Bookkeeping for retail shops and service businesses.
Card settlements, tips, refunds, gift cards and a POS that does not quite agree with the bank. Retail and service books are rarely complicated — they are just relentless. We reconcile the daily traffic every month so your sales numbers are real, your PST and GST are right, and you can see which weeks actually made money.
Sound familiar?
These are the things we see most often in retail shops and service businesses books before we take them over.
- Merchant deposits recorded as sales, so processing fees quietly vanish
- POS totals that never quite match what hit the bank account
- Tips and gratuities run through the books incorrectly at payroll time
- PST charged on the wrong items, or not charged at all
- Gift cards and deposits counted as income before they are earned
- Inventory bought on personal cards and never claimed
What we handle for retail shops and service businesses businesses
- Daily sales and merchant settlement reconciliation, fees separated out
- POS integration with QuickBooks Online or Xero
- PST and GST registration, filing and remittance planning
- Payroll for hourly staff, including tips, remittances, ROEs and T4s
- Gift card and customer deposit liabilities tracked properly
- Monthly statements showing gross margin, not just revenue
How we run your file
We connect your POS and merchant accounts so sales, fees and refunds flow in automatically, then reconcile the settlement to the bank each month — the step most retail files are missing. Sales tax gets checked against what you actually sell, not what was set up on day one. Your monthly pack shows revenue, cost of goods and gross margin so you can see the effect of a price change or a slow month straight away.
Square, Shopify, Clover or Moneris feeding QuickBooks Online or Xero, with receipts captured by phone. Nothing to enter by hand after close.
What it costs
Flat monthly fees from $150, set after a quick look at your volume — no hourly surprises and no lock-in contract.
FAQ
Retail & Service Businesses bookkeeping questions
Straight answers before you pick up the phone.
It depends what you sell. Most goods sold in BC are subject to PST, while many services are not, and there are specific exemptions. We review what you actually sell, get you registered where required, and file both returns on schedule.
Yes, and it is usually the first thing we fix. Merchant deposits arrive net of fees, so recording the deposit as your sales figure understates both revenue and expenses. We record gross sales, fees and refunds separately and tie the settlement to the bank.
It depends whether tips are controlled by the business or paid directly to staff, because that changes payroll treatment and source deductions. We set it up to match how your shop actually distributes them.
Yes. Once cost of goods is coded properly, your monthly statements show margin alongside revenue — the number that tells you whether a busy month was actually a profitable one.