Straight answers, including the ones about what we don't do.

GIFI is the General Index of Financial Information, a fixed set of four-digit codes CRA uses to read the financial statements on a corporate return. Your accounts can be named anything; before a return is filed, every one of them has to be expressed as one of those codes. So the question is never whether the translation happens, only whether it happens once and deliberately, or every year under deadline. A chart built against GIFI means year-end is a filing exercise rather than a reconstruction exercise, and it means the same account lands on the same code every year, which matters because comparative figures that move when the business did not are exactly what draws a question. GIFI is a CRA schedule, so this is Canadian only. For US clients, adding or reorganizing accounts is part of ordinary monthly bookkeeping rather than a separate project.

There is no revenue threshold. Most clients happen to fall in the $250K–$10M+ annual range, above and below it too. What determines the fit is transaction volume and complexity rather than revenue, headcount or industry: a fifteen-person firm with clean, simple books is a lighter file than a three-person one running four entities and a trust account. Tell us what you are running and we will tell you exactly what it takes.

Usually, yes. The listed services cover what most clients ask for, but packages are built from the pieces you actually need and one-off work is quoted individually, software migrations, lender packages, a specific recurring report, a second opinion on somebody else's file. If it involves your numbers, ask. Where something is outside what we should be taking on, such as an audit engagement or formal representation in a tax dispute, we will say so and point you to somebody who holds the right licence.

All of them. Between us our team has worked inside the Canada Revenue Agency, Big Four public accounting and the finance teams of large publicly traded companies, across construction, real estate, professional services, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, e-commerce, transportation and health, at every size from owner-operated businesses through to Fortune 500 companies. Real estate brokerage and property management accounting are particular specialities, including RECO trust and reporting requirements. But none of that is a restriction. Whatever your industry, the core work is identical: statements kept current, bills paid, invoices out and collected, taxes filed early, and the industry-specific detail is the part we tailor to you.

Yes, and it is worth being exact about where the line falls. Available to both Canadian and US businesses: bookkeeping, accounts payable and receivable, receipt and invoice organizing, catch-up bookkeeping, month-end close, financial reporting, budgeting and high-level analysis, budget vs. actuals, depreciation schedules, real estate brokerage accounting, property management accounting, vendor and contract review, payroll recorded and reconciled from the platform you already run, and custom engagements. Canada only: payroll filing, tax filing, GST/HST filing, CRA audit readiness, and chart of accounts and GIFI mapping: all five answer to a Canadian authority, and we do not file returns for US businesses. That applies to US federal and state tax and to US payroll tax filing alike; where a US client needs those, they stay with their existing preparer or payroll provider. Recording and reconciling that payroll in the books is a different job, and it is the Payroll Bookkeeping service listed above as available in both countries. We are not a CPA firm in either country and do not issue audit, review or compilation reports.

Cash accounting, ASPE, IFRS and US GAAP: we do it all, and we work to whichever one your business actually reports under, prepared in a form an accountant can pick up directly. Plenty of smaller businesses are best served on a straightforward cash basis, and that is a legitimate answer rather than a lesser one. IFRS is not an afterthought at the other end either: it is daily work, and it comes from time spent in the finance teams of large publicly traded companies. We do not issue compilation, review or audit reports; those are licensed engagements that belong with a CPA firm, and we will say so rather than blur the line.

For day-to-day bookkeeping: QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage 300 and Sage X3. Alongside the accounting file we also work in the systems a business actually runs on: Buildium, Yardi Breeze and Yardi Voyager for property management portfolios, Lone Wolf Back Office (still widely called brokerWOLF) on the brokerage side, and Jobber, ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro for trades and field service, where the scheduling, invoicing and payments happen before anything reaches the ledger. Those are not a general ledger and are not treated as one; what they hold is reconciled into the accounting file each month. For bills and spending we work alongside Bill.com, Ramp, Expensify and Hubdoc, which your team runs and we reconcile. On payroll, we run Canadian payroll in Wagepoint and Payment Evolution; where you already run your own payroll, on Gusto, RUN Powered by ADP, ADP Workforce Now, Paychex Flex, Rippling and QuickBooks Online Payroll or anything else, we record and reconcile what it produces and it stays your platform that calculates, remits and files. Payroll filing itself is Canada only and we do not file payroll returns anywhere in the United States. For year-end and tax work, CaseWare Working Papers and TurboTax. The team has also worked in Workday and Workday Adaptive Planning inside large public company finance teams, which is where a lot of the reporting habits come from, though those are not systems a growing business is asked to run. If you are on something else, we quote a one-time migration rather than supporting arbitrary software indefinitely.

Monthly bookkeeping is a flat fee priced by transaction volume. Add-ons are priced separately so you aren't paying for services you didn't ask for. Every engagement starts with a books review so the quote reflects your actual complexity.

Fees are set in Canadian dollars, and for a US business we quote the US dollar equivalent at a fixed rate we set rather than a market feed. Either way, the fee agreed in a signed engagement is the fee you pay: it does not move with the exchange rate afterwards.

A dedicated team, overseen by the partner who owns your file. Between us we have worked inside the CRA, in Big Four public accounting, and in the finance teams of large publicly traded companies, and there are Master of Accounting graduates on the team. It matters more than it sounds: knowing how a return gets reviewed and what a reviewer looks for changes how the books get kept in the first place. Whoever does the work, a partner reviews everything before it reaches you or a tax authority, and you always know which partner owns your file.

It depends on how much cleanup is needed first. A current set of books can start on the next monthly cycle; a significant backlog means catch-up work comes first. The consultation will tell you which situation you're in.

Four things, and they are worth checking against anyone else you talk to. Bank feeds connect through the accounting platform in read-only form, we never ask for your online banking password, and nobody here can move money. Access runs through named accounts with two-factor authentication, never a shared login, so every action is attributable to a person. Documents move through the accounting platform rather than as email attachments. And we will sign your NDA if you have one; if you do not, the engagement letter already carries a confidentiality clause that binds us either way.

Yes, and it is the arrangement we prefer. We do not perform audits, reviews or compilations, and we do not take work that belongs with a CPA: so your accountant is not being replaced, they are being handed a clean file. In practice that means they get their own access, a named contact here, and books at year-end that reconcile. Most of the friction between a bookkeeper and an accountant is really a handover problem, and it is cheaper to fix in January than to discover at a filing deadline.

Remotely, for clients across Canada and the United States: every service except tax filing, GST/HST and CRA audit readiness, which are Canadian only. Your bank feeds, your accounting file and your documents all live in the cloud, so being in your office adds travel cost without adding anything to your books. We will get on a call whenever you want one, and we travel when a file genuinely calls for it. What we do not do is bill for hours sitting at a desk in your building.

We tell you, and we re-quote it before we do it. Your fee is set against a written scope from the books review, and anything outside that scope gets priced and agreed in writing first, never added to an invoice after the fact. That cuts both ways: if the work is consistently less than we scoped, we will say so and move you down. The point of a scope is that both sides know what they bought.

No, and we will decline it if it is offered. We are your bookkeeper, not an officer or director of your company, and we do not hold signing authority on your bank accounts or sign filings on your behalf. We prepare the numbers and the paperwork; you review them, you approve them, and you sign. That line exists to protect you as much as us, the person accountable for the decisions in a business should be the person running it.

Every month, once your records for the month are in. How quickly depends on how much is there and how fast the paperwork reaches us, so we would rather tell you where your file stands than commit to a date on the calendar and miss it. If something is going to take longer than usual, you hear it from us before the month end rather than after.

Whichever genuinely fits, and we will tell you which one that is rather than defaulting. Cash basis is simpler and matches what your bank account is doing; accrual gives you a truthful read on a month where you invoiced heavily and collected nothing. Businesses with inventory, work in progress, or long payment cycles almost always need accrual, a cash-basis contractor with a holdback receivable is looking at numbers that describe a different business than the one they run.

Only if you set it up that way, and only against payments you have approved. By default we prepare the payment run and you release it. Nobody here moves your money unilaterally.

We surface the aging and flag what's overdue with the specifics behind it. Whether we make the contact or you do is your call, it usually depends on the relationship.

A penalty applies from the first day, and it is charged against the amount rather than the length of the delay, so a large remittance a few days late costs considerably more than a small one a month late. The usual cause is not forgetting, it is a cash decision in a tight month. Worth telling us before the date rather than after it, because there are better options than missing it.

That is decided by the working relationship rather than by what the agreement calls it or whether they invoice you. Control over how the work gets done, who supplies the tools, whether the person can profit or lose on the job, and how far they are integrated into the business all count. It is worth settling before the first payment, because a reassessment can reach back over the whole period and cover both the employee and the employer halves of what should have been withheld.

No. We do not run, remit or file payroll in the United States: US payroll tax is federal and state, the filings go to authorities we do not file with, and we would rather say so than learn it on your file. What we do offer a US business is Payroll Bookkeeping, a separate service: your existing payroll platform keeps running and filing the payroll, and we record and reconcile what it produces in your books.

Yes, though it works better when the monthly reconciliation comes with it. T4s are only quick if the payroll accounts already agree with what was paid and remitted, and where they do not, the difference has to be found before anything can be filed.

Wagepoint or Payment Evolution, both of which sync into the accounting file, so the entries land in the books as part of running the cycle rather than being typed in afterwards. If you are already on something else, we will tell you plainly whether it is worth keeping.

No. Those platforms are named because they are what clients already run, and knowing which reports each one produces is what makes the reconciliation quick and the mapping right. We are not a partner, a reseller or a certified anything for Gusto, RUN Powered by ADP, ADP Workforce Now, Paychex Flex, Rippling and QuickBooks Online Payroll or any other payroll platform, and we have no ability to file anything from one. Your platform calculates, remits and files. We read what it produced and make the books agree with it.

The payroll service is the cycle itself: pay calculated and issued, source deductions remitted on the schedule CRA assigned you, and T4s and Records of Employment prepared and filed. That one is for Canadian businesses only, because those filings go to a Canadian authority. This is the bookkeeping half on its own, recording and reconciling payroll that somebody else runs and files, and it is open to Canadian and US businesses both.

It is a start, and it is not a reconciliation. An automatic post puts a figure into an account. It does not check that the figure matches what left the bank, that the clearing account came back to nil, that employer cost landed where it belongs, or that a run that failed and was reissued did not go in twice. Entries that post themselves are also the ones nobody opens, which is how a payroll clearing account gets eleven months out before anyone notices.

Usually not, and the reason is worth saying rather than just declining. Reconciling payroll means reconciling the bank, and that only means something if the rest of the file is current. Working off numbers we have not checked would produce a reconciliation that looks finished and proves nothing, which is not worth what it would cost you.

Coding a transaction and chasing down the receipt behind it are different jobs, so they are priced as different jobs. This is an add-on, priced by how many documents a month are in play: which keeps the monthly bookkeeping fee about bookkeeping.

Retention requirements are yours to meet, and an organized system makes that considerably easier. We'll be straight with you about where the line sits.

No. It changes the scope and the quote, not whether it's doable.

No. Catch-up can be a standalone project, though most clients move onto ongoing bookkeeping afterwards to avoid ending up back here.

Because the range is enormous. Three tidy months and two chaotic years are entirely different jobs, and pretending otherwise means someone gets a wrong number.

The income statement and balance sheet are included with bookkeeping. This is for everything beyond them, KPI dashboards, cash flow reporting, and formats built for a specific audience.

Yes. Reporting that measures last year's priorities isn't worth paying for.

Generally once taxable revenue passes $30,000, measured either in a single calendar quarter or across four consecutive ones. Registering voluntarily below that threshold is sometimes worth it, because it lets you claim input tax credits on what you're already spending.

CRA assigns a reporting period: annual, quarterly, or monthly, based on your annual taxable supplies. You can elect to file more frequently than assigned, which some businesses do to keep the amounts manageable.

No. Sales tax registration and filing in the United States varies state by state and by economic nexus rules, and we don't currently offer it.

Not at this time. For US clients we provide bookkeeping, budgeting, and budget-vs-actuals reporting; tax services are limited to Canadian businesses.

It isn't required, but filing off books we already maintain is faster and cheaper than filing off books we're seeing for the first time.

Filing complexity varies enormously between businesses. Pricing it separately means clients with simple filings aren't subsidizing complex ones.

Building the budget is a discrete project with a finished deliverable. Watching the business against that budget month to month is a different job, priced separately as Budget vs. Actuals.

More is better. If the history is thin or messy, catch-up bookkeeping usually comes first: a budget built on unreliable history inherits every one of its problems.

No, but the two work considerably better together, since the budget stays tied to books that are actually being maintained.

No. There's nothing to compare actuals against. If you don't have a budget yet, the budget build comes first.

Yes, provided it's detailed enough to hold actuals against. We'll tell you honestly if it isn't.

A variance report with written commentary, what moved, why, and whether it needs a decision. Short by design.

Year-end is one place it gets handled. Doing it monthly means your statements carry the right asset values all year in the meantime, which matters a great deal if you're making decisions off them or showing them to a lender.

No, and the distinction matters. Book depreciation reflects how an asset is actually consumed; capital cost allowance is a tax calculation with its own classes and rates. We maintain the book schedules and keep them in a form that supports the tax work, whether we're doing that filing or your accountant is.

Whether a lease belongs on the balance sheet depends on its terms, so we read the agreement rather than assume. It is one of the more commonly mis-recorded items in trades businesses.

No. This is preparation and support, organizing records, identifying gaps, and answering questions about the bookkeeping itself. Formal representation, objections, and appeals belong with a CPA or a tax lawyer. We would rather refer you than take work we shouldn't.

No, though the options narrow. Get in touch: the first thing to establish is what has actually been requested and what documentation exists to answer it.

Because it is the step between closing a deal and being paid for it, and we sit on the brokerage side of that exchange every day. We know what a deal administrator needs to see, in what format, and by when. An invoice that arrives complete the first time gets paid on the next run rather than the one after it.

A personal real estate corporation tends to make sense once income is consistently well above what you draw to live on, and it has tax, legal, and regulatory sides to it. We can show you what the numbers look like either way; the incorporation decision itself should be signed off by a CPA or a lawyer.

We support the reconciliation work for brokerages and property managers alike. The trust obligations themselves rest with the licensee and their regulator, and we work to those requirements rather than substituting our own judgement for them.

Each property carries its own income and expenses, each owner gets a statement that ties to the bank, and owner money is never blended with yours. If you cannot currently answer what one specific address earned last quarter, that is the exact problem this fixes.

Property management software is very good at running a portfolio and only partly good at being an accounting system. It tracks rents, leases and work orders; it does not reliably produce a clean set of financial statements for the management company itself, and it does not file anything. We reconcile what the platform holds into a proper accounting file, so the portfolio view and the company's own books agree.

As a liability, not as income: because they are somebody else's money that you are holding. Where provincial rules require deposits to be held separately or to accrue interest, the file is built to match that rather than to a general standard.

Yes, and reconciling to the bank is the part that matters. An owner statement that cannot be tied back to what actually cleared is where trust in a management company starts to erode.

They are treated differently for tax and they change the picture of a property's performance, so they are split at the point of coding rather than sorted out at year end. Getting this wrong is one of the more common and more expensive errors we see in property books.

It is a portion of each progress payment the customer is entitled to keep back for a period after the work, as protection against defects and unpaid subtrades. In Ontario the Construction Act sets the basic holdback at ten per cent of the value of the work and fixes when it can be released. In the United States the same idea is called retainage, the percentage and the release rules are set state by state and vary widely, so we will not tell you what yours is on a web page. The accounting is the same in both countries: the money is earned when the work is done, and it is not collectible until the holdback period ends, so it is recorded as revenue and shown apart from receivables you can actually chase.

Not yet. Until the work is done it is money you are holding, which makes it a liability rather than income, and it moves into revenue as the work is delivered. It matters more than it sounds on a job that straddles a year end, because a deposit booked as revenue in December is profit you are taxed on for work you have not done, and the month that does the work shows the cost with no income against it.

In Canada, a business whose main activity is construction files a T5018, the Statement of Contract Payments, for subcontractors paid five hundred dollars or more in the reporting period, due six months after the fiscal year end. In the United States it is the 1099-NEC, and the threshold has moved: payments made in 2026, reported in early 2027, are reportable at two thousand dollars rather than the long-standing six hundred. Two things to watch there. Most accounting software still triggers its 1099 flag at six hundred, so the report it produces is not the same as the requirement. And the W-9 rule did not change, so you still want one from every subcontractor before you pay them, regardless of what you end up paying. We keep the subcontractor records the reporting is built from. US information returns are filed by you or your tax preparer, not by us.

Because those are two different questions. A field platform knows what was quoted, scheduled and invoiced. It does not know what the supplier actually charged after the account credit, what the equipment cost to run, or what the subcontractor billed against a different job by mistake. Job profit is only true when the job carries every cost that hit the bank, and that reconciliation is the part that happens in the accounting file.

Usually, and how far back is worth being honest about before starting. Recoding a year of transactions to jobs is possible where the source documents identify the job, and it is guesswork where they do not. We would rather tell you the point at which the history stops being reliable than rebuild a year that ends up describing something that did not happen.

No, and we do not want it. Everything the bookkeeping needs is in the financial reports your practice management system already produces: the day sheet, production and collections, the insurance ageing and the practitioner splits. We do not need, ask for, or receive access to patient records. Clinical charts, radiographs and treatment notes are not part of bookkeeping and are not something we ask for. It keeps your obligations under health privacy law where they belong, which is inside your practice, rather than extending them to a supplier who has no reason to be there.

None of them, and that is deliberate rather than a gap. Your practice management system is a clinical record as well as a booking and billing system, and it is not an accounting system: the books sit in your accounting file underneath it. We work from the financial reports yours produces, whichever one you run, and reconcile those into the accounting file. If your software can export a production and collections summary and an insurance ageing, we can work from it.

Because the feeling is production and the statements are collections. Production is what was billed for work done. Collections are what insurance and patients actually paid, after the write-off between what you billed and what the plan allows, and after the weeks it takes a claim to settle. A busy month with heavy insurance work can produce a strong production figure and an ordinary bank balance, and nothing is wrong. Seeing both numbers beside each other every month is the fix, and it is the first thing we set up.

It changes what the practice's revenue actually is. A percentage split recorded net makes the clinic look roughly half the size it is and hides what each provider contributes. Recorded gross, with the associate's share shown as its own cost, the revenue is real and the margin per provider is a figure you can act on. Settling whose receivable it is matters for the same reason: if the clinic bills and collects, the receivable is the clinic's and the split is a payment out of it.

Yes, and it is the arrangement we prefer. They get a file that reconciles: production to collections to the bank, the insurance ageing explained, associate splits settled, lab accrued at the cutoff, and the equipment schedules beside the loan. We do not issue compilation, review or audit reports. Those are licensed engagements that belong with a CPA firm.

Three reasons, and usually all three at once. The card processor settles net of its fees, so the deposit is smaller than the sale. Settlement runs on the processor's cut-off rather than your closing time, so a late Friday lands on Monday and a month end can split a night in two. And cash, tips paid out in cash, and refunds all move separately from the card batch. None of that is a problem once sales are recorded gross and each batch is matched to its deposit. It is only a problem when the deposit is recorded as the sale, because then the fees vanish and the timing differences look like missing money.

Start from the fact that tips are not your revenue, they are money you are holding for staff, so they sit as a liability rather than in sales. Beyond that it splits by country. In Canada the CRA distinguishes controlled tips, where the employer decides how they are distributed, from direct tips that go straight from the customer to the server. Controlled tips are treated as employment income and are pensionable and insurable, so they run through payroll with CPP and EI; direct tips generally do not. Which one you have is decided by how your tip-out actually works rather than by what it is called, and a mandatory service charge you set is not a tip at all. In the United States, tips are federally reportable employee income, employees report tips to the employer, and a large food or beverage establishment additionally files Form 8027 to report receipts and tips. There is also a federal credit available to employers for social security and Medicare paid on tips. State and local rules on tip pooling and wage credits vary too much for us to state here. We do not file US payroll or information returns; what we do is record and reconcile the result.

When the card is redeemed, not when it is sold. Until then it is cash you have taken for a meal you still owe, which makes it a liability. It matters because gift card sales cluster into a few weeks of the year and redemption spreads over the following months, so a December that books all of it as revenue reports a month that did not happen and leaves the following spring serving meals with no income against them.

We would rather give you your own number than somebody else's benchmark. Targets vary enormously between a quick service counter, a bar and a full kitchen, and a figure lifted from a different format is a target that will mislead. What is useful is your own percentage calculated the same way every month against actual purchases, so a two point move is a real signal rather than a difference in how it was worked out.

No. Your point of sale stays yours: your staff ring the sales and the platform settles the batch, and none of that moves to us. What the bookkeeping needs from it is two things, a daily sales report broken down by category, and a settlement report showing what was batched and what was deposited. Nearly every system produces both, under one name or another. Send us a month of each at the start and we will tell you plainly whether they are enough to reconcile from, before you commit to anything.

No, and we do not want it. Everything the bookkeeping needs is in the financial reports your practice management system already produces: the day sheet, the payments received, the outstanding balances and the practitioner splits. Clinical notes and patient files are not part of that and are not something we ask for. It keeps your obligations under health privacy law where they belong, which is inside your clinic, rather than extending them to a supplier who has no reason to be there.

That is decided by the working relationship rather than by the title on the agreement or by whether they invoice you. Who controls the schedule and the treatment approach, who supplies the room and the equipment, whether the practitioner can profit or lose on the work, and how far they are integrated into the clinic all count. The question is worth settling before the first payment, because a reassessment can reach back over the whole period and cover both sides of what should have been withheld. In Canada that is a CRA determination and, for payroll purposes, the one that has teeth. In the United States the federal test is the IRS common-law test, and individual states apply their own and often stricter tests that we will not attempt to summarise here.

Because the exemption cuts both ways. Where a service is exempt you do not charge tax on it, and you also cannot recover the tax you paid on the costs of providing it. Most healthcare services delivered by a licensed practitioner are exempt, while the products a clinic sells beside them, orthotics sold retail, supplements, braces, eyewear frames and so on, frequently are not, and some practitioners are exempt while others in the same clinic are not. The proportion of taxable to exempt activity is what determines how much of your input tax you can claim back, so it has to be tracked as it happens rather than estimated once a year. This one is Canadian. There is no US federal equivalent, and sales tax on retail products is a state matter that varies too much for us to state.

The practitioner pay structure, the receivable question, the classification question at the federal level, and the prepaid package treatment all apply. The GST and HST material does not, because there is no federal US counterpart to it. Where a US practice sells retail products, the sales tax treatment is set by the state and we do not make state-specific claims. What is on offer for a US practice is bookkeeping and financial operations, on the same basis as everywhere else, and we do not file US returns of any kind.

As the treatments are delivered, not when the block is sold. Until it is used it is money held against future appointments, which makes it a liability. It is worth carrying properly because prepaid blocks tend to be sold in bursts and used slowly, so a clinic recognising them on sale reports a strong month, then several thin ones that are actually doing the work.

Because a free period is a discount on the whole lease rather than three months of no rent, so accrual bookkeeping spreads the total across the term instead of following the payment dates. The result is that the profit and loss shows a rent expense in a month when nothing left the bank, and later shows less rent than you actually paid, with the difference sitting on the balance sheet in between. Nothing has gone wrong when that happens. Whether it applies to you at all depends on the basis your books are kept on and on what the lease actually says, and that is a conversation about your lease rather than something a web page can answer.

It is the stretch between getting the keys and opening the doors, while the space is being built out, and leases commonly make it rent free or reduced. It matters for the same reason the free rent period does: the lease term, the payment schedule and the period the space is actually earning are three different timelines, and the rent line only makes sense once you know which one it is following.

The processor settles net of its fees, so the deposit is smaller than the sale, and it settles on its own cut-off, so a late Saturday can land on Monday and a month end can split a trading day in two. Add cash taken separately, refunds and the occasional chargeback and the two figures were never going to be equal. Recording sales at full value and matching each batch to its deposit makes the gap explainable, and turns a missing batch into something you notice.

As the membership is used, month by month, rather than on the day it is sold. An annual membership paid in January is one month of revenue and eleven months of a service you still owe. Recognising it all in January reports a January that did not happen and eleven months that look like a decline, which is a difficult picture to plan against and an even harder one to show a lender.

We reconcile from Square for Retail, Square Appointments and Shopify POS, and from Moneris and Stripe on the card side. Your team runs the counter and the platform settles the batch; we take what each produced into the accounting file and reconcile it to the bank. If you are on something else, the requirement is the same: a sales report and a settlement report we can tie together.

No. We read contracts for commercial terms: price, duration, notice periods, escalation clauses, not for legal risk. Anything carrying genuine legal weight belongs with a lawyer, and we will say so rather than offer an opinion we're not qualified to give.

We'll prepare the position and can sit in on the conversation. The relationship is yours and the decision stays with you.

It varies and we won't pretend otherwise. What is consistent is that the recurring spend turns out to be larger and older than owners expect once it's ranked by annual value instead of by how often the invoice arrives.

Because a messy one produces movement that did not happen. If an expense sits under one code this year and a different one next year, the comparative figures show a change in the business when what actually changed was the coding. That is precisely the kind of unexplained year-over-year variance that draws a question, and answering it means reconstructing two years of decisions somebody made under deadline. A chart that maps the same way every year has nothing to explain.

The mapping is a document, not a setting, so it moves with you. That is deliberate: a migration is the single most common way a chart of accounts gets mangled, because accounts are matched by name on the way across and names are the part that was never standardized. Handing the new file a written account-by-account mapping turns that migration into a checklist.

No. It is a standalone project with a finished deliverable you own. It does work better alongside monthly bookkeeping, because a chart is only as good as the discipline of what gets posted to it, a clean structure and six months of everything landing in Miscellaneous is back where it started.

It is the cheapest it will ever be. Building the chart against GIFI before the first transaction costs a fraction of remapping two years of history, and it means the first return you file already reads straight through.

Software migrations, lender and investor reporting packages, cleanup ahead of a sale, custom recurring reports, and second opinions on existing work. If it involves your financial records, start the conversation and we'll tell you quickly whether it's something we should be doing.

Audit and review engagements, formal representation in a tax dispute, and legal or investment advice. Those require a different licence, and we would rather refer you to somebody who holds it.

No. Small pieces of work are often the most useful ones, and we'd rather do a two-hour job properly than inflate it into a package you didn't need.

No, and this is the one service on this site that is genuinely independent of the rest. If your bookkeeping is already handled, in-house or by somebody else, that is a normal arrangement rather than an obstacle. The work is the layer above it, and part of the job is making whoever does the day-to-day more effective rather than replacing them.

Controller is a job title rather than a regulated designation, and plenty of controllers are not CPAs. One of the partners here does the job today at a multi-property real estate operation. Newhouse & Associates is not a CPA firm and does not provide audit, review or compilation services, and this service does not change that: those are licensed engagements that belong with a CPA firm.

No. A CFO owns capital structure, financing and board reporting, which is a different scope with a different buyer, and we do not offer it. Controller is the job of running the finance function: the budget, the close, the analysis, the systems and the process underneath them.

Because a full-time controller is a six-figure salary plus the employer cost on top of it, and a business in this band needs the judgement monthly rather than daily. Hiring is the right answer once there is enough finance work to keep somebody senior occupied full time. Below that, the choice is usually between paying for a full-time seat you cannot fill or going without the judgement entirely, and this is the third option.

Good, and keep them. Part of the work is giving whoever does the day-to-day a structure to work to, which usually makes their job easier rather than harder. Nobody is being audited and nobody is being replaced.

No, and framing it that way misses what actually differs. The cost comparison matters, but the structural difference is coverage and review: one hire is one person, and when they are away or they leave, the books stop and the knowledge goes with them. Your file does not stop here because one person is away, and completed work is reviewed by a partner rather than going out unseen.

Not here. The work is done by the people named on this site, working remotely across Canada and the United States rather than in your office. Remote and offshore are different things and the word gets used for both, which is why it is worth saying plainly.

When there is genuinely enough finance work to keep somebody busy full time, or when you want a person physically in the office and that matters more than the rest of it. Those are real reasons and we would rather say so than argue against them. Below that threshold you are usually paying a full-time seat for part-time work, and paying it whether the work is there in a given month or not.

That is your decision and not one we push. Plenty of arrangements keep an in-house person doing receipt capture and invoicing while the categorisation, reconciliation and reporting come here, which removes the part that causes the delays without removing anybody.

Onboarding is measured in weeks rather than in the months a hire takes end to end, because there is no posting, no shortlist and no notice period. The work that does take time is the same either way: somebody has to get familiar with your books.