- Rounded has published a ranked list of the six highest-return financial habits for sole traders, scored on how well each survives a real working week rather than relying on willpower, with automatic kilometre tracking placed first on the list.
- Accounting software specialists Rounded argue that the core problem for self-employed workers is not a lack of financial awareness, but an inability to sustain good financial habits consistently across a full working year whilst simultaneously managing client work and business operations.
- Rounded's analysis concludes that the financial habits most likely to stick are those where human decision-making has been removed entirely — such as automatic tax set-asides, real-time expense capture, and automated invoicing reminders — rather than those relying on ongoing discipline.
- Australia's 1.7 million sole traders are estimated to be leaving up to $608 million in unclaimed kilometre-related tax deductions on the table each year, with an individual sole trader driving 4,000 work kilometres potentially missing out on around $1,126 in tax savings under the 2025/26 rate — rising to $1,165 from 1 July 2026 following an increase in the ATO's cents-per-kilometre rate to 91 cents.
- To address the kilometres tracking gap specifically, Rounded has launched Trax, an iOS app that uses a vehicle's Bluetooth or CarPlay connection to automatically detect and log work-related trips without any manual input from the driver, with an Android version to follow.
Sole traders who automate one 30-second task could be more than $1,000 better off at tax time, without lifting a finger
Rounded ranks the financial habits that actually survive a working week, and names the one thing proven to beat willpower every time
MELBOURNE, Friday 31 July 2026: Ahead of this year’s Financial Awareness Day, new analysis from Australian sole trader accounting and business software specialists, Rounded, suggests the country's 1.7 million self-employed workers don't struggle to know what they should be doing with their money, it’s that they struggle to keep doing it, week after week, for a full financial year – and that gap is costing them real money.
Most sole traders know, in general terms, that the ATO will pay them for the kilometres they drive for work1. Few ever get around to tracking them properly. Of the roughly 900,000 mobile sole traders eligible to claim the deduction, Rounded's modelling suggests as many as 540,000 claim little or nothing2, a gap worth up to $608 million in unclaimed tax savings for the 2025/26 financial year nationally3, and around $1,126 each4 for a sole trader driving a modest 4,000 work kilometres on their current return. That opportunity has grown for the year now underway: from 1 July 2026 the ATO lifted the cents-per-kilometre rate to 91 cents, taking the same 4,000 km baseline to a $3,640 deduction and a $1,165 tax saving, with the maximum annual deduction rising to $4,5505.
"The problem was never that sole traders don't know they should be tracking their kilometres, keeping receipts, or putting money aside for tax," says Oliver Garside, co-founder of Rounded. "The problem is that knowing what to do and actually doing it, every week, for an entire financial year, are two completely different things. Nobody running their own business and juggling five client jobs this week is thinking about their logbook on a Tuesday afternoon. That's not a discipline failure. We know that's just what running a business is like, because we’ve sbeen help people to do it for ten years.”
Why good intentions aren’t enough
Financial Awareness Day encourages Australians to review their budgets, check their super, and build better money habits. For employees, that advice holds up reasonably well. For the self-employed, running the entire finance function of a business alone, with no payroll team, no default super guarantee, and nobody else to catch what gets missed, a "good habit" has to survive fifty-two weeks of invoicing, client work and everything else that comes with self-employment. Most don't.
Automation beats habit
Rounded's view, built on a decade of watching sole traders manage their own books, is that the habits which actually stick aren't the ones people try hardest to maintain. They're the ones where the decision has been removed altogether: money that's set aside for tax before it can be spent, a receipt that's captured the moment it lands rather than filed away for June, an invoice reminder that goes out without anyone remembering to send it. Nowhere is that pattern clearer than behind the wheel when it comes to work-related kilometre tracking, something that is directly addressed by Rounded’s launch of Trax.
"Every existing solution in this space has asked the driver to do something: install hardware, open an app, remember to hit start," said Grant McCall, co-founder of Rounded. "We built Trax to ask the driver to do nothing. It uses your car's Bluetooth or CarPlay connection to know when you're driving and logs the trip automatically. The habit that wins isn't the one you're most disciplined about. It's the one you never had to think about in the first place."
Rounded has ranked the six highest-return financial habits for Australia's sole traders on exactly this basis, each scored by how well it survives a real working week rather than a New Year's resolution. Automatic kilometre tracking tops the list, followed by automated tax set-asides and real-time expense capture. The full ranking follows below.
"Financial Awareness Day is a good prompt, but awareness was never really the problem," says Oliver Garside, co-founder of Rounded. "You can be completely aware of what you should be doing and still not do it, because you're human and you're busy.
“The sole traders who end up in the best position aren't the most switched on. They're the ones who've built a business where the right thing happens automatically, whether they're thinking about it or not. That's the shift we want people to make, not try harder, just need to try less."
Trax is available to download here on iOS in the App Store, with Android to follow shortly.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Click here for imagery, and here for the full Trax press kit.
1. The ATO offers sole traders 88 cents for every kilometre driven for work in the 2025-26 income year, up to 5,000 km, with no receipts required. Source: ato.gov.au
2. Modelled non-claiming rate of 60% (upper bound scenario) applied to an estimated 900,000 mobile sole traders. Full methodology available on request.
3. Modelled collective unclaimed deduction, based on 540,000 non-claiming sole traders at $1,126 each. Illustrative modelling only, not tax advice.
4. 4,000 km x $0.88 = $3,520 deduction. At a 32% effective marginal rate (30% income tax plus 2% Medicare levy, applicable to taxable income between $45,001 and $135,000), the tax saving is $1,126. Source: ato.gov.au
5. From 1 July 2026, the ATO cents-per-kilometre rate for the 2026-27 income year rose to 91 cents, comprising an 89 cent base rate plus a temporary 2 cent uplift. At the same 4,000 km baseline, this equates to a $3,640 deduction and a $1,165 tax saving. Maximum claimable distance remains 5,000 km per vehicle per year, for a maximum deduction of $4,550. Source: ato.gov.au
About us:
Rounded is Australia's accounting platform built for sole traders. Since its founding, it has helped hundreds of thousands of Australian sole traders manage invoicing, expenses, BAS lodgements and EOFY tax in one place, with more than $500 million processed through the platform to date. Rounded has grown without outside investment, driven entirely by the needs of its customers. Trax, its automatic kilometre tracker, is available now on iOS at trax.rounded.com.au, with Android in development.
Contact details:
Lee Robson
iStories
M: +61 412 024 651
