Bookkeeping for Courtenay businesses

Monthly bookkeeping for Courtenay businesses starts from $300 a month, with GST and PST filing included in that fee. The books feed every filing that follows: the T2 or the T2125, the GST34 return and its input tax credits, the CCA schedule and the CRA instalments. If the bookkeeping is wrong, every one of those is wrong with it.

One valley, several kinds of ledger

Courtenay is the urban and cultural centre of the Comox Valley, and its downtown is the valley’s commercial and culinary hub. That puts a wide spread of businesses on the same streets: shops and cafés that take card payments all day, trades and builders who invoice by the job, professional offices that bill monthly, and farms and food producers that sell at markets and farm stands. A one-size chart of accounts fits none of them well.

We set the chart of accounts to the way the business actually earns money. A café needs daily sales split by tax and tender. A builder needs costs by job. A farm needs income by product and season. Once the structure is right, the monthly work is consistent and the reports mean something. Our guide to a small-business chart of accounts shows the starting point.

Equipment, loans and the balance sheet

Plenty of Comox Valley businesses run on financed equipment: excavators and work trucks for builders, vans for trades, tractors for farms, boats and gear on the water, kitchen equipment for restaurants. A loan payment is not an expense. It is part principal, which reduces the loan, and part interest, which is deductible. Booking the whole payment as an expense overstates costs and leaves a loan balance on the statements that never matches the lender’s.

The equipment itself goes on the balance sheet and is written off through capital cost allowance, class by class. We record each purchase, trade-in and sale as it happens, so the CCA schedule at year-end is a check rather than a reconstruction. A leased unit is treated differently again, and the lease agreement decides which way it goes.

Lenders read these statements too. A Courtenay business that finances its next truck, boat or fit-out will be asked for current financial statements, and a loan schedule that ties to the lender’s own balance makes that conversation short.

Card sales, deposits and the clearing account

A retail shop, café or service trade takes payments through a card terminal, and the processor deposits the money a day or two later, less its fees. The deposit is not the sale. Booking deposits as revenue understates sales, hides the fees and makes the GST return wrong. A clearing account that takes the gross sale in and the fees and deposits out keeps it straight, and when it does not return to nil, a payment has gone astray. We reconcile it monthly, alongside the bank and the credit cards. Why bank reconciliation matters explains the habit.

GST and PST kept in separate accounts

BC charges 5% GST and 7% PST as two distinct taxes. GST paid on supplies, fuel, parts and equipment usually comes back as an input tax credit. PST paid on the same purchases generally does not, so it belongs in the cost of the item rather than in a receivable. Combining the two in one account makes both returns unreliable.

On the sales side, a business that sells taxable goods, such as parts, retail stock or liquor, collects PST and files with the province on its own schedule. A contractor installing materials into a building usually pays PST as the consumer instead. Most basic food sold by a farm is zero-rated for GST, which still needs recording correctly. The BC PST guide covers who must register.

How the books differ across Courtenay’s main industries

The same monthly routine looks different depending on what the business does.

• Construction: job costing, progress billings, holdbacks receivable and subcontractor payments for the T5018.
• Trades: many small invoices, card settlements, the van and parts sold with PST.
• Restaurants: daily point-of-sale totals matched to card deposits, tips and liquor inventory.
• Farms: market and farm-gate sales, input costs by season, and farm equipment.
• Realtors: brokerage statements, GST on commission, and vehicle and marketing costs.

Seasonal cash and the remittance calendar

The Comox Valley has more than one busy season. Building, farming and marine tourism peak in the warm months, while Mount Washington Alpine Resort brings winter visitors through the valley. Either way, cash arrives unevenly while GST, PST and payroll remittances arrive on a fixed calendar.

Current books make the gap visible in time to act. We flag what is owed and when, so sales tax collected in a busy month is set aside rather than spent. Cash flow for a seasonal business sets out the method, and GST filing deadlines lists the dates by filing period.

Books that fell behind

A busy season is when receipts pile up in a van, a site trailer or a kitchen office. If your books are months or years behind, catch-up work brings them current from bank and card statements, supplier accounts and whatever records exist. Once the backlog is cleared, the monthly fee takes over and the year-end stops being a scramble. Records must be kept for six years, so the catch-up also puts them in order for any CRA review.

What the monthly fee covers

The fee is fixed in writing before work starts and does not change because you emailed a question. It covers bank and card reconciliation, coding to your chart of accounts, GST and PST returns on your filing schedule, a monthly report, and a clean hand-off to the year-end T2. Payroll can be added for a business with employees. A sample quote shows what the written fee looks like.

Remote bookkeeping

EverStone is a fully virtual, one-CPA firm. There is no Courtenay office and no local staff. Bank, card and supplier feeds arrive electronically, documents come in through a secure upload link, and the equipment and loan schedules are kept monthly rather than rebuilt at year-end. Questions go by email first, with a video meeting when it helps.

The moment there are employees, payroll in Courtenay becomes the recurring obligation. For the year-end itself, see corporate tax in Courtenay, and for the owner’s return, personal tax in Courtenay.