Find Professional Services Subcontractors in Australia

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Professional services is the sector where the title itself is regulated. Solicitor, barrister, registered tax agent and several others are protected terms, and using one without the entitlement is an offence rather than a marketing exaggeration.

This page covers what gets subcontracted in this sector, the credentials worth confirming, and how a job runs on Workforce Marketplace. Early access is open.

What gets subcontracted

The work most often subcontracted covers:

Legal work briefed between firms, and counsel briefed by solicitors
Accounting, bookkeeping and tax compliance overflow
Audit and assurance support
Management consulting and project delivery
Human resources and industrial relations advice
Company secretarial and governance support
Conveyancing and property transaction work

Credentials that matter here

The credentials here are practising entitlements, and most are checkable on a public register:

Legal Practising Certificate, Solicitor through the state law society or legal services commission, and Barrister through the state bar association
Registered Conveyancer through state fair trading
Registered tax agent or BAS agent through the Tax Practitioners Board, required to charge for tax services
CA or CPA membership and, for audit work, registered company auditor status
Professional indemnity insurance, which is a condition of most practising certificates and should be confirmed as current
Engineers Australia Chartered status and Architect Registration where the advice is technical

Charging a fee for tax advice without registration as a tax agent is an offence, and it is more common than it should be among bookkeepers and consultants who drift into advice. If someone is advising on tax positions for a fee, check the Tax Practitioners Board register.

What to confirm before work starts

An active ABN. Where a supplier does not quote one, you are generally required to withhold 47 per cent of the payment and remit it to the ATO. Their GST registration also tells you whether the price should carry it.

That the credential is held by the entity you are contracting with. A person can hold a qualification while the business you are paying holds nothing. Check the name on the document against the name on the invoice.

Insurance appropriate to the scope. Public liability is the common one. Depending on the work you may also need professional indemnity, and workers compensation if they carry their own staff.

That the engagement is genuinely a contract for services. Since the Fair Work amendments the test looks at the real substance of the relationship rather than the label on the paperwork, and getting it wrong creates back-pay, superannuation and payroll tax exposure. Contractor vs employee in Australia sets out how it now works.

Writing a scope that gets comparable quotes

Professional engagements need the retainer defined tightly. State the scope of the advice and its limits, who the advice is addressed to and who may rely on it, how fees are calculated and what triggers an estimate revision, how conflicts are identified and managed, who owns the work product and files, what the confidentiality and privilege position is, and what happens to the file at the end of the matter.

How it works on Workforce Marketplace

Post the scope with the payment structure it actually uses, whether that is fixed price, hourly, daily, quoted or split into milestones for staged work. Subcontractors apply, and you compare them side by side rather than chasing callbacks.

Every account is ABN-verified at sign-up. Beyond that, subcontractors can submit licences, certifications and insurance for verification, which we review rather than grant automatically. Their profile shows the status against each credential without showing the document, the licence number or the ABN. Verification is opt-in, so a profile may hold credentials that have not been submitted, and it reflects the document as at the date it was reviewed rather than standing indefinitely.

Applying for work costs nothing and there are no leads to buy. Payment runs through Stripe, and Workforce Marketplace never stores your card or bank details.