The free business.gov.au tools worth bookmarking before you borrow

Ask a dozen owners where they got their last piece of business advice and you’ll hear about accountants, mates, forums and podcasts. Almost nobody says the government’s own business site. That’s a pity, because business.gov.au is free, it’s current, and some of what it offers is the exact paperwork a lender asks for.

This is a tour of the parts worth your time, written from the angle of someone who may need to borrow at some point. For each tool: what it does, what you get out of it and when to use it.

What is business.gov.au, and what is it not?

It’s the Australian Government’s central business information site. It brings together guidance, planning tools, grant listings and links to services run by other agencies, such as the ATO and ASIC.

What it isn’t: a lender, a licensing authority for your state, or a place to lodge your tax return. It points you to the right agency for those. Treat it as the front door to government business services, and then follow the links.

Which tools are actually on the site?

Based on the site’s own tools page as at October 2026, these are the ones that matter for most owners:

Tool	What it does	Most useful when
Grants and programs finder	Free guided search of grants, funding and support programs	Planning a project or purchase
Work out your business registrations	Helps you identify your structure and basic registrations	Starting up or changing structure
Develop your business plan	Free tool or template for a business plan	Preparing to approach a lender or investor
Adviser finder	Search for a business adviser or expert	You need an accountant, mentor or specialist
Events and training finder	Search for business events and training	Filling a skills gap
Business grants portal	Apply for and manage a grant or program	After you’ve found a grant
R&D Tax Incentive portal	Manage your dealings with the R&D Tax Incentive	You run eligible research and development
Mental health support	Free, confidential support for owners	Any time the pressure builds
Contact line and live chat	Phone 13 28 46 or use live chat	You can’t find an answer

The site also links out to ABLIS, the Australian Business Licence and Information Service, and to ABN Lookup. Both are useful when checking what licences your activity needs and when verifying a customer, supplier or lender.

How do you get value from the grants finder?

The finder is the single most useful tool for an owner who is about to spend money. The trick is to treat the filters as a funnel rather than a form. Start narrow (your state, your structure), read what appears, then loosen one filter at a time.

Settings that surprise people:

• Status. You can show open, coming soon and closed grants. Closed ones are still worth a look, because they tell you which rounds recur.
• Support type. It isn’t only grants. Choose “subsidies and rebates”, “loan” or “tax benefits” to see programs that never get called a grant.
• Business stage. A business under two years old sees different programs from one older than five.
• Shortlist. You can save results and email them. Send the list to your accountant before you start spending.

We cover how state programs differ, and the cash-flow trap of reimbursement grants, in small business grants by state. For the wider picture, see government grants for small business.

Can the planning tools help with a loan application?

Yes, with one caution. The business plan tool and template give you a sensible structure: what you sell, who buys it, how you operate, what you need, how you’ll repay. A lender reads a plan to understand whether the owner has thought it through.

The caution is that a template filled with generalities doesn’t help you. What turns a plan into a credible document is evidence:

• recent profit and loss and balance sheet figures (our guides on reading your profit and loss and your balance sheet help)
• a short cash flow forecast
• the amount you want, what it buys, and how it increases income or protects it
• the security you could offer, if any

For the lender-side view of what belongs in a plan, read how to write a business plan lenders will read.

The registrations tool has an equally practical use. A lender will check that the entity applying exists, that the ABN is active and that GST registration matches what the financials show. If you’re not sure your registrations are in order, the tool plus our guide to registering a business name and ABN will sort that before an assessor notices.

Where does it help with finance health?

Business.gov.au’s “Analyse business finances” page doesn’t have its own calculator. Instead, it points to two free ATO tools, and they’re underused:

• The ATO business viability assessment tool. You enter at least three months of figures, such as profit and loss, balance sheet, aged debtor and creditor lists and monthly debt repayments, and it produces a summary report with visual indicators of how the business is performing.
• ATO small business benchmarks. These let you compare your results with others in your industry, which tells you whether your costs or margins sit outside the typical range.

Why this matters for borrowing: a lender will run its own version of these checks. If your cost of sales is out of line with the industry, you’d rather find out and explain it before an assessor asks. Use the benchmarks as a pre-flight check and the viability tool as a mirror. Then read cash flow ratios every owner should know to understand the measures lenders pick out.

Queensland owners also get the Business Queensland finance health check, a state tool that produces a personalised report with suggested resources.

What about the end-of-year and people tools?

The site’s end of financial year checklist is a sound skeleton: records, deductions, compliance tasks and a forward-looking review. We’ve built a more detailed, dated version in our end of financial year checklist for business owners.

The mental health support deserves a mention for its own sake. Money stress and business stress feed each other, and the site offers free, confidential support for owners. If you’re carrying a lot, our piece on mental health and money stress and the guide to free financial counselling cover the options.

If the numbers are telling you that finance might help, a quick enquiry takes about a minute.

A simple way to use the site

An hour with these tools, once a year, beats scrolling for answers when you’re under pressure.

1. Run the grants finder with your state and structure set. Shortlist anything relevant and send it to your accountant.
2. Re-check your registrations with the registrations tool.
3. Open the ATO viability tool with your last three months of figures, and compare against the benchmarks.
4. Draft or refresh your plan with the business plan tool.
5. Find an adviser through the adviser finder if any step shows a gap.
6. Save the contact line (13 28 46) for questions that don’t have an obvious home.

The pay-off is boring but real. When you do need finance, the documents already exist and the story hangs together.

When the tools point to a funding question

Sometimes an hour on the site ends with a clear conclusion: the business is sound, the project is worth doing and it needs money. That’s the point at which most owners go to their bank, which is a good first move; a bank is often the cheapest source of funds, and its offer deserves a proper look when your business fits its criteria. If the bank says no, or is slower than the project can wait, we’re the next stop.

Our enquiry takes around a minute, and it doesn’t leave a mark on your credit file. We don’t send your details out to a crowd of lenders. A real person reads what you’ve written about your business and calls you. If you’ve done the planning exercise above, you already have the numbers to fill the form in accurately, which is what gets the right option in front of you first.

Take the plan you’ve built and see what could fit →