Two deposit streams, moving in opposite directions
Client money flows toward you early: a retainer at signing, an instalment at the midpoint, a balance shortly before the event. Vendor money flows away from you just as early, because the venue wants its hold fee and the florist and rental company want deposits, sometimes before your client's next payment has landed. Cash-basis thinking calls the first stream income and the second an expense. Both readings are wrong until the event is delivered.
In the books we keep, a client retainer sits as deferred revenue, a liability, until the planning work it pays for is done, and a vendor deposit you have paid out sits as an asset until that vendor delivers and invoices the balance. Only then does the profit and loss statement move. A planner who skips this sees phantom profit through booking season and phantom losses through delivery season, then sets owner draws and pricing off both.
One wedding, six money movements
Here is how the money around a single event should land in a planner's books:
| Money movement | Where it sits in your books |
|---|---|
| Retainer received at signing | Deferred revenue, a liability, released as the work is delivered. |
| Client instalment earmarked for vendors | Depends on your contract: funds you hold for the client, or your own revenue. |
| Deposit paid to the venue or florist | An advance, an asset, until the vendor delivers and bills the balance. |
| Final balance invoiced before the event | A receivable when billed, revenue as the event is delivered. |
| Day-of assistants paid after the event | Wages or contract labour, costed to that specific event. |
| Referral commission from a vendor | Your income when it becomes receivable, with HST on top. |
Whether the vendor-money rows run through your revenue at all depends on whether you contract as your client's agent or as principal, a question with tax consequences big enough that we give it its own page on event planner tax services. The bookkeeping rule is simpler: the books must match whichever answer the contract gives, on every event, without exception.
Day-of crews: the line between T4A and T4
Most planners staff event days with assistants, and how they are paid is a facts question, not a label question. CRA looks at who controls the work, who supplies the tools, whether the assistant works for other planners, and whether they carry any chance of profit or loss. A styling assistant who runs her own decor business and invoices you is likely a contractor. A student who works your Saturdays all season, on your schedule, with your kit, is likely an employee even if she only works twelve days a year.
- Contractors get a T4A slip with the fees reported in box 048, due by the last day of February.
- Employees need a payroll account, CPP and EI withholdings each pay, and a T4 by the same deadline.
- Misclassification is expensive: CRA can assess both shares of CPP and EI retroactively, with penalties, and a single assistant filing for EI benefits is often what starts the review.
We settle the classification person by person, paper it, and then run whichever answer applies inside End-to-End Accounting, where bookkeeping, payroll, reporting and tax filing live under one roof.
A close that keeps pace with the season
Planners run their client side in Dubsado, HoneyBook or Aisle Planner, and those tools are good at proposals, contracts and payment schedules. They are not accounting systems. We reconcile their invoices and payment plans into QuickBooks Online rather than letting two systems each tell half the truth, and Dext captures the receipts that pile up on event days, from last-minute candles to parking. Every cost is tagged to its event, so per-event margin can actually be measured when pricing decisions come around.
Payment processing deserves one more sentence of care. When a client pays a Dubsado or HoneyBook invoice by card, the processor deposits the amount net of its fee, and books built off the bank feed quietly record less revenue than you billed. We record the gross invoice, the processing fee as its own cost, and tie the two back to the deposit, because your revenue number feeds your HST return and has to be right.
Through the season that means a disciplined monthly close; through the winter it means the deeper work of year-end, planning and cleanup. A solo planner who is not ready for a full engagement can start with CPA Quick Support at $99 a month and get answers between filings, then step up when the booking book demands it.
