You run a good business. You know your clients, you know your craft, and you can tell within about ten minutes whether a week is going to be a busy one.

And yet when it comes to paying yourself, there's no system. There's a feeling. You look at the account, you decide it's probably fine, you move some money across, and you hope you haven't just spent something that was meant for tax.

That's not a discipline problem. That's what happens when nobody ever showed you how the money is supposed to move.

So let's fix the actual thing. This is how to work out what to pay yourself, how to set it up so it happens without you deciding every time, and what to do when a slow month lands.

What "paying yourself" actually means

Here's the short answer: paying yourself means taking a set, regular amount out of your business on a set day, in a way your business has planned for.

That's it. Regular, planned, and decided in advance.

What most women are doing instead is called drawing. You take money when you need it, in whatever amount is sitting there. It feels like the same thing because money still ends up in your personal account. It isn't the same thing, and the difference is the whole problem.

Drawing means your personal life is funded by whatever your business happened to do this week. A quiet fortnight and suddenly your grocery money is a business performance issue. Paying yourself means your business owes you a wage, the same way it owes rent or your insurance, and that amount doesn't move around based on how busy you were.

The structure you trade under (sole trader, company, trust) changes the mechanics of how you take the money and how it's taxed. That part is a conversation with your accountant, and it's a shorter conversation than you think. What doesn't change, across every structure, is the principle: decide the number first, then set it up to happen.

You're allowed to be paid by your own business. It is not a bonus you have to earn twice.

Why "I'll pay myself what's left over" keeps you stuck

There's a reason this one is so hard to shake. Taking what's left feels responsible. It feels like you're being careful, putting the business first, not being greedy.

But look at what it actually does.

Your wage becomes the only expense in the business with no fixed amount and no fixed date. Everything else has a number. Rent has a number. Your software has a number. Your insurance has a number. Only you are on a variable rate, and the variable is "whatever survived".

Which means three things happen, and they happen in order.

You can never plan personally, because you don't know what's coming. So you cover it with credit cards in the lean weeks. Then a good month arrives, you feel relieved, and you spend at the top of it, because you have been going without and you have earned this. Then the next quiet month arrives and you are back where you started, now with a card balance.

That's the up-and-down cycle. Ahead for a stretch, then one slow month and you are back to the beginning. And it feels worse than never getting ahead at all, because you know you were close.

The cycle isn't caused by your spending. It's caused by having no fixed number to spend against.

How much should I pay myself?

Start with the number you need to live, not the number the business can spare. Those are two different questions and most women only ever ask the second one.

Work through it in this order.

1. Find your personal number. What does your household actually need each month? Mortgage or rent, groceries, insurance, school costs, petrol, phone, the direct debits you have forgotten are still going out. Pull three months of personal bank statements and add up what actually left the account. Not what you think you spend. What you spend.

This step is the one people skip, and it's the one that makes everything else possible. You cannot pay yourself a sensible wage while the target is a guess.

2. Find what your business can support. Take your last six to twelve months of income. Add it up, divide by the number of months, and you have your average monthly revenue. Then subtract your monthly business costs, and subtract what needs to be put aside for tax and super. What's left is the pool your wage comes from.

Six to twelve months matters. Three months will lie to you if any of them were unusual.

3. Compare the two numbers. One of three things is now true, and every one of them is useful.

• The business can cover your personal number. Set your wage at that number and get it running. Done.
• The business can cover part of it. Set your wage at what it can cover right now, even if it's modest. A small reliable wage will change your life faster than a large unreliable one. Then you have a real gap to work on, with a real figure attached.
• The business can't cover much at all. Now you know, and knowing is the whole win. This is a pricing and revenue conversation, not a personal failing, and it's a solvable one.

4. Pick a day and start. Weekly or fortnightly beats monthly, because it matches how your household bills actually land.

You're allowed to start with a number that feels small. A wage you can rely on beats a wage that looks impressive on paper.

What percentage of revenue should I pay myself?

You'll see rules like 30% of revenue, or 50/30/20. They can be a handy sense check, and that's about the limit of what they're good for.

Here's the problem with using one as your answer. A percentage of revenue doesn't know your rent. It doesn't know your tax position, your business costs, whether you have staff, or what your mortgage is. A massage therapist working from home and a retail owner with a lease and two casuals could pull identical revenue and have wildly different amounts available to pay themselves.

Use a percentage to sanity check the number you worked out above. If your figure lands somewhere near the rule of thumb, good. If it's a long way off, that's worth understanding rather than worrying about.

Your number comes from your life and your business, not from a rule invented for somebody else's.

How do I pay myself when my income is irregular?

This is the question I get most, and it's usually asked as though irregular income makes a regular wage impossible. It's actually the reason you need one.

The tool is a buffer. One separate account, sitting between your business income and your wage, that smooths the bumps so your household never feels them.

It works like this.

Money comes into your business account. Tax and super come out and go to their own account, straight away, before anything else. Business costs get paid. What's left moves into your buffer account. Your wage is paid from the buffer, on the same day, every time.

In a busy month the buffer fills up more than your wage takes out. In a quiet month it drains a little. Your wage doesn't change, because that's the entire job of the buffer.

Build toward roughly one month of wages sitting in there, then keep going toward two or three if you can. You will not get there in one go, and you don't need to. Start it with whatever you can and let good months do the work.

The moment that buffer covers one month of wages is the moment the panic stops. Not when you earn more. When the buffer is there.

How do I pay myself and still have money for tax?

By taking the tax out first, before you decide anything else.

Open a separate account, name it something obvious, and every time money hits your business account move the tax portion across immediately. Not at the end of the month. Not when you get to it. On the day.

Your accountant can tell you the right percentage for your situation and your structure, and it's worth asking rather than estimating, because guessing high costs you cash flow and guessing low costs you a lot more than that. If you're setting up super for yourself as well, that's the same conversation and the same account habit.

Then treat that account as though it belongs to someone else, because it does.

Almost everyone who dreads tax time is not dreading the tax. They're dreading the surprise. Once the money is already sitting there, the bill arrives, you pay it, and it's a Tuesday.

You're allowed to feel calm at tax time. That's a systems outcome, not a personality trait.

What do I do in a slow month?

You pay yourself anyway, out of the buffer. That's what it's for and this is the moment it earns its keep.

If the buffer isn't built yet, or a slow run is longer than it can carry, then you reduce your wage on purpose. Pick the new number, decide how long it applies for, write it down, and put a date in your diary to review it.

That is a completely different act from taking less and hoping. One is a decision you made. The other is the cycle starting again.

And notice what a slow month tells you when you have a wage set. It becomes information. You can see the gap, you know its size, and you can do something specific about it. Without a set wage, a slow month is just a bad feeling and a smaller transfer.

Setting it up so it runs without you

Every part of this should happen without you having to decide anything on the day. Decisions are where it falls over, because on a hard week you will make a soft decision.

Four accounts, four jobs.

Business income. Everything comes in here. Nothing lives here.

Tax and super. Money moves here first, the day income lands. Untouchable.

Buffer. Holds what's left after costs, smooths the lean weeks.

Personal. Receives your wage on the same day, every time.

Then automate the transfers. Set the wage as a recurring transfer on your pay day. Set a reminder for the tax transfer if it can't be automatic. If your bookkeeping software runs a pay cycle, use it.

Once it's running, your job is to check it, not to run it.

Your first pay run, this week

You do not need to have all of this in place to start. You need one number and one date.

1. Pull three months of personal statements and work out what your household actually needs.
2. Work out your average monthly revenue over the last six months, minus costs, minus tax.
3. Set your wage at what the business can cover today, even if it's less than you want.
4. Open the tax account and the buffer account. Two accounts, ten minutes.
5. Pick your pay day and set the transfer as recurring.

That's the Making Money Map: know exactly where you are, then build the plan from there. Then it becomes a habit that runs itself, which is where the calm actually comes from.

The first pay run feels strange. The third one feels normal. By the sixth you will wonder how you ran a business any other way.

You're not behind. You were never taught this, and it was never going to sort itself out by working harder.

Do this next

If you want to work out your number properly and set it up with someone showing you exactly what to do, come and do it inside the free 4-Day Money Making Method Challenge.

Four days, real numbers, your business. You'll leave with a wage figure you trust and the accounts set up to pay it.

Join the waitlist for the next Money Making Method Challenge

Erin Davis is a money coach for women in business, with 30 years of financial expertise and an accounting background. This article is general information, not personal financial or tax advice. Your business structure changes how you take money out and how it's taxed, so check your specific situation with your accountant.