Ontario

Running a construction business in Ontario

The day itself, once the work is won and before the money is in. Every job on one board, a morning screen that says what needs a decision today, giving a crew access without handing over your password, and doing the admin by replying to an email from the truck.

11 ways to move forward

Practical guidesAdmin 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.Practical guidesEvery job on one boardAsk a contractor what they are chasing and you get three jobs and a pause. The pause is where a quote sits for five weeks. One board with the money on each column, and a fifteen minute weekly habit.Practical guidesRun your back officeKeep recurring construction office work connected to the records that matter: pipeline, quotes, invoices, documents and Books, with role-based team access.Practical guidesPushed to incorporateOpen a company, keep the same hourly rate, add HST. It sounds like a favour and it is a transfer: everything your boss pays on top of your wage becomes yours. Run the arithmetic on what moves, see the tests CRA and WSIB actually rule on, and price the real version if you go anyway.Practical guidesFirst employeeThe first hire is three jobs: registrations that make it legal, paper that makes the deal clear, and a price you should know before the ad goes up. The payroll deductions account is a checklist item, the employment agreement is generated, and the WSIB card prices the hire with your own rate.Practical guidesOne 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.Practical guidesPaying subsPaying a sub is three jobs: pay them, prove everyone under you is paid, and report it to CRA. The statutory declaration that releases holdback is already generated, the subcontractor agreement starts the paper trail on day one, and the T5018 totals itself from your books.Practical guidesTeam 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.Practical guidesOne 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.Practical guidesTry 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.After you qualifyOperational SetupBusiness banking, construction-specific accounting, payroll setup, trust obligations under the Construction Act, and day-to-day operations.

The rest of the Ontario library

Project documents & deliveryFinding construction work in OntarioBidding and prequalification in OntarioPricing construction work in OntarioGetting paid on Ontario constructionConstruction holdback in OntarioHST for Ontario contractorsConstruction bookkeeping in Ontario
Every guideThe whole Ontario libraryPractical guides