Bookkeeping for Hamilton businesses

Books that follow the job, not just the bank

A lot of Hamilton businesses sell work, not products. A fabrication shop in the east end quotes a run of brackets, a contractor on the Mountain bids a basement, a trucking outfit off the QEW prices a lane. The bank feed shows the money moving. It does not show which job the money belonged to. Monthly bookkeeping that codes materials, subcontract costs and hours to a job is what lets you see, while there is still time to change the price, which kind of work is carrying the business and which is quietly losing money.

That is a set-up decision, not a year-end one. Classes, projects or tracking categories get built into the chart of accounts once, and every bill after that lands in the right place. The chart of accounts guide shows how the structure is usually laid out.

One HST account, and what a Hamilton business actually buys

Ontario harmonised its sales tax with the GST, so the ledger carries a single 13% HST account and the provincial part is recovered the same way as the federal part. For a business buying steel, fuel, tooling and equipment, those input tax credits are large, and a missed one is real money rather than rounding.

That same purchasing profile is why the quick method rarely suits a Hamilton manufacturer or contractor. It trades away input tax credits for a simpler remittance, which helps a consultant with few purchases and hurts a shop that buys most of what it sells. We look at the numbers once, record the choice, and code every month to match it.

Holdbacks and progress draws in the receivables ledger

Under Ontario’s Construction Act the payer holds back 10% of the value of work until the holdback period runs out. For a contractor or a trade supplying a site, that money is earned and invoiced but not yet payable. If it sits in ordinary receivables it makes the aged listing look worse than it is, and it hides the holdbacks that have actually become due and have not been chased. We keep holdback receivable as its own account, job by job, so the release dates are visible and the invoice for release goes out on time.

The shareholder loan account, kept honest

In an owner-managed Hamilton company the owner’s own spending and the company’s spending tend to meet on one card. A truck payment from the personal account, groceries on the company card, a draw taken in a slow month. Each one belongs in the shareholder loan account, and it only stays accurate if it is recorded as it happens. A balance owed to the company that is not repaid within one year after the year end is generally taxed as the owner’s income, so a loan account nobody watched can become a personal tax bill. We post those entries monthly and flag the balance well before the year end, while salary, a dividend or a repayment can still clear it. The shareholder loan tracker shows how the running balance works.

Inventory counted, not guessed

Food processors, fabricators and restaurants all carry stock, and stock is where a Hamilton set of books is most often wrong. Raw steel, packaging, finished goods and a kitchen’s dry storage all sit on the balance sheet at cost until they are used. A year-end count, valued properly and reconciled to the ledger, is what keeps profit honest. Monthly, we track purchases and cost of sales against what should be on hand so the count confirms the books rather than rewriting them. The year-end inventory count covers what the CRA expects.

Employer health tax and WSIB as monthly costs

Ontario employer health tax and WSIB premiums are employer costs on top of wages. They are not deductions from anyone’s pay, so they never show up in the payroll register unless someone puts them there. We accrue both as payroll runs. For an employer approaching the employer health tax exemption, that stops a single unbudgeted charge from landing at the end of the year. It also keeps the monthly margin on a labour-heavy job from looking better than it really is.

The registry return on the same calendar

Every Ontario corporation files an annual return through the Ontario Business Registry within six months of its fiscal year end. It is a registry filing, not a tax filing, so it never arrives as a CRA letter and is easy to forget. We put it on the same calendar as the T2 and the balance-due date, so a lender asking for a certificate of status does not turn up a lapsed file.

How the monthly close runs from Abbotsford

EverStone is a one-CPA firm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, serving Hamilton remotely. There is no Hamilton office. Bank and card feeds connect to cloud accounting software you own the login to, bills and receipts come in through a secure upload link, and questions go by email or a short video call. Hamilton is three hours ahead of us, so your end-of-day upload is waiting when our morning starts. The books close monthly, the HST return files on its own cycle, and nothing waits for a box of paper in April.

What it costs

Monthly bookkeeping starts at $300 a month, with the GST/HST return included. A Hamilton trades corporation that wants bookkeeping, payroll and the year-end T2 with statements in one engagement typically pays $450–$650 a month. Every fee is fixed in writing before work starts. Published pricing sets out what each service covers, and books that have fallen behind can be caught up first through catch-up work.

Where there are employees, payroll in Hamilton covers the remittances and T4s. The year end this ledger feeds is corporate tax in Hamilton.