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.
How to determine if your business idea Is profitable
I have spoken to and mentored many lovely entrepreneurs who have wonderfully innovative ideas for a new business. But, as any business owner can attest to, starting a new business is hard work. Before even thinking about launching, you need to ensure that the business is actually viable. You do this by assessing your market, reviewing potential demand for your product and analyzing the competition. Once you have done this, you then need to ensure that your business can be profitable.
In order to determine profitability, you need to understand both the pricing of your products and/or services and the relevant costs. This can be difficult to do especially when you don’t have any history. Your only choice is to estimate based on the best information available. In this article, I give you some guidance on the financial information that you need to compile.
The Parable of the Toy Soldier: How a Small Gaming Business Became a Victim of their Own Success.
This story has all the ingredients of a great novel - drama, intrigue, the Chinese, hostile takeovers and a guy named Lonnie. It has shaken the world of miniature gaming, where excitement is usually imagined rather than real. And, although the details are murky, it is an excellent case study that demonstrates how mistakes made by business owners can result in severe and unintended consequences.
On January 17th, the founder of Wargames Factory, Tony Reidy issued an open letter:
Wai Kee Hui - if your true intention is to salvage this company and pay back the debts - you have started down the absolutely wrong path.
I understand that this is so far beneath you because you run so many multi-yuan millions businesses - but if you want to salvage anything, you are proceeding in the absolutely worst direction right now.
Your faith in Lonnie Mullins is incredibly misguided. You're trusting a guy who threw me under the bus in order to save his own skin. A guy who has no honor whatsoever.
Read full letter Open letter from Tony Reidy