Bought by the vial, sold by the unit
Botulinum toxin is a prescription drug that arrives in 50- and 100-unit vials and leaves the clinic a few units at a time, which means the cost of every treatment is a per-unit calculation or it is a guess. We cost each treatment at the price the clinic actually paid per unit, and we treat the units lost in a part-used vial as exactly what they are: a real cost of sale. A clinic that ignores reconstitution waste believes its injectable margin is several points better than it is, prices off that belief, and compounds the error every month.
The fridge has a paper trail too. Toxins and several fillers hold between two and eight degrees Celsius, a reconstituted vial has a short usable window, and product that expires gets written off in the month it dies, not discovered at a year-end count. Each month we reconcile units purchased against units billed in the treatment log, whether that lives in Jane App, Aesthetic Record or Zenoti. The gap between those two numbers is where waste, comped touch-ups and missing stock hide, and it deserves a named line on the statement rather than a shrug.
Packages and memberships are liabilities first
A six-session laser package paid in full today is not revenue today; it is a debt the clinic owes in treatments. The books carry it as deferred revenue and release one sixth as each session is redeemed, which is the only way the monthly statement tells the truth about how the clinic performed. HST runs on a different clock: tax on a package is generally collectible when the money is received, not as sessions are used, so the HST return and the income statement can legitimately disagree for months. Both are right, provided both are tracked.
Gift cards run the opposite way. Under the gift-certificate rules, selling the card is ignored for HST, and tax applies only when the card is redeemed against a treatment or a product. Most clinics sell packages and gift cards heavily in the same December, so the point of sale has to tax each on its own clock. We configure that once, then reconcile the liability accounts monthly, including a periodic look at balances that will clearly never be redeemed.
Memberships add a third shape. A monthly fee that banks treatment credits is earned as billed, but the unused credits pile up as their own liability, and a clinic that lets members roll credits forward for years is quietly accumulating an obligation the statement needs to show. We track the credit bank by member, in dollars, so the number is real when a member cancels or when a buyer's accountant asks for it in diligence.
One sale, three clocks
| What was sold | Revenue is earned | HST is collected |
|---|---|---|
| Single treatment, paid that day | At the appointment | The same day |
| Prepaid package of six | One sixth per redeemed session | When the package is paid |
| Monthly membership | Each month as billed | Each month as billed |
| Gift card | When redeemed for services | At redemption |
| Retail skincare | At the register | At the register |
This table is the reason a medspa bank balance flatters its owner. Deposits surge in a strong package month while earned revenue lags behind, and decisions made off the bank feed tend to overspend at exactly the moment future obligations are highest. Statements that keep the liability in view let the cash read as what it is: partly yours, partly the clients'.
The rest of the monthly file
Payroll runs along regulatory lines. Nurse injectors and estheticians sit on different pay scales, usually base plus commission on treatments and retail, and we calculate commissions from the treatment log rather than from memory. Whether an injector belongs on payroll at all is a filing-side question with real CRA stakes, and it gets its own treatment in our tax work for medspas rather than a footnote here.
The retail shelf behaves like a small store inside the clinic: its own cost of goods, its own count, its own margin line, with Square or Shopify POS feeding QuickBooks Online and supplier invoices captured through Dext. Our End-to-End Accounting service wraps all of it, bookkeeping, payroll, HST and the year-end filings, into one engagement for clinics across Mississauga and the GTA. When the deferred-revenue picture starts to drive tax decisions, the file hands off cleanly to Tax Planning & Advisory. Fees are quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, with no hourly surprises.
