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.
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📑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.
Essentials for Starting Your Sole Proprietorship
According to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the definition of a sole proprietorship is as follows:
A sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business that is owned by one individual. It is the simplest kind of business structure. The owner of a sole proprietorship has sole responsibility for making decisions, receives all the profits, claims all losses, and does not have separate legal status from the business. If you are a sole proprietor, you also assume all the risks of the business. The risks extend even to your personal property and assets.
The simple answer is that if you are selling any type of product or service, on an ongoing basis, and you are not employed by another organization where you receive an employment income slip such as a T4, you essentially have a business. If this business in not incorporated or part of a partnership with one or more individuals, then you are a sole proprietorship.
Pros and Cons of Incorporating your small business
The decision to incorporate can be a difficult one that many small businesses face at some point in their lifetime and . Incorporation, literally, represents the creation of a new person. Whereas a sole proprietorship is an extension of one's self, a corporation takes on a life of it's own; it can give birth to subsidiary, marry via a merger and die with a dissolution. It has to file it's own tax return, can be sued and has a set of rules that govern it's existence. Below are some of the points to consider when deciding whether to incorporate:
10 Tax Facts that every corporation Owner should Know
How to Find Any Transaction in QBO (Fast!)
When you enter a transaction in QBO, there are only two final destinations for it - the balance sheet or profit and loss report. Additionally, depending on the type of transaction it will often go to a “subledger”. For example, if you enter a sale or invoice, you will find it in the sales section either under the customer or in the list of invoices.
Similarly, if you an enter an expense, you can find it in the expenses section, under the supplier (assuming you entered the name of the supplier) or if came from your bank or credit card account, you can find it in the categorized section of the banking download.
Should You Do Your Own Small Business Accounting?
Any potential business owner knows that there are some many facets to starting a small business that it is easy to be overwhelmed . Consequently we tend to focus on what is immediately important while we let some of the more technical aspects of our business be deferred until we can no longer avoid them . One of the often overlooked aspects of business is accounting, which arguably (I’m a bit biased) is one of the most important parts of running a business as a good accounting system will let you know if you are financial viable. While many business owners can cobble together a sense of their financial situation through (as a former boss of mine used to say)” back of the envelope” calculations and reviewing their bank balances, there is still a need for an accounting system which at its core can validate your calculations and provide you with data to ensure that your business is going in the right direction
4 Accounting Transactions that Use Journal Entries and How to Enter them in QBO
Accounting software has come a long way in the past few years. Although a good bookkeeper can be invaluable, It has become fairly easy for business owners and their support staff to take on the responsibility of entering day to day transactions while they employ accountants for the more complex aspects of their accounting and tax. While entering the majority of transactions in software, such as Quickbooks Online is fairly straightforward, there are transactions that require somewhat special treatment discussed below:
Preparing your Small Business and Self Employed Tax Return with UFile Tax Software
A Guide To Preparing the T2125 For Small Business Or Self Employed Owners
While being self employed comes with numerous benefits, there are also many challenges. One of the major ones is ensuring that you are aware of, and fulfill, your tax obligations on a timely basis. In the beginning these tax obligations can seem mystifying and somewhat overwhelming, but once you understand what needs to be done and you set up processes and reminders, it tends to become much more manageable. This in turn reduces stress as tax deadlines approach and can result in significant potential tax savings as you keep track of all your tax deductions and avoid interest and penalties.
Why you should register for CRA and RQ My Business Account (and how to do it)
With all data moving to the cloud these days and ubiquitous online access to banking, customer and supplier portals, it makes sense that Revenue Canada (CRA) and Revenue Quebec (RQ) have followed suit. Considerable resources have been spent by the revenue agencies on developing their online portals and encouraging both individual taxpayers and businesses to move the majority of their tax related interactions online (almost every accountant conference has an appearance by a CRA representative talking about the improvements to their online portal and imploring accountants to convince their clients to make the switch). The upfront investment has resulted in significant cost savings for CRA/RQ (postage costs alone have dropped dramatically) while improving accuracy and perhaps most importantly increasing the effectiveness of tax collection efforts. CRA personnel have been able to move away from verifying calculations and manually reviewing tax returns to more value added analysis which has allowed them to identify tax miscreants with higher accuracy.
For both the individual taxpayer and small business owner there are numerous benefits to registering online:
8 Top Notch Information Resources for Small Businesses
As a small business owner and content creator, I’m always looking for resources that will help me improve my own business, and provide insight into the latest developments, innovations, tools and guidance on financial and tax matters. Over time, I have bookmarked a list of the resources that I visit frequently
What is Capital Cost Allowance and How Does it Impact Your Business
Frequently a client of mine will purchase a high ticket item such as a computer or a piece of furniture and will simply show it as an expense on their profit and loss. Since you purchased something that relates to your business, it should be considered to be a deduction and classified as an expenses.
Unfortunately, accountants and revenue agencies do not see it this way. From their perspective, an item that is purchased for a business, whose value extends beyond one year, is actually an asset that should be depreciated over the useful life of the asset. In other words, the expense that you can claim for the asset is only the portion of the asset that is used in the year that you claim it.
While accountants refer to the amount of the asset that is expensed each year as depreciation, Revenue Canada refers to this as capital cost allowance or CCA.
How to Pay Dividends: Completing the T5 Slip and Summary
If you are the owner of a Canadian corporation, you can choose to pay yourself (and other shareholders) dividends instead of a salary. Alternatively, some shareholders also take dividends in addition to a salary depending on their tax planning strategy. If you do decide to pay yourself dividends, it is important to ensure that you prepare the proper documentation for Revenue Canada (CRA) and if you live in Quebec, Revenue Quebec (MRQ) since this must be reported as investment income on your personal tax return in the calendar year in which the dividends are paid. If you are paying dividends to a Canadian shareholder, you must issue a T5 slip while non resident shareholders receive an NR4 slip. The T5 dividend slips are generally due by February 28th of the calendar year following the year in which the dividend was paid Although no income taxes are due at the time of filing the T5 slips with the government, interest and penalties apply for late filing . The process of submitting preparing and submitting the dividend declarations and the documents that need to be filled out and returned to the CRA and MRQ are discussed below:
What Happens When You Contribute Excess Amounts to your RRSP
Being able to contribute to an RRSP is one of the great tax saving strategies available to all Individual Canadian Taxpayers who generate “earned income” which is essentially income earned from employment (salaries) or self employment. It is extremely important to know that there are unfortunately limits to how much you can contribute and Revenue Canada (CRA) actually imposes penalties on overcontributions to your RRSP.
Note that passive income like dividends and interest is ineligible and does not factor into the calculation for how much you can contribute to an RRSP.
4 Alternatives for Preparing Your Small Business Payroll
Paying salaries to employees (or yourself) requires more than just determining the gross amount to be paid. The Canada Revenue Agency and Revenue Quebec require that employers calculate a variety of taxes on the salaries paid, remit them to the federal and provincial governments and prepare annual reports demonstrating that the calculations are correct and all salary deductions have been paid. This can be a lot of work for business owners whose time is better spent generating sales and building their businesses. Luckily there are many options for small business owners to calculate their payroll and salary remittances, many of which simplify the process:
Nine Steps to Starting your Small Business
Starting a small business is a fairly simple process. If you are using your own given name, all you really need is a product or service that people want to a buy. Maintaining a business that is successful and meets your long term goals can be a little more difficult. In our current technological age of AI, online apps for pretty much anything and cloud computing, the tools and apps that can help you succeed are numerous to the point where they can be a bit overwhelming. You are a Google search away from being bombarded with search results, many pages deep, that provide insight, tips, tricks, mistakes and guidance on how to run a business. The difficulty arises when you have to implement them, since every small business owner’s circumstances and business goals are unique. Additionally most business owners, particularly in the startup stages, have tight budgets. With that in mind, below are the steps businesses should follow when they are first getting off the ground: