New Financial Year Prices 2025-26

EOFY 2025: Raise Your Prices or Lose Your Margin

Every June, clinic owners get hit with a silent cost bomb. This year, the Fair Work Commission announced a 3.75% wage increase. Add to that the super guarantee climbing another 0.5%, and your business is now facing a minimum 4% increase in staff costs across the board.

That includes therapists, admin, even suppliers operating under similar wage pressures. If staff costs are already over 60% of your clinic’s expenses, that shift hits hard. And it’s not going away.

Welcome to sticky inflation — where costs don’t just rise, they stay high.

What Most Owners Do (and Why It’s Wrong)

You might think, “Let’s just raise our price by 4% to match.”

That’s not strategy. That’s flat-lining.

If prices and costs rise at the same rate, your profit margin stays unchanged. In economic terms, you're not increasing anything in "real" value. You're treading water while inflation slowly drowns your profitability.

Instead, your mindset needs to shift to:

8–10% price increases, every financial year, until 2030.

This isn’t theory — it’s response. Fair Work has already signalled a long-term target of 20–30% increases across allied health. If you’re not adjusting now, you’ll be playing catch-up at a dangerous pace later.

Sticky Inflation Is the New Normal

Groceries are $60 a bag. Rent creeps up. Wage expectations are climbing. This isn’t temporary — it’s a structural reset.

Even if headline inflation softens, the pressure in real businesses doesn’t. This is why clinics feel like they’re working harder for less.

Your rebates? Frozen. Medicare, NDIS, DVA — all stagnant or capped.

If you're pricing around those, you’re stuck in a race to the bottom.

What’s Your Market, Really?

Let’s look at the actual clientele most private MSK clinics serve:

• Women aged 50+
• Often retired or semi-retired
• Asset-protected, not mortgage-stressed
• Pain-motivated, not price-sensitive

These clients aren’t skipping sessions over a $10 price difference. They're skipping when they don’t trust the value.

"I raised prices from $87 to $97. Nothing changed. Then $97 to $119. Still nothing."

Raise your price, and then raise your message. That’s how you attract the right people.

Related: What New Graduate Physios Are Really Being Paid in 2025

The Real Cost Stack

Let’s break this down:

• Therapist + Super: 50–60%
• Admin: 10%
• Rent: 10%
• Professional services, tech, CPD: 5%
• Advertising & growth budget: 5%
• Other ops: 5%

You’re left with 5–15% max profit before tax. Every additional cost rise slices into that.

And don’t forget:

• Super is still rising
• Long service leave will hit if your team is stable
• Sick leave, CPD, and holidays accrue silently

Meanwhile, your income? Capped — unless you act.

What You Should Do This EOFY

• Raise prices 8–10%, regardless of how busy you are
• Review and shift away from low-margin schemes
• Reinvest margin into better-fit marketing (Meta/Google Ads)
• Move toward a gap-first, private-first model
• Build retention with value, not volume

Price isn’t the enemy. Undervaluing is.

You’re solving problems people would pay six figures to fix. Price accordingly.

From Survival to Strategy

Most clinics survive on volume — but that’s also what burns owners out. What’s sustainable?

• See fewer clients
• Deliver better results
• Charge appropriately
• Reinvest in growth

This is margin preservation. This is leadership.

The People Community

Inside People, our private founder community, we break down everything from pricing strategy to staffing structure and marketing flywheels.

It’s for clinic owners who want to build real businesses — not just survive year to year.

Related reading

• The 2026 Health Professionals Award changes: what they actually cost your clinic — the field guide to the 2026 award changes and what they cost.
• Clinic owners: your second pay rise hits October 1 — what to line up before the October 2026 reclassification.
• How exposed is your clinic to the 2026 award changes? — how much of the increase your clinic is carrying, and how to measure it.
• Admin and receptionist award rates: MA000027 Support Services — the award’s other stream. The October 2026 reclassification does not reach reception or admin staff.
• Fair Work Commission changes: raise wages, starve clinics — why an award increase lands differently on a clinic than on the funders who set what it can charge.

About this information

Culture of One is a business advisory firm, not a law firm. This is general information about the Health Professionals and Support Services Award — not legal or workplace-relations advice — and it doesn't take account of your clinic, your contracts, or any individual's circumstances. Forward dollar figures are estimates, not final rates. The FY2027–FY2029 steps come from a draft determination the Fair Work Commission issued on 14 August 2026 and have not been finalised. The 1 October 2026 and 30 June 2030 rates are settled, but every figure is in today's dollars and rises again each year as the annual wage review is applied on top. Before you change anyone's classification or pay, get advice on your own situation.

Current as at 18 August 2026.