Bookkeeping for the businesses I know best
Bookkeeping by industry
Trades & contractors
Job costs, lien holdbacks, T5018 slips for subtrades and crew payroll with construction vacation pay. For plumbers, electricians, renovators and other trades who’d rather be on site than in the books.
Auto repair shops
Parts supplier statements reconciled, parts and labour recorded with GST, equipment and inventory ready for year-end. Built around the payables side I spent years doing.
Trucking & owner-operators
Fuel and trip records organized for IFTA quarters, long-haul meal logs kept, trucks recorded as assets. Remote by design, so your books follow you down the road.
Salons, estheticians & spas
Employees and chair renters kept straight, tips handled correctly, retail product sales and GST recorded. For salons, spas and home studios alike.
Landlords & rental owners
Rent and expenses tracked property by property, improvements separated from repairs, year-end ready. Whether you own one suite or manage several buildings.
Holding companies
Quiet books kept right every year, related-party balances clear, dividends recorded properly. Even an inactive corporation files a return every year.
What changes from industry to industry
The core of good bookkeeping is the same everywhere: every account reconciled, every transaction categorized, receipts kept, and reports you can read. What changes is where the trouble usually hides.
For a contractor it’s holdbacks and subtrade payments. For a trucker it’s fuel and distance records. For a salon it’s whether stylists are employees, and how tips are handled. For a landlord it’s keeping each property separate. Knowing where to look first is what saves time, and money, on the books.
Plenty of businesses don’t fit neatly into one box: a contractor who also owns a rental property, or a salon owner with a holding company behind the business. That’s normal, and each set of books gets kept separate and clear.
Each page below covers the rules worth knowing for that industry, sourced from the CRA, the Government of Alberta and the relevant regulators, in plain English.
Not on the list?
These are the industries I’ve worked in most, but they aren’t the only ones. If you run a small, owner-operated business (including sole proprietors with no employees at all), the same approach applies: catch up, keep it current, and explain it in plain English. If your industry has something unusual about it, tell me when you get in touch. If it’s something I haven’t handled before, I’ll say so, and we’ll decide together whether I’m the right fit. That’s the honest version of “I don’t know, let’s figure it out.”
See every bookkeeping serviceLet’s get your books level.
Tell me where things stand, even if it’s messy, and I’ll tell you honestly what it’ll take to catch up and keep it that way. Every quote is confirmed after a free review of your books.
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