Bookkeeping for Windsor businesses

Two currencies, reconciled every month

The Detroit River is a short crossing, and plenty of Windsor businesses bank on both sides of it in effect, if not in fact. A typical set-up is a US-dollar account at a Canadian bank for customer receipts, a US card for fuel or supplies, a Canadian operating account for everything else. Each has to be reconciled to its own statement in its own currency, then carried into the books in Canadian dollars. When that is left to year-end, the exchange differences get lumped into one unexplained number and nobody can say whether the business made or lost money on the currency.

Done monthly, it is routine. Invoices are recorded at a consistent rate, receipts at the rate on the day they clear, and the open US-dollar balances are revalued at month-end. The result is a foreign exchange gain or loss you can see and explain. Why bank reconciliation matters covers the basic discipline behind it.

Exports, zero-rating and a clean HST return

Ontario’s 13% HST is one tax on one return, and it is fully recoverable through input tax credits. The Windsor twist is the sales side. Goods shipped to a customer in Michigan or Ohio are generally zero-rated: no HST is charged, the sale still goes on the return, and the credits on your inputs are still claimed. A ledger that codes those sales as exempt, or leaves them out, produces a return that looks odd to the CRA and can cost you credits. We code each sale by where it goes, and keep the bill of lading or customs record that proves export beside the invoice. Zero-rated versus exempt explains why the difference matters, and input tax credits covers what you can recover.

Inventory and job costs for the shops that make things

Essex County builds things. A mould shop carries steel and part-finished tools; a retailer carries stock on the shelf; a contractor carries materials allocated to jobs. For each, the monthly books have to separate the cost of what was sold from the cost of what is still sitting there, or the profit figure moves around for no real reason. We set up a costing structure that suits the business, whether that is jobs in progress for a Windsor manufacturer or counted stock for a Windsor retailer, and keep it consistent from month to month.

Seasonal cash in Essex County

Several of the county’s main sectors spend heavily long before they are paid. A Leamington or Kingsville greenhouse heats, plants and hires through the winter before the first crop ships. A Windsor contractor bills in stages and waits on a 10% holdback under Ontario’s Construction Act. Monthly books show those gaps while there is still time to arrange financing or adjust a payment schedule. Books kept once a year only show them afterwards. Managing cash flow in a seasonal business goes further.

The dates the ledger should carry

Good books hold more than transactions. An Ontario corporation files an annual return through the Ontario Business Registry within six months of year-end, separate from anything the CRA sends. Employers who expect to pass the Employer Health Tax exemption should accrue the tax as payroll runs rather than meet it in one charge. WSIB premiums are reported on their own schedule. We keep all three on the same calendar as the HST return and the corporate year-end, so none of them surfaces late. Once there are employees, payroll services in Windsor covers the pay run itself.

Records that feed other filings

Some Windsor ledgers do double duty. A cross-border carrier’s fuel purchases and kilometres by jurisdiction are the raw material for its IFTA return, so fuel receipts are coded by state or province as they come in rather than sorted in a rush at quarter-end. A greenhouse’s energy bills, the largest cost many growers carry, are split between heating, lighting and any electricity sold back, so the grower can see the real cost of a crop. A contractor’s payments to subcontractors are tagged as they are made, which turns the annual T5018 slip into a report rather than a reconstruction. Setting these up at the start costs little; rebuilding them from a year of loose receipts is where catch-up fees come from. The Windsor trucking page explains the carrier side in more detail.

What monthly bookkeeping includes

Every month: bank, card and US-dollar accounts reconciled, transactions coded, receipts matched, and payables and receivables aged so you can see who owes you. Each filing period: the HST return prepared and filed from the reconciled ledger. At year-end: the books closed and handed to the corporate tax return without a second clean-up. Monthly bookkeeping starts at $300 a month, with GST/HST filing included, and the fee is fixed in writing. If the books are already behind, catch-up bookkeeping brings them current first. See the pricing page for the full schedule.

Remote bookkeeping from Abbotsford

EverStone is a one-CPA firm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, serving Windsor entirely online. There is no Windsor office and no local staff. Bank and card feeds come in electronically, receipts and statements arrive through a secure upload link, and the ledger sits in software you can log into yourself. HST is administered federally, so nothing about the work depends on being in Ontario.