Terms of the audit.

They are between you, the business buying the audit, and me, Mel Cox, trading as Leak, from Perth, Western Australia. When these terms say “I” they mean me personally, because I am the only person who works on your audit.

You accept these terms when you pay for an audit or send me your files, whichever happens first.

It is a one-off, done-for-you review of your operating numbers. You do not log in to anything, you do not upload anything, and there is no software for you to learn. Here is the shape of it:

• You send me your POS sales export, your wage or rostering report, your supplier invoices and your menu. Roughly three months of each. If pulling those files is a pain, I will get on a call and pull them with you.
• I run them through the analysis tool I built for my own cafés, line by line.
• I read every finding myself, throw out the ones that do not hold up, and check the ones that do against what I know about running a café.
• I write you an audit in plain English: an executive summary, an opportunity score, every finding priced with the working shown, and a priority roadmap in the order that pays fastest.
• I walk you through it for 90 minutes, on video or in person if you are in Perth.

This matters more than the list above, so read it properly.

• It is not accounting. I am not your accountant and I do not do your books.
• It is not tax advice. Nothing in your audit is advice about your tax position, your BAS, your GST or your obligations to the ATO.
• It is not legal advice, and it is not advice about employment law. If a finding touches award rates, classifications or entitlements, treat it as a prompt to check with someone qualified, not as a ruling.
• It is not financial product advice, and I am not licensed to give it.
• It does not replace your accountant or your bookkeeper. It sits alongside them, and honestly, they will usually be glad of it.
• It is not an assurance engagement, and it is not an audit within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001. Nobody should treat it as verified financial statements.
• It is not a tax agent service. Where your files contain payroll, I do not advise on PAYG withholding, superannuation guarantee obligations or fringe benefits tax, and nothing in your audit should be read as advice on any of them. If a finding touches one, it is flagged for your registered tax or BAS agent.
• It is not advice on award compliance. If something in your roster or payroll data looks like it may be an underpayment or a classification problem, I will tell you in writing so you can act on it, and I will tell you to take it to an employment lawyer or the Fair Work Ombudsman. What I will not do is stay quiet about it, and I will not recommend a labour change that I can see would breach an award.

I am a café owner of almost ten years, with twenty-one years in hospitality, telling you what your numbers say. That is a genuinely useful thing and it is not a professional opinion in the regulated sense. Please take anything with tax, legal or employment consequences to the person who is qualified to sign off on it.

• $1,500 for a Profit Leak Audit.
• $750 for the first 3 venues. That is an exchange rather than a discount: in return I ask for permission to name you in a case study, two introductions to operators you rate, and an honest hour of feedback on the report. The audit, the document and the guarantee are identical either way.
• Payable upfront, in full, before I start work. That is not me being precious: it is what keeps this a single fixed fee with nothing added later.
• One fee, one audit. No packages, no tiers, no subscription, and nothing extra invoiced mid-engagement.
• All prices are in Australian dollars and include GST. I am registered for GST, so you get a tax invoice carrying my ABN and the GST included in the price. $1,500 means $1,500, with nothing added at the checkout.

If your business is more than two sites, or your records are in a state that means the work is materially bigger than a standard audit, I will tell you before you pay and we will agree a price, or I will tell you I am not the right fit. What I will not do is take the money and then ask for more.

Separately, and only ever after your walkthrough, I sometimes offer a follow-on engagement to help implement the plan. It is never a condition of anything in your audit, it is never mentioned before the document is delivered, and nothing in your report is written to sell it.

Here is the promise: your audit will identify more in costed, evidenced opportunities than it cost you, or you pay nothing and you keep the report.

And here is the limit of it, in the same size type, because you should hear it from me rather than find it out later: I do not guarantee you will save the money. I can find it. Only you can bank it.

Exactly what that means, so there is no argument later:

• It is measured on the opportunities identified in your audit, expressed as an annual run rate, added up across the findings that carry a dollar figure. Advisory findings, which deliberately carry no dollar figure, do not count towards it.
• Every opportunity comes with the working shown, so you can check the arithmetic yourself rather than take my word for the total.
• You have 14 days from your walkthrough to claim. Tell me the total came in under what you paid and I refund your fee in full, back to the card you paid with, within five business days. After that window the fee is final, because I cannot carry an open-ended refund liability in a business this size.
• You keep the audit either way. I am not going to hand you findings and then take the document back.
• A run rate is arithmetic, not a forecast: it is the same behaviour carried across a year if nothing changes. It is not a prediction of your next twelve months and it is not a promise of savings.
• I make that call honestly and I do not pad a report to clear the bar. If a business is already run tightly, the right answer is that there is not much here, and you get your money back.

The guarantee does not depend on you implementing anything, and it is not conditional on you proving results. It is a floor on the value of what I hand you, not a promise about what happens next.

I deliver your audit within 5 business days of receiving your complete files, followed by your 90 minutes walkthrough at a time that suits you.

“Complete” means the files we agreed on, for the period we agreed on. If something is missing, the clock starts when the last piece arrives, and I will tell you the moment I notice a gap rather than quietly waiting.

If I am going to miss that window, you will hear it from me before the deadline, with a new date and a reason. If I miss it without telling you, ask for your money back and you will get it.

Every number in your audit is an estimate built from the files you gave me. Its accuracy depends entirely on those files. If your POS is mis-categorised, if invoices are missing, if a wage report covers a different period than it says it does, my findings will inherit that problem.

I check for the obvious signs of that and I tell you when something looks off. I cannot audit the source systems themselves, and I do not verify that what you send me is complete or correct. You know your business. Read the working, and tell me when something does not match what you see on the floor.

I can promise to find it, price it and hand it to you in an order you can act on. I cannot promise you will realise a single dollar of it, because that depends on you: renegotiating the supplier, rebuilding the roster, changing the portion, holding the line the following week.

Two cafés get the same audit. One re-quotes their coffee on Tuesday and the other means to. Their outcomes will not look the same, and that difference is not something I can control or guarantee.

Your results also depend on things neither of us controls: supplier pricing, award rate changes, weather, rent, the street your café is on.

Your numbers are yours. I do not share them, publish them, or use them as an example without your written permission. I will sign your NDA or send you mine before you send me a single file, whichever you prefer.

There is a full page on what actually happens to your files: how I handle your data, alongside the privacy page.

The audit I write for you is yours to use inside your business however you like: hand it to your manager, take it to your accountant, show your bank, show your business partner.

I keep the copyright in the document, the templates and the methods behind it, so please do not resell it or publish it as your own work. Using it to run your business is exactly what it is for.

Nothing here tries to exclude the rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law. Those rights cannot be contracted away and I am not trying to.

Beyond that: to the extent the law allows, my total liability for anything connected with an audit is capped at the fee you paid me for it. I am not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, lost revenue, lost opportunity, or business decisions you make on the strength of the audit.

Put plainly: this is a $1,500 report written by one person from the files you sent. Decisions worth more than that deserve a second opinion from someone qualified in the specific area, and my liability is sized to what you paid.

Before I start work, tell me and I will refund you in full. Once I have started, tell me anyway: I would rather sort it out than hold your money over an audit you do not want.

I can also decline an engagement or stop one, for example if I do not think the audit will clear the Findings Guarantee for your business, or if the work turns out to be well outside what I described. If I do that, you get a full refund.

These terms are governed by the law of Western Australia, and the courts of Western Australia have jurisdiction over any dispute.

Before anyone goes near a court, email me at hello@getleak.com.au and tell me what has gone wrong. In a business this small, that is almost always the fastest way to fix it.

If I change these terms, the version that applies to you is the one on this page on the day you paid.