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Ontario

Construction bookkeeping in Ontario

You cannot price the next job off books you do not trust. These guides cover getting receipts out of the truck and into a ledger, knowing by the fifth whether last month made money, and keeping records that hold up when somebody asks to see them.

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Open a seeded business in your trade. Nine jobs on the pipeline, a quote sent and viewed, a deposit paid, an invoice overdue, and a holdback on the current month.

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12 guides on this

How to run the businessTeam accessWhat would fix a contractor’s admin is almost never a feature. It is a person: a bookkeeper, an office manager, a partner who already does the invoicing. Three roles, an email address, and an accountant export that means they never need a login at all.How to run the businessReceipts out of the shoeboxFiling a $47 receipt costs more attention than the $47 is worth on the day, so it waits until January. Photograph it in the parking lot, check what was read off it, and claim the HST you paid instead of losing it.How to run the businessAdmin by emailLogging in to answer a one line question costs more than the question is worth, so it waits until night. Your business has an email address: ask it what is outstanding and the answer comes back with your own invoices, jobs and calls in it.How to run the businessWin rate and your priceA win rate is a score, not a diagnosis. Put the size of what you lose next to the size of what you win, read the reasons you lost, and check what the wins actually made before you come down on price.How to run the businessOne screen every morningThe worst part of running a contracting business is the twenty minutes before the work, spent reconstructing what happened yesterday. A briefing written each morning from your own invoices, deals and books, ranked so the top card is the one that matters.How to run the businessDid I make money this monthThe bank balance is a mix of last month's invoices, next month's HST and a deposit on a job that has not started. Read the month, split it by job, and learn the difference between a job losing money and a job you have not invoiced yet.How to run the businessBooks that stand upThe fear is being asked a question about your own business and not being able to answer it. The way out is records made as the work happens, by the system that raised the invoice, so there is nothing to reconstruct in March.How to run the businessTry it as a working businessAn empty trial account tells you nothing. Pick your trade and land in a business partway through its year: money in play, an invoice fourteen days overdue, change orders on a live job, books that balance.How to run the businessHow much to chargePrice one real job end to end: every cost on its own line, markup you set on purpose, Ontario HST applied for you, holdback split into what you bill now and what waits, and one list of every quote out with its status and value. Demo business, no signup.How to run the businessWhat an hour costs youThe wage is roughly half what a worker costs. Add the employer side, the truck, the tools and the insurance, divide it across the hours you can actually invoice, and get a floor under your rate before the quote goes out.How to run the businessHST without the surpriseNobody writes to tell you that you crossed the threshold. Register on time, charge it on the whole invoice, keep the collected money separate, and read your return on the CRA's own line numbers before you sit down with your accountant.How to run the businessOne place, not five toolsContractors build their own spreadsheets because every app was missing the thing that makes construction different, and because a monthly bill for something that still needs a workaround is infuriating. Holdback, per-job profit and the T5018, in one place, with no monthly bill.

Count it instead of estimating it

Ontario filing deadline calendarEvery date a contractor owes the CRA and WSIB, counted from your own year end. Including the T5018, which is the one that surprises people.Free, no signup.
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The rest of the Ontario library

Finding construction work in OntarioBidding and prequalification in OntarioPricing construction work in OntarioChange orders and extras in OntarioGetting paid on Ontario constructionConstruction holdback in OntarioConstruction liens in OntarioHST for Ontario contractors
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