Most bookkeeping disasters we clean up in Vancouver start the same way: a business owner puts month-end off until quarter-end, then until year-end. A repeatable 90-minute routine prevents almost all of it.
Reconcile every account, not just the main one
Bank feeds are helpful, but they are not reconciliation. Match the closing balance in your accounting file to the closing balance on each statement — chequing, savings, every credit card, and any line of credit.
If a balance is out by a few dollars, resist the urge to post a plug entry. Small unexplained differences are almost always duplicated transactions or a payment recorded twice, and both distort your reported revenue.
- Business chequing and savings accounts
- All corporate and personal-but-business-used credit cards
- Merchant processors (Stripe, Square, Shopify Payments)
- Loans and shareholder accounts
Chase receipts while people still remember
CRA expects supporting documentation for expenses, and a bank line alone is not documentation. Use a capture tool so receipts land in your accounting file the day they are incurred rather than in a shoebox each spring.
Pay particular attention to meals and entertainment (50% deductible), vehicle costs (require a logbook), and home-office expenses, which need a reasonable square-footage basis.
Review AR and AP before you close
Print an aged receivables report and an aged payables report every month. Anything past 60 days needs a decision — chase, negotiate, or write off. Anything sitting in payables that you know you already paid is a sign of a duplicate bill.
This is also the moment to check your cash runway: receivables you cannot collect are not cash, and treating them as such is how profitable companies run out of money.
Read the two reports that actually matter
Close each month by reading a profit-and-loss compared to the prior month and a balance sheet compared to the prior year-end. Look for line items that moved more than 20% and ask why.
If you cannot explain a movement, that is your bookkeeping issue for the month. Fix it while the details are fresh instead of reconstructing it eleven months later.
Want this handled for your business?
North Pacific CPA runs bookkeeping, payroll, and year-end for owner-managed companies in Vancouver. Book a 30-minute discovery call and we'll map out what your books need.
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