Explore Small Business Finance Topics

Discover our most popular topics for Canadian solopreneurs and small business owners. From income tax and GST/HST to QuickBooks tutorials and managing your business finances, these guides are designed to help you move from financial uncertainty to financial confidence.

Click on any topic and scroll down to see related articles.

📑Canadian Income Tax

Guidance on filing and planning your Canadian taxes, from T1 and T2 returns to instalments

📊Managing Business Finances

From cash flow to pricing and metrics — learn to manage your business finances with confidence.

🏢 Canadian Business Structure

Should you incorporate? Stay informed on sole proprietorships, corporations, and registrations.

💰 GST/HST & QST

Understand how to register, file, and maximize input tax credits while avoiding common mistakes.

🧾 Guides and Tutorials

Practical accounting processes like reconciliations, journal entries, and reporting.

📝 Deductions & Expenses

Learn which expenses are deductible and how to track them for maximum tax savings.

Quebec Taxes & Business

QST, Revenu Québec filings, Quebec payroll, and provincial rules every entrepreneur should know.

👤 Paying Yourself

Salary vs dividends, management fees, and how to pay yourself from your corporation or small business.

💻 QuickBooks Online & Tools

Tutorials, guides and time-saving tips for using QuickBooks Online effectively.

🏦 Money & Personal Finance

Personal finance strategies for entrepreneurs, from RRSPs to saving for taxes.


Accounting, Technology Ronika Khanna Accounting, Technology Ronika Khanna

Apple Vs Google: Comparison of Quarterly Results (Infographic)

Apple and Google both had incredible quarterly results for the 3 months ended June 25th (strange quarter end date) and June 30th respectively.  They beat forecasts by significant margins, continue to expand their operations and have massive amounts of cash on their balance sheets with virtually no debt.  The infographic below presents some key figures of interest.  It is interesting to note that while Apple is almost twice the size of Google, based on Market Capitalization, their Earnings per share is virtually the same.  The majority (68%) of Apple's sales come from the iPhone and ipad , while almost all of Google's sales come from advertising.  Another interesting distinction for this quarter is that while Apple spent 2% of its gross revenues on  R&D, Google's investment in R&D was about 13%.
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Accounting, Technology Ronika Khanna Accounting, Technology Ronika Khanna

20 Interesting Financial Facts About Google

One of the best ways to analyse a set of financial statements is to look at a public company’s 10-K.  The 10-k is a mandatory annual filing for all public companies’ and provides a wealth of information about the business, operational and financial information about the entity.  Google’s is particularly interesting, as most of us are intimately familiar with at least some of Google’s wide array of services, yet its business model is fairly simple and accessible.  The bulk of its revenues are derived from advertising and its expense comprise primarily of amounts paid to adsense members, employee salaries and stock compensation and maintenance of its data centres.  Whether you are considering Google as an investment or trying to glean some insight into how one of the world’s most successful companies’ operates, a review of their 10-k is interesting (it helps if you are a finance geek) and insightful reading.  Below is a review and analysis of some financial facts and figures from their 2010 10-K.
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Self Employed, Small Business, Technology Ronika Khanna Self Employed, Small Business, Technology Ronika Khanna

How to Be Less Forgetful: 17 Task Tracking Tips for Business Owners

 

Memento (Chris Nolan’s masterpiece) is the story of a man who suffers from short term memory loss i.e. he can’t remember anything for more than 15 minutes.  This makes his life somewhat complicated, in that he needs to come up with a system to track his memories.  Interestingly it also simplifies it as having no memories allows him to live his life entirely in the present.   One of the many brilliant aspects of the film is that every time you watch it, it is a slightly different movie, as the memory of it does what memories do – they fade and dissolve and meld with other memories leaving us with an impression which is different from the actual events as they unfold.  This is why eyewitness testimony is often unreliable, and individuals’ recollections tend to vary significantly.

Our particular ability to remember … and forget is unique to all of us.  Some of us never forget a face while being hopeless with names.  Others have trouble with appointments  or where we left our keys.   I often have trouble finding the right word or forget the entire plot of a movie or book.  (Not to mention  chunks of my life that are completely missing).  Unfortunately , these memory malfunctions tend to get worse with age, so it is important to find ways to fend them off.  From a work and business perspective, forgetting something important can have severe consequences.   Below are some ideas to help you keep track of your tasks:

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