Bookkeeping for Ottawa businesses

Payroll is split before it is posted

Provincial payroll obligations follow where the work is performed, so an Ottawa business with anyone working from a Quebec address is running two provincial payroll populations rather than one. That distinction has to exist in the payroll system from the first pay run, because separating it afterwards means recalculating every period. In the ledger it means payroll accounts that can be reported by province, remittances that reconcile to the right authority, and year-end reporting that matches. Businesses that discover the split at year end usually discover it as a set of corrections rather than a reconciliation.

Sales coded by where the supply happens

Whether a supply carries Ontario’s 13% HST or a different treatment depends on place-of-supply rules rather than on which office issued the invoice. For a business working on both sides of the river that is a coding requirement, not an occasional judgement: sales need a province attached at entry so the return can be prepared from the ledger rather than from a re-reading of the invoices. It also matters for input tax credits, because tax paid under different regimes is not recovered identically. Place-of-supply rules set out how the determination is made.

Public-sector receivables age differently

Invoices to departments and agencies are not late in the way a commercial invoice is late; they move through approval, verification and payment cycles that can run long by design. Treating them as overdue produces a receivables report full of noise, and treating them as reliable produces a cash forecast that is wrong in the other direction. What works is expected-payment dating drawn from the contract terms rather than from a standard thirty days, so the aged listing distinguishes an invoice progressing normally from one that has actually stalled somewhere.

Unbilled work across a period end

Contract work delivered before a milestone is reached sits as effort with no invoice behind it, and where the ledger records nothing until billing the monthly result becomes meaningless — costs in one period, the matching revenue two periods later. Recording work in progress at the close and reversing it when the invoice is issued puts each month’s activity in that month. For a business whose contracts run across quarters this is the difference between monthly figures worth reading and a set of numbers that only make sense annually. Cash versus accrual accounting covers the principle.

Documentation on a contract file

Contract work generates obligations to retain records that outlast the ordinary tax retention period, and audit provisions in public contracts can require supporting documentation years after the work is done. That makes the bookkeeping archive part of contract compliance rather than only a tax matter. Electronic records are acceptable to the CRA provided they are readable, complete and retained for the required period, and the same discipline serves both purposes: capture at source, attached to the transaction, retained in a form somebody else could follow. Digital record-keeping requirements covers the standard.

Employer health tax on the Ontario side

Ontario levies an employer health tax on remuneration, with the rate chosen from payroll bands using total Ontario remuneration before the $1,000,000 exemption is deducted. For a business with staff in both provinces, the Ontario measure counts Ontario remuneration — so splitting a team across the river does not simply divide one provincial charge in half, it produces two separate provincial payroll positions to track. Accruing the Ontario charge monthly as payroll runs keeps it from arriving as a single unbudgeted amount.

Remote bookkeeping from Abbotsford

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm at 32615 South Fraser Way in Abbotsford, British Columbia. There is no Ottawa office and no local staff. Payroll registers, contracts and invoices arrive electronically, and the ledger is maintained monthly against them. For a file with a provincial split running through it, the useful part of a sole-practitioner engagement is that the coding decision made in month one is made by the person who will prepare the returns in month fourteen.