The short answer
Retail compliance is light unless you sell something licensed (liquor, tobacco, firearms, pharmacy lines, second-hand goods), but the dated items that hurt are commercial: the lease option that needed written notice, the supplier account on stop credit, the insurance that lapsed the week of the break-in, and the domain or payment gateway that expired. The money leaks are stock: the best seller that ran out on Thursday and the lines that have been sitting since winter.
Dates and licences
Lease: option exercise window, rent review dates, make-good obligations, outgoings reconciliation. Insurances: contents, stock, public liability, business interruption, and cyber if you trade online. Licences if they apply: liquor (with RSA per staff), tobacco retailer licence (NSW Health, since 1 July 2025, renewed yearly), second-hand dealer, weighing instrument verification, council signage or footpath approvals. Online: domain renewals, SSL certificates, payment gateway and marketplace account requirements, PCI compliance attestation for card handling. People: right-to-work checks with visa expiries for casuals, WWCC if you run children's activities, annual Award rate changes (from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July).
Consumer law and product safety
Australian Consumer Law guarantees apply regardless of your own returns policy, and signage that says 'no refunds' is unlawful. Product safety: mandatory standards and bans for categories such as toys, children's products and button batteries, and recalls you must action if a supplier issues one. Country-of-origin and pricing display rules. Dated items are fewer here; the register holds the compliance checklist and its review date.
Stock and suppliers
The signals: days of cover on the top 20 lines, lines with no sale in 60 and 90 days, gross margin by category, and supplier lead times against reorder points. Supplier terms carry dates too: account limits, early-payment discounts, and price rises with notice periods. Stocktake dates and shrinkage by period.
Where it usually slips
The lease option that required six months' notice, discovered at five. A public liability policy that auto-renewed onto a card that had expired. A product recall email that went to an old address. Two thousand dollars of a seasonal line reordered because nobody looked at what was still on the shelf.
What the register and the board hold
The register: lease dates, insurances, licences, online-platform and domain renewals, staff checks, supplier terms and the consumer-law checklist, with warnings at 90, 60 and 30 days. The board: yesterday's sales by category, top and bottom lines with days of cover, margin, cash and what's due out, and the warnings. The morning check flags a stockout before it happens and a lease date before it passes.
Where a spreadsheet stops being enough
The register is fine at any size. The stock side depends on the POS: Square, Shopify, Lightspeed and Vend already know what sold; the board reads their export. Once you carry more than a few thousand SKUs or run multiple stores with transfers, inventory management belongs in the POS, and the board simply summarises it.
Quick answers
Is a 'no refunds' sign legal in Australia?
No. Australian Consumer Law guarantees apply regardless of a store's own policy, and a sign saying no refunds is unlawful.
What lease dates should a shop track?
The option exercise window, rent review dates, outgoings reconciliation, expiry and make-good obligations, with warnings of 180 days for option windows.
What stock signals matter for a small retailer?
Days of cover on the top 20 lines, lines with no sale in 60 and 90 days, gross margin by category, and supplier lead times against reorder points.
Specific questions
Lease option and rent review dates: the reminder most small businesses don't set
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Written by Christian Stewart, Stewart Systems, Wollongong. Published 2026-09-29. This is a records-and-flags view for business owners; it is not legal, WHS, food safety or insurance advice, and requirements change, so check the regulator named above for the current rule.
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