Year-end bookkeeping in Lethbridge
Sound familiar?
- Your tax preparer keeps emailing you questions
- You hand over a box and hope for the best
- Your balances don’t match what was filed last year
- You’re not sure what your year-end even needs
What goes in a year-end package
Whoever prepares your tax return needs more than a profit & loss statement. A good year-end package answers their questions before they ask. Mine usually includes:
- Trial balance and general ledger as at your year-end
- Profit & loss statement and balance sheet
- Bank and credit card reconciliations, including the month after year-end
- Who owes you and who you owe (receivable and payable listings)
- Equipment and vehicle purchases, with the dates they went into use
- Loan and line-of-credit statements
- Payroll and GST filings for the year
- Notes on owner draws, dividends and anything unusual
Dates that cluster around year-end
Year-end rarely comes alone. For a calendar-year business, T4 and T4A slips are due the last day of February, and T5018 slips for construction businesses are due six months after the end of the reporting period (June 30 for a December year-end).
Corporations file a T2 return within six months of year-end, and even an inactive corporation has to file every year. I get the books ready for whoever files it, so their part is straightforward.
Before you hand it over
A few things only you know, and they make the biggest difference to a clean year-end. If you can tell me about these, the package is complete the first time:
- Equipment or vehicles you bought or sold during the year, with dates
- New loans, leases or lines of credit, and any that were paid off
- Money you put into the business, or took out for yourself
- Personal expenses that were paid from the business account (or the other way around)
- An inventory count at year-end, if you carry stock
Records worth keeping
The CRA generally expects you to keep business records for six years after the end of the tax year they relate to. A clean year-end package, stored with the receipts behind it, is the easiest way to have everything in one place if questions ever come up.
What’s included
- Year-end close
- the year’s books finished and closed off
- Final reconciliations
- every account matched through the last day
- Year-end package
- everything your tax preparer needs, in one place
- Preparer questions
- I answer the bookkeeping ones so you don’t have to
How year-end works
Step 1
Check the year
I review the year’s books and catch up anything that’s behind.
Step 2
Close and reconcile
Every account is reconciled through year-end, and adjustments are noted.
Step 3
Hand over
Your package goes to your tax preparer, and I handle their bookkeeping questions.
The free review of your books costs nothing. Tell me where things stand.
Year-end bookkeeping in Lethbridge
Lethbridge business licences renew every January, which makes early in the year a good moment to wrap up last year too: licence, T4s and year-end package, done together.
Plenty of local businesses have no employees at all: sole proprietors and holding companies make up a large share of registered businesses. Their year-end is short, but it still needs reconciled accounts and a clear note on owner draws or dividends before it goes to whoever files the return. And if you’re a contractor licensed in more than one town, note each licence, so those costs land in the right place in the year-end package.
If your books are already on monthly bookkeeping, year-end is mostly a final reconciliation and a tidy handover. If they’re not, we start with catch-up and finish the year from there.
For a full checklist you can work through yourself, see my year-end bookkeeping checklist.
Year-end work, from $50/hour
Year-end work is charged by the hour, from $50/hour. It’s quick when your books are already current, and quoted with the catch-up work when they’re not. Every quote is confirmed after a free review of your books.
How pricing worksKeep exploring
Questions about year-end
Do you prepare my tax return?
No. I prepare the books and the year-end package. Your tax preparer files the return, and having clean, reconciled books makes their part much easier.
Can you work with the tax preparer I already have?
Yes. You keep whoever prepares your return now. I send them the year-end package and answer their bookkeeping questions directly, so you’re not stuck in the middle relaying emails.
When should I start year-end?
As soon as your year-end bank and credit card statements are out. The package also uses the statements for the month after year-end, so we’ll plan around those, and earlier is always easier than later.
My corporation didn’t do anything this year. Do I still need year-end books?
Yes. Even an inactive corporation has to file a T2 return every year, so it still needs a set of books, even if they’re short. See holding company bookkeeping.
What if my books are behind at year-end?
Then we start with catch-up bookkeeping, bring the year current, and finish the year-end package from there.
Let’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.
Leave a message and Vanessa will call you back.