Bookkeeping for Windsor businesses

Two currencies, reconciled every month

Many Windsor businesses effectively bank on both sides of the river: a US-dollar account at a Canadian bank for receipts, a US card for fuel or supplies, a Canadian operating account for the rest. Each must be reconciled in its own currency and carried into the books in Canadian dollars. Left to year-end, exchange differences become one unexplained number.

Monthly, it is routine: invoices at a consistent rate, receipts at the clearing-day rate, open US-dollar balances revalued at month-end, giving a foreign exchange gain or loss you can explain. See Why bank reconciliation matters.

Exports, zero-rating and a clean HST return

Ontario’s 13% HST is one tax, fully recoverable through input tax credits. Windsor’s twist is sales: goods shipped to Michigan or Ohio are generally zero-rated — no HST charged, but the sale still goes on the return and input credits are still claimed. Coding them as exempt, or leaving them out, makes the return look odd 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 stock, a contractor job materials. Monthly books must separate the cost of what sold from what remains, or profit swings for no reason. We set up costing to suit, jobs in progress for a Windsor manufacturer or counted stock for a Windsor retailer, and keep it consistent.

Seasonal cash in Essex County

Some sectors spend long before being paid. A Leamington or Kingsville greenhouse heats, plants and hires through 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 time to arrange financing. Managing cash flow in a seasonal business goes further.

The dates the ledger should carry

Good books track more than transactions. An Ontario corporation files an annual return through the Ontario Business Registry within six months of year-end, apart from the CRA. Employers nearing the Employer Health Tax exemption should accrue it as payroll runs. WSIB premiums follow their own schedule. We keep all three on the HST and year-end calendar. With employees, payroll services in Windsor covers pay runs.

Records that feed other filings

Some Windsor ledgers do double duty. A cross-border carrier’s fuel and kilometres by jurisdiction feed its IFTA return, so fuel receipts are coded by state or province as they arrive. A greenhouse’s energy bills, often its largest cost, are split between heating, lighting and electricity sold back, showing a crop’s real cost.

Tagging subcontractor payments as made turns a contractor’s T5018 into a report, not a reconstruction. Setup costs little; rebuilding from a year of loose receipts is where catch-up fees come from. The Windsor trucking page covers the carrier side.

What monthly bookkeeping includes

Monthly: bank, card and US-dollar accounts reconciled, transactions coded, receipts matched, payables and receivables aged. Each filing period: the HST return filed from the reconciled ledger. Year-end: books closed and handed to the corporate tax return without a second clean-up. Bookkeeping starts at $325 a month with GST/HST filing, fixed in writing. If you are behind, catch-up bookkeeping brings the books current first. See the pricing page.

Remote bookkeeping

EverStone serves Windsor entirely online. There is no Windsor office and no local staff. Bank and card feeds arrive electronically, documents by secure upload, and the ledger sits in software you can log into. HST is federal, so nothing depends on being in Ontario.