Smart EOFY tech spending: what to buy before 30 June (and what to skip)

Every May and June, two things happen at once. Accountants start asking clients whether there is anything else they want to bring forward. And IT suppliers start running EOFY campaigns. Sometimes those line up neatly with what a business actually needs. Often they do not.

This is a short, honest take on EOFY tech spending for Australian small and medium businesses. What is genuinely worth doing in the next few weeks, what to ignore, and how to make the decision without buying things you would not otherwise have bought.

One quick note before we start. We are not your accountant, and this is not tax advice. The current Instant Asset Write-Off thresholds, prepaid expense rules and depreciation treatment change from year to year and depend on your structure. Anything below that touches the tax side should be confirmed with the person who actually lodges your return.

Why EOFY matters for tech (in plain terms)

For most SMBs, the EOFY tech question comes down to two things. First, whether bringing forward a purchase you were going to make anyway lets you claim it in this financial year rather than the next. Second, whether the asset can be deducted in full now or has to be depreciated over time.

Both of those are governed by ATO rules that change. The Instant Asset Write-Off threshold has bounced around in recent years. Prepaid expenses for small businesses generally need to relate to a service period of 12 months or less to be deductible in the year they are paid. The asset needs to be installed and ready for use by 30 June, not just ordered. Your accountant can tell you exactly what applies to your business this year.

What matters at our end is much simpler. EOFY is a useful forcing function, not a reason to buy. If a piece of technology was on your plan for the next six months and the timing makes sense, EOFY can help. If it was not, the tax saving will almost never make up for spending money you did not need to spend.

What is genuinely worth buying before 30 June

There are a few categories where the maths usually does work for an Australian SMB heading into the new financial year.

1. Hardware that is overdue for replacement. Laptops, desktops and monitors at the end of their useful life. If you have machines that are four or five years old, machines on Windows 10 that cannot take Windows 11, or staff working on whatever was cheapest at the time, this is the obvious one. Business-grade hardware, refreshed on a sensible cycle, is one of the highest-return tech spends a small business can make. People are faster, support is faster, and the security baseline goes up. EOFY is a reasonable trigger to do the refresh rather than push it into next year.

2. The Windows 11 catch-up. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 10 on 14 October 2025. Anything still on it is now running an operating system that no longer receives security patches. If you have a fleet that is part-way through the move, or you have been quietly hoping the problem solves itself, this is the moment to deal with it. We covered the detail in Still running Windows 10? You are now unsupported.

3. Cyber security tooling that should already be in place. A real endpoint detection and response layer over Microsoft 365. Email security beyond the default. A managed backup of your Microsoft 365 tenant. Multi-factor authentication everywhere it is not yet. Cyber insurance and frameworks like the ASD Essential Eight and SMB1001 increasingly expect these as baseline controls. If yours are missing or under-done, bringing them forward into this financial year is usually a good call.

4. Software you were going to renew anyway. Annual subscriptions you already pay can sometimes be prepaid for the next 12 months under the prepaid expense rules for small businesses. Microsoft 365, line-of-business software, design and accounting tools. This is the textbook EOFY move, with two cautions: only on tools you are committed to keeping, and only inside the rules your accountant confirms apply to you.

5. Network and meeting-room equipment with a clear payback. A proper Wi-Fi refresh in an office where the network is a daily complaint. A meeting room that finally works for hybrid calls. A switch or firewall that is end-of-life. These are not glamorous, but they remove friction every day, and they are easier to justify when the timing aligns with EOFY.

What to skip

Most of the bad EOFY decisions we see fall into one of these patterns.

Buying for the tax break, not the business. A deduction does not put money back in your bank account. It reduces the tax on profit. Spending a dollar to save 25 cents in tax is not a saving. If the spend was not on the plan and would not be on the plan in July, it almost never makes sense in June.

Hardware that will not arrive and be set up in time. For tax purposes the asset usually needs to be installed and ready for use by 30 June, not just ordered. With current supply lead times and a few weeks left, this is the wrong month to start a big infrastructure rollout from scratch.

Prepaying software you are not sure you will keep. Locking in 12 months of a tool you might churn off in the new financial year is a long way from a smart EOFY move. The tax effect is small. The opportunity cost of being stuck on the wrong platform is much larger.

Stockpiling consumables. Cupboards full of cables, dongles and spare keyboards bought to "use up the budget" almost never get used. They get lost, become obsolete, or sit in a drawer until the next office move.

Big strategic projects rushed to land before 30 June. Email migrations, line-of-business platform changes, ERP work. These are multi-month decisions. If they were not already in flight, EOFY is not the reason to start.

How to plan it in the next few weeks

If you want to do something useful before 30 June, the sequence is fairly straightforward.

Start with your accountant, not your IT provider. Confirm what is deductible in your structure this year, what the current Instant Asset Write-Off treatment looks like, and whether prepaid expenses make sense for you. That conversation takes 15 minutes and stops you guessing.

Then look at your existing plan. Which hardware is genuinely due for replacement? Which security gaps have been on the list for months? Which subscriptions are you definitely keeping? Anything that comes up on both lists, your accountant's and your own, is fair game for EOFY.

From there, work backwards from 30 June. Confirm what your supplier can actually deliver and have ready to use in time. Cleanly walk away from anything that cannot, and put it in the July plan instead.

How we help (and what we will not do)

For AgileMANAGED clients, EOFY usually does not need to be a scramble. Hardware lifecycle is already tracked. Security baseline work happens on a rolling plan. Most of the conversation in May and June is whether to bring forward something that was already scheduled, not whether to invent new spend.

If you are not on a managed plan, we are happy to walk through the same exercise with you anyway. We will look at what your business actually has, what is overdue, where the security gaps are and what we think is worth doing before 30 June. We will be specific about what is worth the money and what is not.

What we will not do is tell you a piece of technology is a good idea because the tax effect makes it look better than it is. That is not our job, and the maths usually does not support it.