Flexi-wage for self-employment

Before you apply

Three exclusions end it before you start, and they are the ones people get caught by. You cannot get this if you are restarting a business you have owned before, if you are already running an established business that is struggling financially, or if you are currently bankrupt. It is for a new venture, not a rescue.

Work and Income do not publish an amount anywhere on this page, which is why every other website quotes a different figure. Take the number from your case manager, not from a blog.

Two other payments sit alongside it and are worth asking about in the same appointment. The Business Training and Advice Grant is up to $5,000 toward developing a business plan or training in business skills, and it can cover a business adviser. The Self-Employment start-up payment helps with essential start-up costs — furniture, or your first lot of stock.

The process has four steps and the business plan is the whole thing. You book an appointment, submit your business idea with market research, marketing, competition, finance, operations and risk planning, meet again to work through it, and then your plan goes to an independent assessor. Approval hangs on that assessment, so the plan is where the effort goes. Work and Income point at the business.govt.nz guide for writing one.

If you get it, claims are four-weekly and there is a mid-project financial report due within the first 12 to 20 weeks. It has to show productivity, actual cash flow, how you are tracking against the original plan, and cash flow expectations for the next six months. An independent person reviews that too. Budget time for it.

Not Māori-specific, but it is one of very few places that will fund someone with an idea and no trading history — which is where most pakihi funding will not go.