Trades accountant in North Vancouver

The year-end covers the T2 with Schedule 1 and Schedule 50, the CCA schedule, the small business deduction, T4 or T5 slips for the owner’s pay, and the instalments for the year ahead.

Hidden conditions and how the contract is written

Open a wall in a sixty-year-old North Shore house and the scope often changes. Rock where the plan showed soil, a failing retaining wall, or drainage that has been running under the slab for years. Each discovery becomes a change order, and each change order is revenue, cost and sometimes GST timing that the books must follow.

How the contract is written decides how that flows through. A fixed-price job with a clear change-order process keeps the original margin visible and prices the surprises separately. A cost-plus job needs costs captured completely and promptly, because every missed invoice is margin given away. Either works; mixing the two on one job without saying so does not. The job margin work shows where a job really made money.

Deposits, progress billing and GST timing

North Shore homeowners usually pay a deposit before work starts, and longer jobs bill in stages. GST generally becomes payable on the earlier of the invoice date and the date of payment. A deposit taken in March can therefore put remittable GST in your hands months before the work it relates to is done.

Deposits are not earned revenue either. On a job running across a fiscal year-end, work performed but not yet billed is earned, and money billed ahead of the work is not. That cut-off decides the year’s profit and the T2 that follows. Setting the GST portion of every deposit aside on the day it arrives avoids the shortfall at filing time.

PST on what you install

In BC a contractor who supplies and installs materials into real property generally pays PST on those materials, at 7%, as the end user. The PST is a job cost, not something recovered later. It belongs in the job’s materials figure, and it should be in the quote. Selling materials on their own, without installing them, is different and generally means charging PST to the customer. A company that does both needs a PST registration and a clean split between the two kinds of sale. See the BC PST guide and construction accounting in BC.

Subtrades: T5018 slips and clearance letters

A renovation on a steep lot often brings in excavators, concrete crews, drainage specialists and finishing trades in quick succession. Payments to subtrades for construction services are reported on T5018 slips, due six months after the reporting period. That only works if subtrade payments are coded separately from materials when they are entered.

Before paying a subtrade, get a WorkSafeBC clearance letter. If a contractor you paid was not registered or behind on premiums, the liability can move to you. Short engagements make both habits more important, not less. See the T5018 subcontractor tracker and subcontractor or employee.

Trucks, tools and the bridge commute

A North Shore trades company runs vehicles that work hard: loaded trucks on steep residential streets, and crews crossing the Lions Gate or Second Narrows bridges between jobs. Trucks, trailers and tools go on the CCA schedule in the right class. A vehicle log separating business from personal kilometres supports the claim, and personal use of a company truck is a taxable benefit. Travel between job sites is business use; the drive from home to the first site generally is not. The mileage and vehicle log is the simplest way to keep it.

Rain, slope and a lumpy year

North Shore weather shapes the work calendar. Excavation and exterior jobs on steep ground slow down in the wettest months, and interior work fills the gap. The result is uneven cash: big deposits in spring, heavy subtrade bills in summer, and thinner invoicing over the winter.

Two habits smooth it. Keep GST, PST and source deductions in a separate account as they are collected, so a quiet January does not meet a remittance it cannot cover. And settle the owner’s pay for the year in the fall, once the season’s profit is known, so salary or dividends are set before the year-end rather than reconstructed afterwards. The salary versus dividends calculator shows the trade-off for your numbers.

What is covered

One Chartered Professional Accountant handles the whole file:

• Deposit, progress billing and change-order tracking by job
• Year-end cut-off on jobs that span two fiscal years
• GST returns and BC PST on installed materials and material sales
• T5018 information returns and WorkSafeBC clearance checks
• Payroll for crews, with records of employment and T4 slips
• T2 corporate return and year-end financial statements

Payroll runs through payroll in North Vancouver, and the monthly books through North Vancouver bookkeeping.

Remote, and there is no North Vancouver location

EverStone has one base, in Abbotsford. Every engagement runs online: email first, video meetings when they help, e-signature and a secure upload link for receipts and bank statements. For a contractor who spends the day on a hillside job site, that means sending photos of invoices from the truck rather than finding time for a meeting. The same CPA prepares the return and answers questions during the year.