What a consulting corporation's month actually looks like
Two or three invoices out. One or two deposits in. A run of card charges, most of them software. One transfer to yourself. That is the entire month for most one-person tech corps, which is why we run consultant books inside End-to-End Accounting on a deliberately light footprint: QuickBooks Online on bank feeds, Dext catching receipts from your phone, and a monthly close that takes minutes because the volume never justifies hours.
Simple does not mean casual. Every input tax credit on the HST return needs a receipt behind it, the T2 needs costs in the right buckets, and one account punishes sloppiness more than any other: the shareholder loan. Personal spending on the corporate card accumulates there, and a balance you owe the corporation that is still outstanding a year after the corporation's year-end gets added to your personal income. We keep that account boring on purpose, with a clean monthly sweep instead of a year-end confession.
The subscription stack hides a real HST trap
A consultant's cost base is mostly SaaS: IDE licences, cloud compute, an API bill, a couple of AI tools, a password manager. Since July 2021, many foreign vendors charge GST/HST under the simplified registration regime, and tax charged under that regime is not claimable as an input tax credit. The fix is administrative, not clever: give each vendor your HST registration number so they stop charging it. We sweep the subscription list annually for tax being paid that should not be, for US-dollar charges that need consistent exchange treatment, and for tools nobody has opened since the last contract ended.
| Typical cost | How it lands in the books |
|---|---|
| SaaS from a Canadian vendor | Expense; 13% ITC with the receipt |
| SaaS from a foreign vendor | Expense; provide your HST number, because simplified-regime tax is not recoverable |
| Laptop, monitors, home-lab hardware | Class 50 CCA at 55% declining balance |
| Perpetual software licence | Class 12, written off quickly |
| Driving to a client site | Per-kilometre allowance from the corporation, backed by a log |
| Conference trip | Travel deductible; meals at 50% |
The home office, without hand-waving
A consultant working from a spare room should not be guessing a percentage the night before filing. The cleaner pattern is the corporation reimbursing a documented share of home costs: measure the workspace as a fraction of the home, apply that fraction to a defensible pool of costs, and pay the reimbursement the same way every month.
What belongs in the pool depends on tenure. A renter's pool is straightforward: the workspace share of rent, utilities and home internet. An owner's pool is narrower and worth an actual conversation, because reasonable and aggressive diverge fast once mortgage costs enter the picture. Either way the method is set once, written down, and revisited only when you move. Cell phone follows the same logic: a documented business share, not a round number.
A payroll of one still has deadlines
If you pay yourself salary, the corporation carries a payroll account, remits source deductions by the 15th of the following month as a regular remitter, and issues a T4 by the last day of February. If you take dividends, there is no monthly remittance but a T5 is due on the same February deadline, and personal instalments usually take over the pay-as-you-go role. Whether salary or dividends is the right mix is a planning question; the accounting job is making sure the ledger, the slips and the actual bank transfers all tell one identical story.
Year-end becomes a handoff, not a project
Because the books close monthly, year-end is a file transfer rather than an archaeology dig: reconciled accounts flow to Corporate Tax Filing for the T2, and the HST return is assembled from ITCs that were verified when they happened. No shoebox week, no estimated numbers filed under deadline pressure.
Between year-ends, questions do not wait politely. Can the corporation pay for a certification course? How should a signing bonus from a new contract be invoiced? For solo consultants across Mississauga and the GTA, CPA Quick Support at 99 dollars a month exists for exactly this: unlimited questions, three topics a month, and CRA letter review included, priced so you never sit on a question because you are watching the meter.
