Bookkeeping vs tax filingTwo jobs two times of year
What the monthly work covers, what the year-end return covers, and what the state of your books does to the year-end bill.
Most owners here already know these are two different purchases. What is less obvious is where one stops and the other starts — which work is priced monthly, which is priced once a year, and what happens at the join when the monthly half was skipped.
That join is where the year-end invoice is decided, and it is the part nobody quotes on in advance.
What each one covers
How the work divides
What the monthly work covers
The work that runs all year: categorizing every transaction, reconciling the bank and credit card accounts, closing each month, filing GST and PST, and running payroll — source deductions, T4s, an ROE when someone leaves.
The word doing the work there is monthly. The point of bookkeeping is that the books are right as the year happens, not that someone reconstructs the year in March from a folder of receipts.
What the year-end return covers
The work that happens once the year is closed: annual financial statements, then the income tax return itself. Unincorporated, that is a T1 with the business schedule. Incorporated, a T2 and its schedules.
All of it assumes a finished set of books. Where the books are not finished, the first step of the return is bookkeeping. We quote that as its own number before we start, the same way we quote any catch-up work.
The year in between
Books assembled once a year are accurate once a year. For the other eleven months there is no margin to read, no receivable aging to chase, and no way to know what to set aside for tax.
That is the cost that does not appear on either invoice. By the time a year-end return shows the problem, the year it happened in is over and most of what could have been done about it is out of reach.
What the books do to the year-end price
The size of the year-end job depends almost entirely on what arrives. A set of books closed monthly, reconciled and categorized is a different piece of work from an unsorted year, and it is priced like one.
This is the return on monthly bookkeeping that gets left out of the comparison: it is a cost that lowers the other cost. How far depends on where you are starting from. The direction does not.
What we take on
Monthly and at year end
What we take on monthly
Bookkeeping: we categorize the transactions, reconcile the accounts, close the month, and send you the statements.
Sales tax filed for you — GST to the CRA, PST to the province — on whichever reporting periods each has assigned you.
Payroll, source deductions, T4s and ROEs, and the WorkSafeBC filing.
Catch-up on old books: we work out how far behind things are and quote a total before starting, not an hourly rate and a shrug.
What we take on at year end
T1 personal returns for sole proprietors and the self-employed, business schedule included, prepared from books kept through the year.
T2 corporate returns for CCPCs and their schedules, prepared from books that were closed monthly. Where it applies, the shareholder’s personal return is handled alongside the company’s rather than by someone else afterwards.
One firm doing both halves means the year-end return does not begin with learning your business, and does not begin with rebuilding your year.
If someone else already does your year end
Then we will do the monthly half only. Once the year closes we hand over the closed books, the statements and whatever reconciliations they ask for, direct to them, without you carrying files between two firms.
If they have questions, they can put them to us. Why a payment eleven months ago was what it was is our record to explain, not something you should be reconstructing from memory.
More on what the monthly work covers, and how the plans are scoped.
Not sure which one you need?
Tell us where your books stand and we will say which you need in your written quote.