Monthly bookkeeping for owner-run businesses in Ottawa
Ontario terms, recorded the same way every time
An Ottawa business keeps its books on Ontario terms. A year of those books can be hard to add up even when no single entry in it is wrong. The cause is the same kind of entry recorded three different ways across the year, so that nobody can total it without redoing it.
HST is the clearest case. Collected on a sale, paid on a purchase, sometimes included in a price and sometimes added to it, it ends up scattered across accounts unless it is recorded one way from the first transaction. Recorded consistently, the quarterly figure is a total the books already hold. Recorded loosely, it is an afternoon of searching every quarter, and the search is where errors come from.
WSIB works the same way. Premiums belong with the payroll runs they were calculated on, and recorded there, they reconcile. Recorded as a lump when the bill arrives, they float free of the wages they describe.
What is kept, each month
- HST recorded on every sale and purchase as it happens, in the accounts your accountant expects to find it in.
- WSIB recorded with the payroll run it belongs to, not with the date the bill was paid.
- Source deductions entered as your payroll provider processes each run, and reconciled afterwards so the provider and the books agree.
- Every bank and card account reconciled to its statement.
- A quarterly package assembled for your accountant, with the sales-tax figures and the detail behind them.
Your accountant files from the package we prepare. Where a question needs a professional answer, it goes to your accountant with the facts attached, and the books record the answer once it is given.
When the work crosses the river
If your business has a client, a supplier or an employee on the Gatineau side, some transactions will not fit Ontario terms neatly. Those are flagged with what is known about them and sent to your accountant, who decides the treatment. The decision is then applied the same way to every similar transaction, so the second one is not decided again from scratch.
Who is doing this
One operator, with over 20 years of experience in bookkeeping, accounting and financial analysis, for-profit and non-profit, across a wide range of sectors, in English and in French.
Questions Ottawa business owners ask
Our sales tax is spread across several accounts. Can that be fixed?
Yes, going forward from the start date, and as far back as the clean-up reaches. The read-only look shows how scattered it is today, and that decides how much of the history is worth correcting rather than simply noting.
We work in English but some clients write to us in French.
The books can be kept in English and the questions about a French invoice handled in French, by the same person. Nothing needs translating on the way through.
Do we have to change accountants?
The package is assembled for the accountant you already have, in the form they ask for. If there is no accountant today, we look after year-end and tax season with a licensed CPA partner we work with, through us.
One next step
A fifteen-minute call about your month, at no cost. Ask for a call.