How to switch bookkeepers in BC without losing your records
Changing bookkeepers feels awkward and risky. It does not have to be — here is the order of operations that keeps your data and your filings intact.
Most owners stay too long with a bookkeeper who has stopped answering, because switching sounds like it will break something. Done in the right order, a handover takes about a week and nothing goes missing.
Step 1: Confirm who owns the file
If the QuickBooks Online or Xero subscription is in your business name, you own it and you can simply change who has access. If it sits under your bookkeeper's firm account, ask for the file to be transferred to a subscription in your name before anything else happens. This is the single most important step.
Step 2: Collect these before you give notice
- Admin login to your accounting software
- Filed GST/PST returns and confirmation numbers for the last two years
- Payroll registers, remittance confirmations, T4s and ROEs
- Year-end working papers and adjusting entries from your accountant
- A copy of the current trial balance and bank reconciliation reports
Step 3: Never hand over your CRA credentials
A bookkeeper should be authorized through CRA Represent a Client using their own RepID, not by logging in as you. If your outgoing bookkeeper has your My Business Account password, change it, and remove their authorization in Represent a Client once the handover is done.
Step 4: Pick a clean cutover date
The end of a GST period or a fiscal quarter is ideal — it gives a natural line where one set of numbers ends and the next begins. Have your new bookkeeper review the opening balances against the last reconciliation before touching anything forward.
Step 5: Get a written review of what you inherited
Any decent bookkeeper will tell you what they found: unreconciled accounts, GST on the wrong side, personal spend in the business, suspense accounts hiding a problem. If nobody tells you what shape the file was in, you will discover it at year-end instead.
How we handle it
Our onboarding does exactly this: a file review, a written summary of anything that needs fixing, and a fixed quote for any catch-up work before we start the monthly service. Send us the intake form and we will take it from there — with a callback inside 24 hours.