Monthly bookkeeping for Leduc businesses

The books feed every filing that follows: the T2 and AT1 or the T2125, the GST return and its input tax credits, the CCA schedule, T4 slips and the CRA instalments.

One sales tax, one account, one return

Alberta has no provincial sales tax, so a Leduc ledger carries a single 5% GST account rather than the two that a business in British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Manitoba maintains. There is no second registration, no second filing cycle and no non-recoverable provincial tax to push into cost of goods sold or capitalize into equipment. That removes a real source of coding errors. The risk that remains is complacency: a single GST account works only while all the selling happens inside Alberta, and only while every purchase is coded with its tax correctly so the input tax credits can be supported.

Costing by job, product line or unit

The City of Leduc describes its economy around advanced manufacturing, value-added food production, transportation and warehousing, and energy. Businesses in those sectors rarely make money evenly. A fabrication shop earns on some jobs and loses on others; a food processor’s margin differs by product; a carrier’s profit depends on which lanes and which units. A ledger that records only total revenue and total costs cannot show any of that.

The fix is structural and cheap if done at the start: classes, locations or job codes set up so that every sale and every direct cost lands against the job, product or unit it belongs to. Labour, materials, subcontract and equipment time are separated at entry. The monthly report then answers the question owners actually ask — which work is worth taking — rather than just whether the bank balance went up.

Inventory and work in progress at month end

Manufacturers, processors and parts-heavy service firms carry inventory, and contractors carry work that is started but not billed. Both affect profit directly. If raw materials are expensed as bought rather than as used, a month with a big steel or packaging order looks like a loss and the next one like a windfall. If unbilled work is ignored, the year end understates income in one year and overstates it in the next. We agree a practical method with you: periodic counts where they make sense, a work-in-progress schedule for open jobs, and a year-end cut-off that puts revenue and its costs in the same period.

Fleets, equipment and the fixed asset register

Trucks, trailers, forklifts, presses and shop equipment are capital assets, not expenses. Each purchase is recorded with its in-service date and financing, so the CCA schedule at year end is built from the ledger rather than reconstructed from invoices. Loan and lease payments are split between principal and interest. Disposals and trade-ins are recorded when they happen, with the proceeds, because a trade-in with no cash moving is the transaction most often missed — and missing it leaves the CCA pools wrong for every year after. Fuel cards, repairs and parts are coded to the unit where that information is useful.

The books have to close for two returns

Alberta administers its own corporate income tax, so a Leduc corporation files a federal T2 and a separate AT1 with Alberta Tax and Revenue Administration. Both are prepared from the same closed year end, which raises the standard the bookkeeping has to meet: a trial balance good enough for one return but adjusted informally for the other produces two filings that no longer agree. Closing the year once, properly, and preparing both returns from that single set of figures keeps them reconciled. Leduc corporate tax covers the two-return structure.

Payroll entries that match the remittances

Alberta levies no employer health tax, so a Leduc payroll carries federal source deductions and WCB-Alberta premiums with no provincial levy alongside them. Each pay run still needs its full entry — gross wages, deductions withheld, employer CPP and EI, and the resulting remittance liability — rather than a single net withdrawal from the bank. Done that way, the liability clears to zero when each remittance is paid and the T4 summary agrees with the ledger in February. Payroll remittances covers the schedule.

Receivables when a few customers matter most

Many Leduc suppliers sell to a handful of large customers in the business parks or the wider Edmonton region, often on long payment terms. Where most revenue comes from two or three accounts, the aged receivables listing is the most important management report the business produces. Reviewed monthly, it shows which accounts are drifting while there is still commercial room to act; reviewed annually, it shows which ones will not be collected. Collecting receivables sets out a workable routine.

Working with a firm that is fully online

EverStone is a fully virtual, one-CPA firm. There is no Leduc office and no local staff. Bank and card feeds arrive electronically, receipts and supplier bills come through a secure upload link, and the file lives in cloud accounting software you hold your own login to. What matters is that one CPA holds both the monthly ledger and the year end, so nothing is handed across a gap between a bookkeeper and an accountant.

Where the decisions have outgrown the reporting, fractional CFO work in Leduc is the next step.

Keeping the books accurately and knowing what they mean are different jobs, and it is worth being deliberate about where bookkeeping stops being the answer.

Bookkeeping elsewhere in Alberta

The same service, online and at the same published fees, for owners in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, St. Albert and Red Deer.