Accurate books. On-time HST filing. Zero CRA surprises. Running a business in Toronto is hard enough without losing weekends to bank reconciliations or wondering whether your books will hold up if the CRA comes knocking.
Our team has been keeping the books of local entrepreneurs, professional corporations, trade contractors, e-commerce sellers, healthcare practices, and incorporated consultants for over 14 years. We process tens of thousands of transactions each month across QuickBooks Online, Xero, Wave, Sage 50 Canada, and Dext.
Every engagement is led by a senior bookkeeper who knows your business and reviewed by a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant familiar with Ontario tax rules, CRA correspondence, HST filing requirements, payroll source deductions, and WSIB obligations. That CPA layer matters: it's the difference between a bookkeeper who records what you give them and a finance team that catches errors, flags missed input tax credits, and prepares your books to actually save you money at year-end.
Our office sits in downtown Toronto's Financial District, at 100 King Street West (First Canadian Place), and we serve clients across the entire Greater Toronto Area, plus remote clients across Ontario who needed a Toronto bookkeeper who actually understands their market. All work is done with cloud-based bookkeeping software, secure document portals, and bank-level encryption — you don't need to drop off boxes of receipts.
Bookkeeping Toronto was founded in 2011 by Daniel Reyes, CPA, CA, after eight years at a mid-tier Bay Street accounting firm. The thesis was simple: small business owners deserved the same calibre of CPA-reviewed, CRA-savvy bookkeeping that mid-market companies got — without paying mid-market prices. Fixed monthly fees, dedicated bookkeepers, real CPA oversight, and CRA representation rolled in. Fourteen years later that's still the model, and the team has grown to support businesses from one-person law practices in midtown to multi-entity construction groups in Etobicoke and Vaughan.
Toronto is full of bookkeeping options — freelancers on Kijiji, big-box accounting firms downtown, offshore data-entry services, software-only solutions like Bench. Each has trade-offs. Here's where we sit and why hundreds of GTA business owners have made the switch.
Hourly bookkeepers create a perverse incentive: the longer they take, the more they charge. We charge a flat monthly fee based on transaction volume and complexity, agreed up front. Whether it takes us four hours or fourteen, your invoice doesn't change. Toronto small business clients typically land between $400 and $1,500 per month.
You get one named bookkeeper who knows your chart of accounts, your vendors, and your seasonal patterns. Same person every month. They reply within one business day during Toronto business hours — not a ticket queue. When you call about a Royal Bank deposit you don't recognize, the person on the other end already knows it's probably your Stripe payout from the King West location.
A Chartered Professional Accountant reviews every monthly close before it's signed off. That's how we catch a misclassified GIC purchase before it becomes a $12,000 audit adjustment, or notice that your meals & entertainment line is double what it should be because the cleaning company was being coded there. CPA review is included — not an add-on.
Most Toronto bookkeepers panic when a CRA letter arrives. We open them, log into the CRA Represent a Client portal, and respond on your behalf. We've handled HST audits in Etobicoke, payroll trust account reviews in North York, T2 information requests for Yorkville professional corporations, and shareholder loan reassessments for Liberty Village tech founders. CRA correspondence and audit support are included for our monthly clients.
Everything runs on QuickBooks Online or Xero, with Dext or Hubdoc for receipt capture. Snap a photo of a receipt at a Yorkville lunch meeting, it lands in your books before you finish your espresso. Approve bills from your phone on the GO Train. Real-time dashboards from anywhere — no more waiting for month-end to know whether you're profitable.
We know that a King Street West restaurant has different needs than a Mississauga warehouse, that condo developers in Liberty Village have specific HST self-assessment quirks, and that medical professional corporations in Yorkville handle billing through OHIP differently from a private clinic on Bloor. Local context matters.
We've onboarded hundreds of Toronto businesses and we know within 30 days whether the relationship is going to work. If you're not happy with your first month — for any reason — you don't pay for it. No retainers, no annual contracts, no exit fees. We earn the work month by month, the way it should be.
Most clients start with a monthly bookkeeping package and add payroll, HST, or year-end as needed. Pricing ranges shown are typical Toronto market rates as of 2026 — your actual quote depends on transaction volume, accounts, and complexity.
The foundation of everything. We log into your business bank accounts and credit cards via secure read-only feeds (RBC, TD, BMO, Scotiabank, CIBC, National Bank, Tangerine, Stripe, Square, Shopify Payments, PayPal, all supported), categorize every transaction, reconcile to the penny, and produce month-end financial statements you can actually read. Includes GL maintenance, journal entries, accruals, prepaid amortization, depreciation schedules, owner draws, and intercompany eliminations.
From $400/mo · scaled by transaction volume
Ontario's HST rate is 13% (5% federal GST + 8% provincial portion). We handle registration, monthly/quarterly/annual filings via CRA NETFILE, ITC reconciliation, Quick Method analysis where eligible, and adjustment requests when prior errors need fixing. The biggest dollar value for most clients isn't the filing itself — it's the input tax credits we recover that DIY filers miss. Recovered ITCs frequently exceed our annual fee.
Included in monthly packages, or $150–$400/filing
Full payroll processing for Toronto employers: bi-weekly or semi-monthly pay runs, direct deposits, CPP/EI/income tax source deduction calculations, monthly remittances to CRA, ROEs, T4s, T4As, T5018 contractor slips, and year-end reconciliations. We handle the awkward stuff too: vacation accruals, statutory holiday pay calculations under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, taxable benefits, and Ontario Employer Health Tax for employers exceeding the $1,000,000 payroll exemption.
$40 base + $8–$15/employee/run
Bills come in via a dedicated email or upload portal — we code them, route them through your approval workflow, schedule payments, and execute via EFT, cheque, or pre-authorized debit. Vendors get paid on time, you never miss an early-payment discount, and cash flow has predictability. On the AR side: we send invoices on your behalf, follow up on aging receivables (most Toronto small businesses have $15K–$60K stuck in 60+ day AR), and produce weekly aged AR reports.
Bundled with monthly · volume-priced
If you're behind — six months, a year, three years — we fix it. We'll reconstruct from bank statements, credit card statements, and digital records, properly categorize everything, file outstanding HST returns (even multi-year backfiles), and bring you current. Most catch-ups for Toronto small businesses run 5–25 hours of work depending on complexity. Fixed-price quotes available after a 30-minute file review.
$75–$95/hr · or fixed-price after review
By the time your CPA tax accountant gets the file, it should be ready to drop straight into a T2 corporate return or T1 self-employment schedule. We deliver a full year-end package: trial balance, GL detail, reconciled bank and credit card balances, fixed asset schedules, accrued expense schedules, deferred revenue calculations, and notes flagging anything unusual. Your tax accountant works faster, charges less, and your tax return goes in cleaner.
Included for monthly clients · $400–$900 standalone
Switching from a desktop Sage 50 file to QuickBooks Online? Moving from a chaotic Excel spreadsheet to Xero? Coming off Bench? We migrate historical data, set up a proper chart of accounts, configure bank feeds, train your team, and integrate connected apps (Stripe, Shopify, Lightspeed, Jobber, ServiceTitan, BuilderTrend, Dext, A2X, etc.). One-time projects, fixed scope, fixed price.
$500–$2,500 one-time · scope-based
Restaurants & hospitality (POS integration, tip allocation, Toronto liquor licensing). E-commerce & Shopify (A2X, multi-currency, marketplace facilitator HST). Construction & trades (job costing, holdback tracking, T5018s, WSIB). Real estate investors (per-property P&L, CCA, Section 45(2) elections, GST/HST new residential rental rebates). Medical & professional corporations (OHIP billing reconciliation). Tech startups (MRR/ARR, deferred revenue, SR&ED tagging). Not-for-profits (fund accounting, T3010). Law firms (Law Society of Ontario By-Law 9 trust accounting, three-way reconciliations).
Same fixed pricing · specialized chart of accountsEvery Toronto and GTA client gets a written, fixed monthly quote based on transaction volume, payroll, HST complexity, and industry — agreed before we touch a single bank feed.
Tell us your industry and monthly transaction count. We'll send back exact pricing the same day — and if we're not the right fit, we'll tell you which Toronto bookkeeper or CPA you should call instead.
Book Your Free Quote →Solo consultants, professional corporations, single-bank-account businesses with under 75 transactions per month. Includes monthly close, HST tracking, and one financial statement package per month.
Best for under $250K annual revenueToronto small businesses with 2–4 bank/credit card accounts, 75–250 monthly transactions, and quarterly HST filing. Most popular package — covers retail, single-location restaurants, established consulting practices, and small contractors.
Best for $250K–$1.2M annual revenueMulti-account, multi-channel businesses with 250–600 monthly transactions, payroll for 5–25 employees, and inventory accounting. Includes weekly cash-flow reports and quarterly CPA review meetings.
Best for $1.2M–$5M annual revenueHolding companies, multi-entity real estate investors, multi-location restaurants, agencies with US clients, and medical groups with multiple professional corporations. Custom-quoted based on entity count and consolidation needs.
Custom-quoted per entityMonths or years behind on your books? We do a 30–60 minute file review, then quote a fixed price for the entire catch-up regardless of how long it actually takes us. Most full-year catch-ups complete in 2–4 weeks.
Fixed price after file reviewFor Toronto businesses that handle their own monthly books but need a clean, T2-ready year-end package handed to their tax accountant. Trial balance, fixed-asset schedules, accrual notes, and reconciled balances.
One-time · scope-basedMost clients come to us with one of the following situations. Usually it's faster and cheaper to fix than they expected.
Catch-up work is one of the most common requests we get from Toronto entrepreneurs in January, February, and March. We've completed full-year catch-ups in two weeks. The trick is having the bandwidth, the templates, and the CRA experience to do it without making it worse.
Pre-Assessment Reviews, Post-Assessment Reviews, HST audits, payroll trust examinations, T2 desk reviews, requests for working papers — we handle them all. Don't ignore the letter and don't reply until you've shown it to a professional. Penalty waivers and Voluntary Disclosure Program submissions are real options.
Sadly common. We rebuild the file, identify what's missing, reconstruct from source documents, and deliver a clean trial balance. We don't badmouth predecessors — we just fix the file.
A bookkeeping cleanup. Common causes: bank feed reimporting, untrained staff coding to default accounts, undeposited funds piling up because no one ever reconciles. We have a structured 12-step cleanup process.
This one is just math. If you're a Toronto consultant, lawyer, doctor, or contractor billing $150–$300/hour for client work, every hour spent in QuickBooks is direct lost revenue. Our monthly fee is almost always less than the billable hours we give back to you.
Cash flow ≠ profit. We produce both Income Statements and Cash Flow Statements so you can see exactly where the gap is. Common Toronto culprits: HST collected but not remitted (it's not your money), shareholder loan repayments, and large prepayments.
You're almost certainly right. We routinely find $2,000–$15,000+ per year in missed input tax credits during cleanup work — on home office costs, vehicle expenses, professional fees, software subscriptions, capital purchases, and meals.
Toronto investors, BMO and RBC business banking, BDC, Futurpreneur, FedDev — they all want clean financials before releasing capital. We get you to investor-ready in 30 days for most businesses.
Hourly bookkeepers, software-only services, and offshore data-entry shops all sound cheaper at first. Here's what changes when CRA writes you a letter or your year-end accountant opens the file.
CPA-led. Toronto-based. Fixed-fee. Real human.
Cheaper line item. Hidden costs at year-end and audit time.
Our onboarding process is built so you can keep running your business while we untangle the books in the background.
Zoom or phone. We ask about your business: industry, monthly transaction volume, current software, payroll, HST status, problem areas, and what you actually want from a bookkeeper. No sales pitch — by the end of the call you'll know whether we're the right fit.
We ask for read-only access to your current books or a recent QBO/Xero backup. We spend 30–60 minutes reviewing the file, identifying what's clean, what needs cleanup, and how complex your monthly volume actually is. You get a fixed monthly quote in writing within 24 hours.
You sign a simple engagement letter and we kick off onboarding. We collect bank login credentials (read-only via secure feeds, never your password), CRA Represent a Client authorization (Form RC59 or AUT-01), payroll account details if applicable, current chart of accounts, and access to any connected apps like Shopify, Stripe, Square, or Dext.
If your books are behind, we do all the catch-up work first — at the agreed fixed price, regardless of how long it actually takes us. Most catch-ups complete in 2–4 weeks. You can keep running the business while we work; we don't need anything from you that you can't email or upload.
By the 10th business day of each month, we close the previous month: bank reconciliations done, credit cards reconciled, all transactions categorized, journal entries posted, and HST tracked. You receive an email with your Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and any flags or questions we have for you.
Every 90 days, your assigned CPA does a deeper review: looks at trends, spots anomalies, identifies tax planning opportunities (should you incorporate, buy that vehicle this year, accelerate that capital purchase before December 31), and reports back. This is where most of the strategic value lives.
Come tax season, we deliver a year-end package directly to your tax accountant — or to you, if you don't have one. We'll refer you to one of our trusted Toronto CPA partners. They take it from there for the T2 or T1 filing, working from a file that's already T2-ready.
All work is cloud-based, so location is mostly a question of context and culture rather than logistics — and we know the local context. Below are the neighbourhoods where we have active clients.
Bookkeeping isn't just data entry — it's the foundation of tax compliance. Toronto and Ontario have specific rules and quirks your bookkeeper needs to understand cold.
Ontario's Harmonized Sales Tax is 13%, combining the 5% federal GST and the 8% Ontario provincial portion. Once your business has crossed $30,000 in taxable revenue across any four consecutive calendar quarters (or in a single quarter), you're legally required to register, charge, and remit HST. Miss this and you're on the hook for the HST you should have collected — even if you didn't actually charge customers.
For Toronto businesses growing fast, this threshold sneaks up. We see it constantly with consultants who land one big client, e-commerce stores that have a viral month, and Airbnb hosts who didn't realize short-term accommodation is taxable.
CRA assigns your filing frequency based on annual taxable revenue:
Most Toronto small businesses file annually or quarterly. You can also voluntarily elect to file more frequently if you regularly receive HST refunds — common for export businesses or those in startup mode with heavy capital spend.
The CRA's Quick Method lets eligible small businesses with under $400,000 in worldwide taxable supplies remit a flat percentage of their HST-inclusive sales rather than tracking ITCs in detail. For service-based Toronto businesses with low overhead — consultants, freelance designers, IT contractors — this often saves money. But it's not for everyone: bookkeepers, accountants, financial consultants, tax preparers, lawyers, and notaries are explicitly excluded. We run the math both ways before electing.
Ontario charges Employer Health Tax on employer payroll above an exemption threshold of $1,000,000 for most private-sector employers, with the exemption phased out for very large payrolls. Most Toronto small businesses fall under the exemption and pay nothing. Once you cross it, EHT rates climb to 1.95% on payroll above the threshold. Bookkeepers must track this monthly to avoid year-end surprises and file the annual EHT return by March 15.
Most Ontario employers in Toronto are required to register with WSIB and remit premiums based on payroll. Construction is mandatory regardless of size. WSIB rates vary by industry classification, and your bookkeeper needs to track payroll subject to WSIB separately, calculate quarterly or annual premiums, and file accurately. Construction businesses also face mandatory WSIB clearance certificate requirements before accepting subcontractor invoices.
Toronto Vacant Home Tax (1% of CVA) doesn't apply to commercial bookkeeping directly, but affects rental property investors with residential portfolios — annual declarations are mandatory and easy to forget.
The City of Toronto requires business licences for many service categories — including building renovators, drain contractors, electricians, plumbers, taxicab owners, holistic centres, and food premises. Annual renewal fees and inspection records should be tracked in your books. Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, and Vaughan have similar but separate licensing regimes.
CRA requires Ontario businesses to retain financial records for a minimum of six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to. Digital records are acceptable as long as they're complete, legible, and accessible. We keep all your records securely in cloud storage with encrypted backups.
CPA-led bookkeeping isn't a marketing phrase. It's a structural commitment to oversight, expertise, and accountability you can actually verify.
Over 14 years of Toronto bookkeeping. Tens of thousands of transactions processed each month across 22 industries — restaurants, e-commerce, construction, real estate, professional corporations, tech startups, not-for-profits, and law firms. We've seen every catch-up scenario CRA can throw at us.
Canadian CPAs in good standing with CPA Ontario lead every engagement. QuickBooks ProAdvisor and Xero Certified Advisor designations across the team. Specialized knowledge of Ontario EHT, WSIB, HST quirks, professional corporation rules, and Law Society of Ontario By-Law 9 trust accounting.
Registered with CRA's Represent a Client program — we handle audits, reviews, and CRA notices on behalf of every monthly client at no extra charge. We've handled HST audits in Etobicoke, payroll trust reviews in North York, T2 desk audits in Yorkville, and Voluntary Disclosure Program submissions across the GTA.
$2M errors & omissions insurance plus $2M commercial general liability. PIPEDA-compliant data handling, signed NDAs available on request, encrypted client portal with bank-level security. 4.9-star average across 247+ verified Google reviews. First-month satisfaction guarantee.
Eight stories from current and former clients across the city — the kind of feedback that captures why CPA-reviewed bookkeeping pays for itself within months.
"We were three years behind on our HST filings when we found these guys. Within four weeks they had us caught up, filed the back returns through Voluntary Disclosure, and saved us close to $18,000 in penalties we would have otherwise owed. Worth every dollar."
"My corporate tax accountant told me she'd never seen a year-end file this clean from a small business. I genuinely believe she's right. Switching from my old hourly bookkeeper to a fixed-fee monthly CPA-led team has been the single best operational decision I've made this year."
"On their first cleanup, they found over $7,000 in input tax credits I had never claimed across two years of filings. They filed adjustment requests with CRA and within six weeks I had a refund cheque. Their fee for the entire year was less than what they recovered for me."
"I'd been with one of those big online bookkeeping services for two years. Every month a different bookkeeper, every question routed through a ticket queue. Switched to this team and I have one person who knows my business, picks up the phone, and replies the same day. Night and day difference."
"I sell on Shopify, Amazon, and Etsy across Canada and the US. My old bookkeeper just kept smushing all the deposits into 'Sales' and I had no idea where my money was actually coming from. They set up A2X integration, separated everything by channel, and now I can see exactly which channel is profitable."
"As a solo law practice in midtown, I needed someone who understood trust account compliance under Law Society By-Law 9. They knew exactly what I needed, set up my three-way reconciliations, and I haven't had a sleepless night about my trust account since."
"I'm a chiropractor — numbers are not my thing. They explain everything in plain English, send me a one-page summary every month, and don't make me feel stupid for asking what an accrual is. The first bookkeeper I've actually liked working with."
"I have seven rental properties across Toronto and Mississauga. They built me a per-property P&L so I can finally see which units are actually making money and which are bleeding cash. Game-changer for my portfolio decisions."
A look at what cloud-first, CPA-reviewed Toronto bookkeeping actually looks like — from the dashboards we ship to the neighbourhoods we know.
Public, third-party verifiable review platforms — the only kind worth paying attention to.
Real questions from Toronto small business owners. If yours isn't here, ask us during your free consultation.
Bookkeeping in Toronto typically costs between $400 and $1,500 per month for small businesses, depending on transaction volume, number of bank accounts, payroll, HST complexity, and industry. CPA-led firms with included HST filing usually price toward the upper end. Hourly bookkeepers in Toronto charge between $45 and $95 per hour, but hourly billing creates incentive to take longer — fixed monthly pricing is the industry standard for cloud bookkeeping in 2026.
A bookkeeper records and categorizes your daily transactions, reconciles bank accounts, prepares monthly financial statements, and files HST and payroll. An accountant (typically a CPA) takes the bookkeeper's clean records and prepares your annual T2 corporate tax return or T1 self-employment return, advises on tax strategy, and signs off on year-end financial statements. You usually need both — and they should work together. We are bookkeepers with CPA oversight; we partner with your tax accountant or refer you to one.
You're legally required to register for HST once your business has earned more than $30,000 in taxable revenue across any four consecutive calendar quarters, or in a single quarter. Below that threshold you're a "small supplier" and registration is optional. Many small businesses voluntarily register early so they can claim Input Tax Credits on business expenses — often a smart move if you have significant startup costs.
Ontario's Harmonized Sales Tax is 13%, made up of the 5% federal GST and the 8% Ontario provincial portion. This applies to most goods and services sold in Ontario. Some items are zero-rated (basic groceries, prescription drugs) or exempt (most healthcare, residential rent, financial services).
Yes, if they're registered with CRA's Represent a Client program. We handle CRA HST audits, payroll trust account reviews, T2 desk audits, and pre/post-assessment reviews on behalf of our monthly clients at no extra charge. If your current bookkeeper can't or won't deal with CRA on your behalf, that's a red flag.
CRA requires Canadian businesses to retain financial records — including invoices, receipts, bank statements, payroll records, and ledgers — for a minimum of six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to. Digital records are acceptable. We retain a complete encrypted backup of everything we touch for our clients.
Both are excellent. QuickBooks Online has the larger market share in Canada and integrates with virtually every Canadian bank and Canadian payroll provider. Xero tends to have a cleaner interface and better multi-entity handling — popular with consultants, agencies, and tech startups. Sage 50 Canada (formerly Simply Accounting) still has a place for desktop-preferring businesses but is being phased out in our practice. We're certified in all three.
Cloud-based bookkeeping is fully remote and has been the industry standard since around 2015. There's no business reason for an in-person bookkeeper anymore — bank feeds, secure document upload, video calls, and screen sharing handle everything. Our team is Toronto-based but our work is done remotely on cloud platforms, which is exactly how the rest of the industry operates.
Most full-year catch-ups for Toronto small businesses are completed in 2 to 4 weeks. Complex catch-ups (multi-entity, multi-currency, missing source documents, prior bookkeeper made errors) can take longer. We give a fixed-price quote up front based on a 30–60 minute file review, so you're never charged more than agreed even if it takes us longer.
Primary platforms: QuickBooks Online (most common), Xero, Sage 50 Canada, Wave. Receipt capture: Dext, Hubdoc. Payroll: QuickBooks Payroll, Wagepoint, Payworks, Ceridian Powerpay, ADP. E-commerce: A2X for Shopify, Amazon, and Etsy. Industry-specific: Jobber, ServiceTitan, BuilderTrend, Lightspeed, TouchBistro, Square, Stripe, PayPal.
Yes. Full-service payroll: bi-weekly or semi-monthly pay runs, direct deposit, source deduction calculations and remittances, ROEs, T4s, T4As, T5018s, year-end reconciliations, EHT and WSIB calculations and filings. Pricing is typically $40 base plus $8–$15 per employee per pay run.
Same service, same price. We serve clients across the entire GTA — Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Aurora, Newmarket, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Oakville, Burlington, Milton — with the same fixed monthly pricing as our Toronto clients. Cloud-based work doesn't care about postal codes.
That's a tax-planning question that crosses into the territory of a CPA tax accountant — we'll give you the bookkeeping perspective (cleaner separation of personal and business, easier tracking, better lending terms) and refer you to one of our trusted Toronto tax CPAs for the actual incorporation decision. The general rule of thumb: if you're consistently earning more than $80,000–$100,000 in self-employment income above what you need to live on, incorporation is usually worth the cost.
Same week. Free consultation today, signed engagement letter tomorrow, onboarding kicks off within 48 hours. Catch-up work begins immediately. You'll see your first reconciled monthly close within 14–21 days.
Three things. (1) We're Toronto-based with Toronto business hours and a real human you can call. (2) Every account has Canadian CPA oversight — most online-only services use offshore data entry without CPA review. (3) We handle CRA correspondence, audits, and complex Ontario-specific situations (EHT, WSIB, HST quirks, professional corporation rules) that generic online services aren't equipped for.
Ninety seconds to fill out, 24-hour reply with a fixed monthly fee in writing. Or call (613) 324-9141 to talk through it.
No sales pitch. Tell us your industry and monthly transaction count, we'll send pricing the same business day. If we're not the right fit, we'll refer you to a Toronto bookkeeper who is.
Most Toronto small businesses we onboard are surprised by how fast the relief sets in — clean, current books, an HST filing that won't bounce back from CRA, and a bookkeeper who actually picks up the phone.