Monthly bookkeeping services in BC
Bookkeeping done once a year is a reconstruction. Done every month it is a record, and the difference shows up in what the year end costs and what you knew while the year was still running.
Quick answer: Monthly bookkeeping means every account reconciled each month, not just the bank: transactions coded consistently, sales tax filed on schedule, payroll run and remitted, and a set of books that closes at year end rather than being rebuilt. From $300 a month, scaling with transaction volume.
Who does the work: a Chartered Professional Accountant prepares and reviews your file and answers your questions, from the first quote to the filed return. About EverStone CPA.
Fees are published: see fixed-fee bookkeeping on our pricing page.
Monthly accounting, in one view
What a monthly engagement covers, and what is priced separately.
Who it suits
- Businesses with steady monthly transactions
- Owners doing the books at night, or whose bookkeeper left
- Companies that want the year-end prepared from clean records
What is included
- Bank, card and loan accounts reconciled monthly
- Consistent coding to a chart of accounts built for you
- GST/HST and PST filed on your period, where registered
- A closing package each month
- Year-end statements and T2 can be included in the fee
Outside the standard scope
- Bringing prior months current (quoted separately)
- Bookkeeping for additional companies, quoted on their own
- Your accounting software subscription
- Controller or CFO reporting
What you provide
- Read-only bank and card feeds, or monthly statements
- Receipts and bills, uploaded or photographed
- Payroll changes before each pay run
- Answers to a short list of questions each month
How it works
- Request a quote with your monthly volume
- Scope and a fixed monthly fee in writing
- Any cleanup scoped and quoted on its own
- Monthly close, then year-end from closed books
What affects the fee
- Transactions a month and number of accounts
- Payroll: employees and pay frequency
- Sales tax registrations and filing frequency
- Condition of the books on day one
Bookkeeping starts at $300 a month. Payroll and sales tax are priced in where they apply.
What is included
- Every account reconciled monthly — bank, credit cards, loans, and the balance sheet accounts nobody usually checks.
- Consistent coding against a chart of accounts built for your business rather than the software default.
- Sales tax prepared and filed on your reporting period.
- Payroll run and remitted, with the slips at year end.
- A closing package each month, so the year end starts from a closed file.
- One accountant who knows the file, rather than a queue.
What it changes at year end
A year end prepared from monthly books costs less and takes less of your time, because the questions were answered in the month they arose rather than nine months later. It also means the adjusting entries are small, which is the difference between the year confirming what you thought and the year surprising you.
Where the books are behind, that is a separate piece of work first. Catch-up bookkeeping brings them current and is quoted on its own.
When monthly is not enough
Bookkeeping records what happened. It does not tell you whether the result is right or what to do about it. Where someone outside the business now reads your figures, or decisions are being made on the bank balance, the next rung is oversight rather than more bookkeeping — bookkeeper, controller or CFO sets out the difference.
What a month of bookkeeping actually contains
“Monthly bookkeeping” covers anything from typing in receipts to a closed set of accounts. This is what ours includes each month, and what each step is for.
| Each month | What it feeds |
|---|---|
| Bank and credit card accounts reconciled to the statements | Every other figure; an unreconciled account makes the rest guesswork |
| Income and expenses coded, receipts matched | The monthly profit and loss, and the T2 at year-end |
| GST/HST coded on every transaction | The GST/HST return (GST34), and input tax credits that survive a review |
| Payroll and source deductions matched to remittances | Clean T4 slips in February, and no PIER letter from the CRA |
| Subcontractor payments tracked | T5018 slips for construction businesses |
| Equipment and vehicle purchases flagged | Capital cost allowance (CCA) on the T2, instead of a lost deduction |
| Shareholder loan account kept current | A year-end without a surprise taxable benefit |
At the end of each month you get the profit and loss and balance sheet, with anything unusual flagged in plain language. At year-end the books arrive at the T2 already closed, so the financial statements — usually a CSRS 4200 compilation — take days, not weeks.
What we need from you
- Read-only access to the bank and card feeds, or monthly statements
- Receipts and supplier invoices, photographed or forwarded as they arrive
- A short answer when we ask what a transaction was, usually a few a month
Monthly bookkeeping starts from $300 a month, and the fee is fixed in writing after we review your enquiry, based on volume and how many accounts there are — see pricing. GST/HST filing is included.
Software, access, and switching from your current bookkeeper
We work in QuickBooks Online and Xero, inside your own file, so the books stay yours if you ever leave. Bank and card feeds are connected read-only: we can see transactions, not move money.
Switching is simpler than most owners expect. We ask for the last reconciled month, the opening balances, and the login to the existing file; the previous bookkeeper does not need to be involved beyond that. The first month usually includes a clean-up — unreconciled items, duplicated transactions, a shareholder loan account that has drifted — which we quote separately if it is more than a few hours.
Records are kept for six years, as the CRA requires, and at year-end everything the T2 needs is already in the file.
Why monthly, rather than once a year
Books done once a year are books reconstructed from memory: the receipt that has faded, the transfer nobody can explain, the invoice that was never sent. Done monthly, each question is asked while the answer is still known. It also means the GST/HST return, payroll remittances and instalments are prepared from reconciled figures rather than estimates, and that a decision in October — hiring, buying equipment, paying a bonus — is made against real numbers instead of last year’s. And when a lender, a buyer or the CRA asks for figures mid-year, they already exist and have already been checked.
Who this is for, and who it is not
A good fit: an incorporated business past the point where the owner can keep the books at the kitchen table, especially one with payroll, sales tax and more than a couple of hundred transactions a month.
Not a fit: a business with almost no transactions, where an annual clean-up costs less than twelve monthly closes and loses nothing that matters. In either case we say so on the first call rather than quoting for work you do not need.
For a figure before we talk, the fee estimate tool turns the published fees into a monthly number for your business.
Common questions about monthly bookkeeping
Which software do you work in?+
Can we keep our own bookkeeper?+
How much does it cost?+
What if we only want the year end?+
Which bookkeeping software do you work in?+
The forms and the dates
A monthly close means every bank and card account reconciled to the statement, sales tax coded so the GST34 and the BC PST return can be filed from the ledger, payroll posted from the PD7A remittance, and a set of statements — profit and loss, balance sheet, aged receivables — sent on a fixed date. Year-end then starts from a closed December rather than from a shoebox.
Who this is for in the Fraser Valley
The monthly files are Fraser Valley operating businesses: Abbotsford and Chilliwack trades and construction with progress billing and holdbacks, Langley and Surrey retail with PST, Mission and Maple Ridge service businesses with payroll. Each gets the same close on the same day of the month, and the GST/PST returns and payroll remittances come out of the books rather than being assembled separately.
What it costs. Monthly bookkeeping from $300 a month, including GST/PST filing and payroll; a contractor bundle with the year-end T2 and T5018s is usually $450–$650 a month all-in. Every published fee →
Other bookkeeping and accounting work
The rest of what this covers, and the page each one is on.
Bookkeeping by city
The same monthly service, written up for the city your business is in.
- British Columbia: Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission, Langley, Surrey, Maple Ridge, Aldergrove, Fraser Valley, Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna
- Manitoba: Winnipeg
- Ontario: Toronto, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, Windsor, Oshawa, Barrie
Talk to a CPA about this
One Chartered Professional Accountant, start to finish. Fixed fees, quoted in writing before any work begins, and no obligation from a first conversation.
“…have been completing my bookkeeping, taxes and financials for the last 2 years and they have been amazing. Thank you!”