Client Engagement and Best Practices
Our goal is to provide you with useful 5 Star Books.
This outlines how you can ensure we have accurate information and documentation to make this happen.
We can only maintain great books with your help and engaged participation.
We strive to complete your prior period by the 10th day of the next month. This gives you a few days to review your reports for accuracy so we can supply your GST/HST filing information by the end of the next month. To accomplish this, CV Bookkeeping needs all your documentation & receipts and requested information uploaded to Keeper/Hubdoc by the 5th day of the month, at the latest.
We will supply relevant reports: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cashflow, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable as needed.
We will also supply a report of transactions we do not recognize what they are for and did not clear the bank or credit card. You need to review that report and have the transactions identified for us again within ten days of receiving the report. You can mark up the report and email it back to us.
If you file GST/HST, please do so by the 25th of the month following the past filing period and email us that the confirmation and payment receipt have been Hubdoc’d. If you cannot pay your GST/HST, you still must file to avoid penalties in addition to the interest you will be assessed.
If we file on your behalf, we will do so by the 25th and send you a confirmation.
Bookkeeping Best Practices
1: Meals and Entertainment & gift cards are only meals & entertainment to conduct, maintain or obtain business.
2: Travel expenses, same deal.
- They are not for grabbing lunch or a coffee because you are on business hours or for “writing off” a vacation.
- You need solid documentation, and we highly recommend not abusing these expenses.
- The claim value of M&E is 50%
- You don’t get to claim GST/HST on a gift card.
- If you give a client a gift card to a restaurant or a pair of tickets to a hockey game, those gifts are considered to be meals and entertainment expenses; as a result, you may write off half of their value.
- If you purchase a gift card for a client, mark the receipt that you Hubdoc of who it is for.
- For your own business use, you can either go with the convenience of using a card (no GST/HST benefit), or you can make each purchase separately and put the receipt into Hubdoc. No matter what you do, you must have documentation of who/what/why you met marked on the Hubdoc’d receipts.
- You must still put the marked-up GC redemption receipts into HD, but we will not expense them individually if there are no matches in the bank feed.
- You cannot double dip (purchase with a gift card – for you or your client) and then deduct the expense.
3: Track biz expenses paid personally
- Let us know if you make a personal purchase on your business debit or credit account as soon as it happens.
- Do not Hubdoc/Dext them unless they are clearly marked as a personal expense.
Again, this is not a great habit, but we realize it happens sometimes.
4: Petty cash – Must be considered a bank account, a rarely used one.
- When money is withdrawn as petty cash, Hubdoc bank withdrawal receipts.
- Expenses from petty cash, Hubdoc all receipts and mark as petty cash.
- Email us the petty cash balance at the month’s end, and we will reconcile.
5: Cash drawer payouts (Retail clients)
- Any expenses paid out from the cash drawer, Hubdoc & mark to cash drawer payouts.
- You will also need a log of these to balance the till to the POS report.
Petty cash float is much preferable to CDP/Os.
6: Sales & payments
- Invoicing can be done in QBO or as a sales receipt to match POS transactions.
- Payments are received into “Undeposited Funds” (or “Sales Clearing” if we have set that up), not into the bank account. I created deposits using your Hubdoc’d picture of bank deposit receipts.
- Customer payment cheques go into Hubdoc matched to the customer’s (aka vendor) name.
We highly recommend QBO Merchant for receiving client credit card payments for invoices created in QBO. Plooto for PADS and direct deposits.
7: Bills and payments
- No matter how you complete your vendor payments, please ensure they are marked as completed in QBO.
We recommend Plooto for vendor payments.
8: QBO bank feed
- “Update” it weekly, but please don’t do any matching or adding it in. Leave that to us.
It can be our best friend or worst bookkeeping foe if not managed correctly.
9: Due to shareholders & owners – We need to make sure that this account is neither too high nor too low.
Keep the transfers to & from to a minimum.
We appreciate how busy you are just keeping up with running your business, but we can make it more efficient and profitable if we have your full engagement to maintain useful, 5-star books.