Three kinds of dollars ring through one front desk
Help with a course the student's school gives credit for is exempt from HST. An SAT class or a robotics enrichment program is taxable at 13%. And the ten-session package a parent paid for on the first of the month is not income yet, it is sessions the centre owes back. Each dollar needs its own treatment from the moment it is invoiced, because no year-end cleanup can reliably rebuild the split from a single lumped revenue account.
End-to-End Accounting puts bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting and tax filing under one roof, and for a tutoring centre the build starts in the program catalogue: every offering is coded exempt or taxable when it is created, so each invoice line lands in the right revenue account without anyone thinking about tax at the desk.
| What the centre sells | HST on the invoice | When it becomes revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 11 functions tutoring (credit course) | Exempt, no HST | Session by session, as delivered |
| SAT or LSAT prep class | Taxable at 13% | Across the scheduled class dates |
| Enrichment programs (coding, public speaking) | Taxable at 13% | Session by session |
| Ten-session prepaid package | Follows the program it buys | A liability until each session is logged |
| Online self-study course access | Taxable at 13% | Over the access period |
A package is owed back in sessions, not banked as profit
When a family prepays a semester, the deposit sits in a deferred revenue account and moves to income only as sessions are delivered. The earning record already exists: scheduling platforms like Teachworks or TutorBird log every attended session by student, tutor and program. We use that log as the source of truth, post a monthly entry that recognizes what was actually taught, and carry an unearned balance the centre can read student by student.
Makeup lessons, credits and mid-package refunds all run against the liability rather than against revenue, so a refunded family never distorts a month's sales. The same discipline keeps the June wave honest: heavy exam-season collections show up as cash and obligation, not as a profit spike that evaporates in July.
Family billing brings its own edge cases. Sibling discounts belong on the invoice line, so program revenue stays comparable across students. The free assessment hour is a cost of winning a student, not a discount against revenue. Pre-authorized monthly charges need a failed-payment routine, because a declined card in a prepaid model quietly turns a liability into an uncollected receivable. And when a family pauses for the summer, the unearned balance simply waits; the books should show it waiting, not write it off.
Tutor payouts, payroll and the February file
Most centres pay tutors an hourly rate per delivered session, and the payout calculation should fall straight out of the same session log that earns the revenue. We track amounts per tutor, run payments through Plooto, and keep cumulative totals so contractor T4A slips in February are an export, not an archaeology project. Salaried staff, a centre director or front-desk coordinator, run through payroll inside the same engagement with source deductions, vacation accrual and T4s handled.
Whether a given tutor is genuinely a contractor is a facts question the CRA tests, and the bookkeeping should never contradict the answer the centre claims. Clean per-session records, tutor invoices on file and consistent payment handling are the paper trail that position depends on.
Month-end that answers an owner's real questions
Franchised centres carry two more lines the books must get right: the royalty, a share of gross tuition in some systems and a flat monthly per-student fee in others, and the marketing-fund contribution, each booked on the base the agreement defines and reconciled to the franchisor's statement. Receipts flow in through Dext, the ledger lives in QuickBooks Online, and the close lands on the same date every month.
The monthly pack reads the way a centre actually runs: revenue earned by program, the unearned session balance, tutor cost as a share of delivered revenue, and enrolment counts against last month. Because every invoice line was coded at the catalogue, the HST filing starts from a report rather than a guess, and the credit allocation between exempt and taxable activity carries a working paper a reviewer can follow. Those clean splits also feed straight into Corporate Tax Filing at year-end instead of triggering a reconstruction. We work with centres across Mississauga and the GTA, and every engagement is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
