Detailed Bookkeeping

Precision bookkeeping for businesses of every size

• Receipts that support the claim

  The CRA's documentary rules for input tax credits work in three bands. Under $30 you need the supplier's name and the date and the total. From $30 to under $150 you also need the supplier's GST/HST registration number and the tax amount. At $150 and over you need the buyer's name, the terms of payment, and a description of the supply. A photo of a card slip clears none of the second two.

• Sales tax filed on the right cycle

  Monthly and quarterly filers have one month after the period ends to both file and pay. Annual filers usually have three months after the fiscal year end, except a sole proprietor with a 31 December year end and business income, who pays by 30 April and files by 15 June. A nil period still needs a return. I keep the cycle straight so the filing is transcription, not reconstruction.

• Payroll remitted on the day it is due

  A regular remitter pays by the 15th of the following month. The penalty ladder is steep and starts immediately: 3% at 1 to 3 days late, 5% at 4 or 5 days, 7% at 6 or 7, and 10% beyond a week or where nothing is remitted at all. T4s are due the last day of February. None of that is expensive if the close happens on time, and all of it is if it does not.

• Records the CRA can actually reach

  You must keep records six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, and keep them at your place of business or residence in Canada unless the CRA gives you written permission otherwise. Records held on a server outside Canada and read from a browser here do not count as kept in Canada. That catches more cloud-based small businesses than anyone expects, and it is fixable before it matters.

• The close is where problems surface

  A monthly close finds the receivable that has not moved in ninety days, the subscription that doubled, and the sales tax that is no longer in the account. Finding those in month two rather than month fourteen is most of what you are paying for. I flag them in writing at the close, not once a year at the return.

Bookkeeping is not administrative overhead. It is the evidence layer under every tax filing, every credit claim and every financing conversation you will have, and the CRA assesses it as evidence. Get the month right and the year end stops being an excavation.

• Small and medium businessFrom $250 / month
• Large corporationCustom quote

Monthly bookkeeping is priced on transaction volume and complexity. Larger corporations are quoted individually.

• Customizable to fit needs
• Efficient, time-saving service
• Free initial consultation

What is included at $250 a month?

Monthly categorisation and reconciliation of your accounts, receipt matching, and a profit and loss and balance sheet you can actually read. GST/HST and payroll figures are reconciled as part of the close so the filings are transcription rather than reconstruction. Volume and complexity move the price, and it is quoted before work starts.

When do I have to register for GST/HST?

You stop being a small supplier once your worldwide taxable supplies pass $30,000. If you cross it inside a single calendar quarter, you have to charge tax on the very sale that took you over the line, and register within 29 days of that effective date. If you cross it across four consecutive quarters instead, you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month following that quarter. People usually discover this months late, having charged nothing, and the tax still has to come from somewhere.

I have not done books in a year. Is that a problem?

It is common and it is fixable. The first catch-up close takes longer than a routine month, sometimes a full day of work, and it is quoted separately. After that the monthly routine is one to two hours. One point worth knowing before you delay further: where a return is filed late, the six-year record retention clock runs from the date you actually file it, not from the year end, so the paperwork obligation stretches with the delay.

What does filing GST/HST late actually cost?

The late-filing penalty is calculated as A plus B times C, where A is 1% of the amount owing, B is 25% of A, and C is the number of complete months the return is overdue up to a maximum of 12. There is no late-filing penalty if you owe nothing or are owed a refund. Two flat penalties are easier to trip: $100 the first time you file on paper when you were required to file electronically and $250 for each one after that, and $250 for ignoring a demand to file.

Do you handle payroll?

Yes, including source deduction remittances and year-end T4s. A regular remitter, meaning an average monthly withholding under $25,000, remits by the 15th of the following month. A small employer with a clean compliance record may qualify to remit quarterly, on 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January, which is worth asking about because it frees up cash without changing anything you owe. T4 slips are due the last day of February, and a small employer filing 1 to 5 slips late faces a flat $100.

What happens if the CRA reviews my payroll or sales tax account?

That is a trust accounts examination, and it is narrower than a tax audit: it looks only at payroll and GST/HST. The CRA says the process generally runs about 60 days. It is triggered by patterns rather than bad luck, including late or missed remittances, late T4 or GST/HST filings, no response to a discrepancy notice, and a shareholder trying to recharacterise pay as dividends after the fact. Every one of those is a bookkeeping problem before it is a tax problem.

Which software do you work in?

Whatever you already use, provided it supports connected bank feeds and attaching receipts to transactions. If you are choosing, the requirements that matter are bank feeds, receipt capture, sales tax handling that understands Canadian GST/HST, an export you own, and a clear answer on where the data physically lives. I will not push you onto a product for the sake of it.

What do you actually need from me each month?

Read-only bank and credit card access or the statements, the receipts and supplier invoices, any payroll changes, and a note on anything unusual: an owner draw, a loan, an asset purchase, a personal expense that went through the business card. That last category is the largest source of year-end adjustments in owner-managed businesses, because to the software it looks like an ordinary transaction.

Will you tell me if something looks wrong?

That is most of the value. I would rather send you an uncomfortable note in month two than a large adjusting entry in month fourteen. If a number is going the wrong way, you will hear about it while there is still time to act on it.