps your business grow efficiently.
Choose SBAAS for the support you can trust. We focus on what matters most—helping your business succeed.
