The Coquitlam owner-operator's guide to bookkeeping

Bookkeeping for a Coquitlam owner-operator comes down to four jobs on a fixed calendar: close last month by the 10th, file GST and PST when the governments expect them, run payroll and remit on time, and hand your CPA a clean file at year-end. The rest of this guide is detail on one of those four.

The detail matters because businesses here rarely stay simple for long. An agent with a personal real estate corporation (PREC) often holds a rental condo or a presale deposit as well. A clinic in City Centre bills patients, insurers and MSP in the same week. A restaurant on North Road runs card batches, cash, tips and delivery-app payouts every night. We follow those three hypothetical owners through each section. Their figures are invented and rounded so the arithmetic stays visible.

What does bookkeeping cover for a Coquitlam owner-operator?

It covers recording every transaction, proving each account against its statement, and keeping the tax and payroll filings that rely on those records up to date. Tax planning, corporate structure and the income tax return belong to your CPA.

The work breaks into five parts:

• Recording. Every sale, bill, receipt and transfer is coded to the chart of accounts, with its source document attached.
• Reconciling. Each bank account, credit card, loan and payment processor is matched to its statement.
• Sales tax. GST charged and GST paid sit in their own accounts, so a return is read off the ledger rather than rebuilt. PST works the same way if you sell taxable items.
• Payroll. Pay runs, source deductions, remittances, T4 slips and records of employment.
• Reporting. A monthly profit and loss, a balance sheet, and an aged list of who still owes you.

Our three owners need those parts in different proportions:

Detail	Agent with a PREC	Clinic in City Centre	Restaurant on North Road
Key source documents	Brokerage commission statements	Practice-software day sheets, insurer and MSP payments	End-of-day POS reports, card batches, delivery-app statements
Where errors usually start	Deposits booked net of the split	Payments matched to the wrong payer or patient	Payouts booked net of app commission, tips mixed into sales
Payroll	None, or a part-time assistant	Front desk and assistants, plus associate agreements	Servers, kitchen staff and a tip pool
Other files to keep apart	Rental condo, presale deposit, maybe a HoldCo	Sometimes a health profession corporation	A second location, once it opens

How does the monthly close work, and why by the 10th?

The close turns last month's activity into numbers you can rely on: gather the paperwork, reconcile every account, review the odd items, then lock the period. Finishing by the 10th leaves time to act before the next GST and payroll dates arrive.

A typical month runs like this:

1. Days 1 to 3, gather. Bank and card statements come in through the feeds. You send what only you hold: commission statements, supplier invoices, the restaurant's cash count, the clinic's month-end report.
2. Days 3 to 6, reconcile. Every account is matched until its ending balance agrees with the statement to the cent. Card processors and delivery apps are accounts too.
3. Days 6 to 8, review. Anything unusual gets a question: a supplier billed twice, a deposit nobody recognises, a personal purchase on the company card.
4. By the 10th, report and lock. You receive the statements and a short written note. The period closes, so any later change leaves a trail.

How that plays out for each owner:

• The agent. Say a sale pays $20,000 gross and, after the brokerage split and a desk fee, $15,000 reaches the PREC's account. Booking the deposit as revenue hides $5,000 of income and the matching costs. The close records the gross from the commission statement, puts the split and fees on their own lines, and ties the net to the bank.
• The clinic. A month of deposits mixes patient card payments, insurer cheques and direct deposits, and MSP remittances. Each is matched to what the practice software says was billed, so a short-paid or rejected claim surfaces while it can still be resubmitted.
• The restaurant. Thirty days of trading means thirty end-of-day reports. Each is tied to its card batch, the cash deposit and the delivery-app payout, with app commission booked as a cost and tips set aside for staff. One unmatched Tuesday is easy to trace in week two and painful in month ten.

Quiet months close the same way as busy ones. An agent whose income lands mostly in spring needs the slow months reconciled just as carefully, because those months show how far the spring cash has to stretch. The full routine is in our monthly bookkeeping service.

When does a Coquitlam business have to register for GST?

You must register once your worldwide taxable sales, counted together with any associated businesses, pass $30,000 in one calendar quarter or across the last four consecutive calendar quarters. Under that line you're a small supplier, and registering is your choice.

How you cross the line sets the timing:

• Inside one quarter. The sale that takes you past $30,000 already carries GST, and you have 29 days to register.
• Across four quarters. If four quarters together pass $30,000 but no single one does, small-supplier status ends at the close of the month after that quarter. GST starts on your next sale, and the 29 days run from there.

Say the restaurant opens in early spring and expects $90,000 in its first full quarter. It will pass $30,000 within weeks, so the GST number should be in hand before opening day, with the POS charging tax from the first ticket.

The clinic is a different case. Most medically necessary physician and dental services are exempt from GST, and the threshold counts taxable sales only. A dental office whose taxable extras, cosmetic whitening for example, stay small may never have to register. The catch: GST paid on costs for exempt work generally can't be claimed back. Your CPA confirms which services are exempt; the books just need each type of fee coded separately so the answer can be applied.

Registering voluntarily below $30,000 lets a business claim input tax credits on its purchases, in exchange for charging GST and filing every period. Our post on when a home-based or online business in BC needs to register for GST works through both tests in more depth.

How often do you file GST, and when is it due?

The CRA assigns your reporting period from annual taxable sales: annual at $1.5 million or less, quarterly above that up to $6 million, and monthly above $6 million. You can choose a shorter period. A monthly or quarterly return, with its payment, is due a month after the period closes; most annual filers get three months from their fiscal year-end.

Reporting period	Period ends	Return and payment due
Monthly	July 31	August 31
Quarterly	March 31	April 30
Annual, corporation with a December 31 year-end	December 31	March 31
Annual, sole proprietor with a December 31 year-end	December 31	Pay by April 30, file by June 15

Three rules trip people up:

• A nil return is still a return. A quarter with no sales still needs a filing. Skipping it can bring a failure-to-file penalty and hold up refunds.
• Paper is mostly gone. Electronic filing is mandatory for most registrants.
• Annual filers can owe instalments. When net tax reaches $3,000 or more in both the previous and the current year, quarterly instalments may be required, each due one month after the fiscal quarter ends.

For the agent, the useful habit is watching the GST shown on each commission statement build up in its liability account. A strong spring can leave a large balance due at once, and that money was never the PREC's to spend. Our GST and PST filing service prepares each return from the reconciled ledger, not from a spreadsheet kept on the side.

Does a Coquitlam business need to charge BC PST?

You must register for PST if your BC business routinely sells or leases goods, software or services that PST applies to, unless you qualify as a small seller. The general rate is 7%, with exceptions, and PST is a provincial tax filed with the province, separately from GST.

Among our three owners, PST matters most to the restaurant:

• Restaurant food is generally exempt from PST.
• Liquor is taxed at 10% PST.
• Soft drinks are taxable.

Each POS button has to carry the right tax setting, or every ticket is wrong in the same way, all quarter. The same goes for a café in Austin Heights or Maillardville: the tax setup at the till is a bookkeeping decision made once and checked every close.

A home-based seller with no storefront may qualify as a small seller and skip registration, provided qualifying retail sales stayed at $10,000 or less over the previous 12 months and are expected to stay there. Each PST return, with its payment, must reach the province by the final day of the following month, filed through eTaxBC.

What payroll jobs come with hiring staff in BC?

With your first employee, you deduct income tax, CPP and EI from each pay, add the employer's share, remit the total to the CRA on time, and report the year on T4 slips. BC's Employment Standards Act adds rules on paydays and tips.

The obligations, in order of how often they come up:

• Paydays. BC employers pay at least twice a month, with wages for a pay period paid within 8 days after it ends.
• Employer share. You match each employee's CPP contribution and pay EI at 1.4 times the employee's premium.
• Remittances. Most small employers are regular remitters, and the CRA must receive their deductions by the 15th of the month after payday.
• T4 slips. Staff get their slips, and the CRA gets the T4 return, no later than the last day of February.
• Records of employment. When someone leaves or stops earning, an electronic ROE is generally due within 5 calendar days after the end of that pay period.

Here's the clinic on a semi-monthly payroll. Staff are paid on January 15 and January 31; the deductions from both pay runs, plus the clinic's share, must reach the CRA by February 15. A hygienist who finishes in the pay period ending June 15 needs an ROE by June 20.

Tips are the restaurant's payroll question. Under BC rules, an employer can't keep or take staff tips except through a tip pool or where the law requires, may share in a pool only when doing the same kind of work as the staff, and can't charge business costs against tips. The CRA then splits tips into two kinds. Controlled tips, such as card tips paid out through payroll or a pool the employer divides by formula, have income tax, CPP and EI withheld and appear on the T4. Direct tips, handed from customer to server, don't. Our post on daily sales, tips and delivery apps walks through a full week.

The agent may have payroll too. If the CPA decides the PREC should pay the agent a salary, or the PREC hires an assistant for listings and paperwork, it needs its own payroll account and remittance calendar. Whether salary or dividends suit the agent is the CPA's call, not the bookkeeper's. Our payroll management service runs the cycle and files the slips. Clinics have a second layer, associate agreements and insurer billing, covered in bookkeeping for Tri-Cities dental and medical clinics.

How do you keep a PREC and property files apart from the operating business?

Give every entity its own bank account and its own ledger, and record each transfer between them as a loan, salary or dividend, never as an expense. How the entities should be set up, and how each is taxed, is your CPA's decision; the books exist so that decision can be made on clean records.

For the agent, the line is drawn by the regulator: when an agent works through a PREC, the brokerage pays the corporation, not the agent personally, under BCFSA's PREC guidelines. Commissions arrive in the PREC's account and nowhere else. Deposits held in trust are the brokerage's to account for under BCFSA's trust account guidelines, so they stay off your ledger until released.

Now add property. Say the agent personally owns a one-bedroom rental in Burquitlam and has a deposit on a presale tower in City Centre. Each belongs in its own records:

• The PREC: commissions, marketing, vehicle, brokerage fees, and a shareholder loan account for money moving to and from the agent.
• The rental: rent, strata fees, property tax, insurance, mortgage interest and repairs, coded by unit, ready for the T776 on the agent's personal return.
• The presale: the deposit recorded as an asset by whoever signed the contract, with the contract, deposit receipts and key dates filed alongside it.

A short checklist keeps the lines clean:

• One bank account and one card per entity, with no shared cards
• Personal spending on a company card posted to the shareholder loan, not to expenses
• Balances between entities reconciled every month, so each side agrees
• Larger repairs on a rental flagged for the CPA to class as current or capital
• Every presale deposit and assignment document filed with its entry

Clinics and restaurants meet the same issue in other forms: the clinic owner whose holding company owns the building and charges rent, or the restaurant whose second location gets its own company. Same answer each time: separate accounts, separate ledgers, documented transfers. Deeper reading: PREC bookkeeping for BC realtors, rental property bookkeeping for Coquitlam condo owners, and the records presale and assignment investors need.

What should the run-up to year-end look like?

Start about eight weeks before your fiscal year-end, because the deadlines that matter fall after it and depend on records you can only gather before. A corporation files its T2 within six months of year-end, but the tax balance is generally due two months after year-end, or three for a qualifying Canadian-controlled private corporation. So the cash leaves before the return is due.

For a PREC with a December 31 year-end, that means:

• Tax balance owing by the end of February, or March 31 if the PREC qualifies for the three-month rule
• T4 slips for any salary, and T5 slips for any dividends paid, by the last day of February
• The T2 itself by June 30

A run-up that fits most small corporations:

• Eight weeks out. Confirm the year-end date. List loans, leases, vehicles and anything bought for more than a few thousand dollars.
• Six weeks out. Chase missing receipts and statements. Clear the questions list from the monthly notes.
• Four weeks out. Agree payroll year-to-date figures to what was remitted. Agree GST filed to the ledger.
• Year-end day. The restaurant counts food and liquor on hand. The clinic pulls its outstanding insurer claims. The agent lists deals that closed before year-end but paid after; how they're treated is the CPA's call.
• After year-end. Reconcile through the last day, then send the CPA the package described below.

Keep everything for at least six years, counted from the close of the last tax year it supports, longer if it supports something that stays open, such as a presale contract. Our year-end checklist for Tri-Cities owner-operators has the full eight-week list with lines for PRECs and rental HoldCos, and year-end preparation is the service that delivers it.

What software does a small Coquitlam business need?

A cloud ledger, a receipt tool, a payroll app once you have staff, and the industry systems that feed them. Keep every subscription in the business's name, so the data stays yours whoever keeps the books.

The stack we use most:

• QuickBooks Online or Xero for the ledger, with a separate file per entity.
• Dext for receipts and bills: photograph a parking stub after a showing or forward a supplier email, and it's attached to the right transaction.
• Plooto for paying suppliers, with an approval step before money leaves.
• Wagepoint for payroll, remittances and T4s.

Each owner adds the systems their trade already runs on:

• The agent: a simple commission register listing each deal's address, closing date, gross, split and net. It answers most CRA and CPA questions in one page.
• The clinic: the practice-management software's day sheets and payment reports, exported monthly and matched to deposits.
• The restaurant: the POS end-of-day report and each delivery app's settlement statement, which show the commission and fees a bank deposit hides.

One caution. A bank feed imports transactions; it doesn't categorise them correctly or reconcile them. Software that guesses at categories needs someone checking its guesses every month, or the errors repeat until year-end.

When should you hire a bookkeeper, and what does it cost in Coquitlam?

Most owners hire help when the books start taking evenings or a second moving part appears. Common signals:

• A second entity, such as a PREC plus a HoldCo or a rental
• The first employee, or a tip pool
• Sales approaching the $30,000 GST threshold
• More than a few dozen transactions a month
• Two or more months not reconciled
• A CPA year-end bill that keeps growing because of cleanup

Our monthly bookkeeping starts at $500 to $750 per month CAD for a single entity with light volume. The tier moves with transaction count, number of entities, and whether payroll is included:

Tier	Monthly transactions	Monthly fee (CAD)	Typical shape
Steady	0 to 50	$500 to $750	Monthly bookkeeping for single-entity businesses with straightforward transaction volume.
Considered	50 to 150	$800 to $1,200	Monthly bookkeeping with payroll, AP, and quarterly review calls for businesses with more moving parts.
Bespoke	150 or more	$1,250 to $2,000	Holding companies, multi-entity structures, and fractional controller engagements.

The agent with a PREC alone is usually the smallest file. Add a HoldCo, a rental and a presale and the work grows, because each entity has its own feeds and its own reconciliation. The clinic and the restaurant tend to sit higher once payroll and daily deposits are in the mix. Fees are plus applicable taxes.

If the books are already months behind, they're brought current first through catch-up bookkeeping, quoted separately. A group with several clinics or restaurant locations may need budgets, cash forecasts and a reviewer above the bookkeeper, which is the role of a fractional controller. For price bands in more detail, read how much bookkeeping costs in Coquitlam in 2026.

How should your bookkeeper and your CPA split the work?

The bookkeeper keeps the ledger current and the filings on time all year; the CPA prepares year-end financial statements and the corporate return, and advises on tax and structure. The better the handoff, the less of the CPA's time goes on cleanup.

The year-end package we send a CPA:

• Trial balance and financial statements to the last day of the year
• Bank, card and loan reconciliations with the closing statements
• Payroll summary agreed to remittances and T4s
• GST and PST returns filed, agreed to the ledger
• Shareholder loan schedule and balances between entities
• Fixed asset additions with invoices
• Rental summaries by unit, and presale contracts and receipts
• A list of open questions, with our notes on each

The decisions stay with the CPA: salary or dividends, how a PREC or HoldCo is structured, current or capital on a large repair, the tax side of a presale assignment, and which clinic services are exempt. We keep the records those calls rest on, and book the answer once it's made.