One close for the register and the webstore
Shopify POS at the counter and the online store share one product catalogue, but the money arrives in three shapes: cash in the till, card batches from the terminal, and Shopify Payments payouts that land net of processing fees. Coding bank deposits straight to sales gets all three wrong at once, and it quietly misstates the HST collected. Our End-to-End Accounting engagement, bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting and tax filing under one roof, rebuilds each day at gross so sales, fees and tax each sit on their own line.
| In the daily close | How it should post |
|---|---|
| Card terminal batch | Matched to the bank deposit, kept separate from cash takings |
| Shopify Payments payout | Rebuilt to gross online sales, processing fees on their own expense line |
| Cash sales and float | Counted against the Z-report, over and short tracked rather than buried |
| Refund across the counter | Sale and its HST reversed the day it happens |
| Gift card sold | A liability, never revenue |
| Children's clothing rebate line | The 8% provincial credit carried item by item into the HST filing |
The same rhythm covers the buying side. Wholesale invoices and freight bills flow through Dext into QuickBooks Online as deliveries arrive, so the season's purchase commitments are visible in real time instead of reconstructed at year-end. An online order returned across the counter is the everyday omnichannel wrinkle: the refund has to find its original channel, and the unit has to walk back into sellable stock, or the webstore keeps selling inventory that no longer exists.
Returns, exchanges and gift cards carry liabilities
A boutique with a fair return policy sells some pieces twice. A December dress refunded in January reverses its revenue and its HST in January, which is why a strong holiday statement deserves a hard look at the weeks after it. Exchanges post only the price difference. Store credit issued instead of cash is a liability, exactly like a gift card, and it needs the same tracking.
Gift cards earn extra respect in Ontario because consumer-protection rules mean most of them never expire. Every card sold sits on the balance sheet until redeemed, and the HST applies at redemption rather than at sale. We reconcile sold against redeemed balances monthly so the liability is a real number, not a plug that grows for years.
The consignment rack is not your stock
Consigned pieces belong to the consignor until the moment a customer pays, so they never enter your inventory asset and never inflate your cost of sales. At the sale, the ticket splits: your share posts as revenue, the consignor's share as a payable with a payout date. Mixing consigned goods into owned inventory overstates the balance sheet and breaks your margin reporting in both directions.
One flag worth settling in writing before the first piece sells: when a boutique sells for a consignor who is not HST-registered, the tax rules can put the full 13% on the boutique for the entire selling price. We set up the ledger and the consignment terms so everyone knows whose tax is whose.
Counts, shrink and an aged-stock report worth reading
Owned inventory sits at cost until it sells, and the only way to trust that number is to count it. We tie the ledger to periodic counts, measure shrink from theft, damage and shopworn stock instead of assuming it away, and keep an aged-stock report by season and category. That report is what turns January's clearance racks into a documented year-end writedown, a conversation our Tax Planning & Advisory work picks up with the evidence already filed.
Payroll and a month-end that lands on time
The first sales associate brings payroll remittances, WSIB registration and T4s; the seasonal hires for the holiday rush bring all of it again in a compressed window. It runs inside the same engagement, and month-end closes on schedule: sales by channel at gross, margin after markdowns, the gift card liability, the consignor payables and the HST building toward the next filing. That is the package we deliver to boutiques across Mississauga and the GTA, scoped and quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call. An owner-run shop that only needs a CPA on call for now can start with CPA Quick Support at $99 a month.
