Selling

Selling coaching packages online in New Zealand

A three-month package is often the largest single thing a coach sells, which makes it the first sale to cross NZ$1,000 — the line where New Zealand’s invoicing rules start asking for more than a number. None of it is hard if the checkout collects the right details at the moment of sale.

Can you sell a coaching package online with the invoice done right?

You can sell a coaching package online in New Zealand with a checkout that charges 15% GST to local clients, zero-rates overseas clients, and issues the full taxable supply information a sale over NZ$1,000 requires — the buyer's name plus one identifier, which the order already captures at checkout.

Taxable supply information is the phrase that replaced the old tax invoice rules in April 2023. The job is unchanged — a record of what was sold, for how much, and how much of it was GST — but what the record must contain steps up with the size of the sale, and coaching packages sit exactly in the price range where the step happens.

One limit worth stating plainly before anything else: GoCushy is the checkout. It takes the payment, works out the GST, and issues the record. It does not host your sessions, schedule your calls, or file your GST return — those stay with your video tool, your calendar, and your accountant.

What changes when the sale is over NZ$1,000?

Take a NZ$1,800 three-month package, priced GST-inclusive. For a New Zealand client the record reads NZ$1,565.22 plus NZ$234.78 GST, totalling NZ$1,800.00. Those figures come from dividing by 1.15, and they reconcile to the cent every time because the checkout calculates them instead of a person retyping them.

Because the sale is over NZ$1,000, the taxable supply information also has to identify the buyer: their name plus at least one other identifier, and an email address qualifies. This is the detail that catches people who invoice by hand — the payment arrives through a payment link or a bank transfer, and weeks later someone is emailing the client to ask for details the record should already hold. A checkout collects a name and an email on every order as a matter of course, so the over-NZ$1,000 requirement is met by information the buyer typed themselves at the moment they paid, not chased afterwards.

An NZ$1,800 package sale flows through a checkout that captures the buyer details the record needs An NZ$1,800 package passes through the checkout, which captures the buyer's name and email — the over-NZ$1,000 requirement — and produces full taxable supply information. A dashed branch shows an overseas client being zero-rated with residency evidence stored. NZ$1,800 package THREE MONTHS Checkout captures name + email THE $1,000+ TIER Full taxable supply information IN YOUR NAME Overseas client AT CHECKOUT Zero-rated COUNTRY + IP STORED
A sale over NZ$1,000 must identify the buyer on the taxable supply information: a name plus one other identifier, and an email address qualifies. The checkout collects both on every order, so an NZ$1,800 package sale carries what the record requires from the start. An overseas client takes the dashed path: the sale is zero-rated and the order stores the stated country and device IP as evidence.

What about overseas coaching clients?

Coaching delivered over a video call to someone outside New Zealand is generally a zero-rated export — you charge no GST, and the sale still appears in your return at the zero rate. The word “generally” is doing real work in that sentence: the treatment depends on the client being a non-resident and outside New Zealand when the service is performed, and unusual arrangements are exactly the conversation to have with your accountant.

The practical problem with zero-rating is not deciding to do it, it is proving it later. If a return is ever queried, “the client was in Singapore” needs something behind it. The checkout stores the buyer-stated country and the device IP address on the order at the moment of purchase — contemporaneous evidence that is easy to keep and nearly impossible to reconstruct a year later.

How do you sell ongoing coaching after the package ends?

Packages end, and the clients you keep usually move to an ongoing arrangement. The clean way to sell that is a monthly subscription with a card on file: a NZ$300 per month retainer bills as NZ$260.87 plus NZ$39.13 GST, month after month, and each charge issues its own record. There is no invoice to remember to send and no “just following up on last month” email, because the card is charged on schedule whether or not you remembered. Setting one up is covered in the subscriptions guide.

Where does an order bump fit?

A checkout also gives you somewhere to offer something small at the moment a client is already paying. A NZ$180 strategy session as a tick-box on the package order shows as NZ$156.52 plus NZ$23.48 GST, on the same order and the same record as the package. The bump itself is under NZ$1,000, but it rides an order that already carries the buyer’s name and email, so nothing extra is asked of the client and nothing extra lands on your admin pile.

If you sell coaching, the most direct test is to set up a package at your real price during the trial, buy it yourself, and read the record it produces.

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