Frequently asked questions

Canadian dollars. Every published tier, add-on and calculator result on the pricing page is quoted in C$, and your invoice is issued in C$ as well. If your business also bills in USD, that only affects how those transactions are coded, not the currency you are billed in.

The base fee is set by transaction volume, not by province count, but coding several provinces' GST, HST or provincial sales tax correctly does add complexity that can move you into a different volume band. The published pricing page and calculator reflect that as you enter your numbers.

GST/HST return preparation support is an add-on on top of the base bookkeeping plan, priced separately because filing frequency and complexity vary by business. The published pricing page lists it as its own line so you can see the incremental cost before adding it.

T2 preparation support is quoted on top of your monthly bookkeeping plan, based on corporate structure and how current your books are heading into the filing. Businesses already reconciled month to month typically see a lower incremental cost than a business starting from a backlog.

CRA remittances, whether GST/HST, source deductions or corporate tax instalments, are always paid in Canadian dollars directly to the CRA. That payment is separate from your invoice to Finbryn; we track and reconcile the amounts, the remittance itself goes straight to the CRA.

Pricing follows transaction volume and scope rather than legal structure directly, though an incorporated business typically adds T2 preparation support and a fixed asset or shareholder loan schedule a sole proprietorship does not need, which shows up as an add-on rather than a different base rate.

Payroll journal reconciliation is included in every plan tier, from Essentials up, rather than sold as a separate add-on. What is priced separately is running the payroll itself through a platform like Wagepoint and preparing GST/HST or T2 filing support on top of bookkeeping.

No. PIPEDA governs how personal information is handled and disclosed, it does not require Canadian data to stay within Canada's borders. What it requires is that any cross-border handling carry comparable protection, which is addressed in the privacy policy's data-transfer clause rather than by keeping data in one country.

Only the named pod assigned to your file and the senior principal who reviews it get access, through your own accounting platform's connected feeds rather than a copy of your online banking credentials. Access is scoped to your account and removed the moment someone leaves the engagement.

No. Bank and card data reaches your bookkeeping through a read-only feed inside QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage 50, the same connection you would set up yourself. We never ask for or hold your online banking login credentials at any point in the engagement.

Nothing about your records depends on our account status. Your file lives in your own QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage 50 subscription throughout, so it stays fully accessible to you regardless of what happens on our side of the engagement.

Your Business Number and any SIN needed for a T1 filing are handled only within your accounting platform and the tax preparation workpapers built for that filing, never copied into a separate marketing or storage system. Handling follows the safeguards set out in the privacy policy.

Yes. You can request a list of who has had access to your file and when at any point during the engagement, since access is logged by named pod member rather than shared across an undocumented group.

No. Access to your QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage 50 feeds is granted once at onboarding and stays in place across a tier change, since the connection is to your accounting platform, not to a specific plan. Only your billing and scope of work change when you move tiers.

No. GST or HST is coded to its own line as transactions come in, so it does not hold up the rest of the close. The profit and loss and balance sheet are delivered on the agreed close date, with the GST/HST position already sitting in the ledger.

The same named pod handles your file every month, and you reach them directly rather than through a rotating support queue. A first reply lands within one business hour on business days, and a call can be booked in your own time zone when writing is not enough.

QuickBooks Online, Xero and Sage 50 cover most Canadian files, with Dext, Hubdoc or Wagepoint connected where receipt capture or payroll needs to post into the ledger. If you use something outside that list, tell us at onboarding and we confirm whether it fits before starting.

We prepare the numbers and documentation behind a bank or CRA conversation and can join a call if useful, but the relationship and any formal correspondence stay yours. Filing and signing authority with the CRA sits with you or your registered preparer, not with Finbryn.

The close date accounts for statutory holidays when it is set at onboarding, so a long weekend does not silently push your numbers a full cycle late. If a holiday genuinely delays a bank feed or a document you need to provide, that is flagged on the open-items list.

Yes. Each entity is reconciled on its own set of books, and intercompany balances are tracked and eliminated where a consolidated view is needed. Scope and pricing reflect the entity count, agreed before the first close so nothing is a surprise partway through.

Coordination and calls are booked in your own business hours, whichever Canadian time zone that is, Pacific through Atlantic. Written replies land within one business hour on business days regardless of time zone, since that response standard is not tied to a single office hour window.

Yes. We review the exported Wave data, rebuild the chart of accounts inside QuickBooks Online or Xero if that is where you are moving, and run a gap check across the handover period so no month is missed before ongoing bookkeeping continues.

No. Changing who does your bookkeeping does not require notifying the CRA, since your Business Number, GST/HST account and filing obligations stay with your business regardless of provider. Only a change in your registered preparer for filing purposes would involve a CRA authorization update.

We flag it once it surfaces during reconciliation and lay out what the correction would involve, but you or your registered preparer decide whether and how to amend it with the CRA. We do not file the correction ourselves.

A straightforward switch with a current, reconciled file can start within a week of the handover date. If a backlog exists, catch-up work is scoped and timed separately so ongoing monthly bookkeeping still starts from a clean base rather than an estimate.

No. If you already have a subscription, it stays in your name and you simply grant access to your new pod. If you do not have one yet, we set it up under your own account so you own it from the first day.

Yes. We reconstruct the period from your bank and card statements up to the switch date, reconcile it against whatever partial records exist, and continue from there so the next GST/HST return has a complete, reconciled period behind it.

Yes. We reconcile the period leading up to the switch date so the next GST/HST return has continuous, matched records behind it rather than a gap between what your old provider filed and what we pick up. Any prior period needing correction is flagged separately.

No. CRA's EFILE program requires the registrant to be a Canada-resident, EFILE-registered preparer, so a credentialed signer transmits and you or your corporation's authorized officer certifies the return. We build and reconcile the numbers that draft return is prepared from.

The 9% federal small business rate applies to active business income up to the $500,000 business limit, and we track that threshold through the year so the corporate tax instalment calculation and draft T2 workpapers already reflect it, rather than surprising you at filing time.

Yes. We reconstruct and reconcile the missing period first, then prepare draft workpapers for that year alongside the current one. Filing a late return, and any penalty or interest question that comes with it, is handled by you or your registered preparer using our reconciled numbers.

That threshold applies to your registered preparer, not to Finbryn, since we do not file returns. If your preparer transmits more than 5 T1, T2 or T3 returns a year, mandatory electronic filing rules apply to them; we simply hand over a reconciled, ready-to-file package.

Individual instalment dates follow the fixed calendar quarters regardless of your business's fiscal year, while a corporation's instalment and T2 filing deadlines follow its own year-end. We track whichever applies to you and build it into the preparation timeline.

Yes. Where a shareholder draws salary, dividends or a loan from their own corporation, we prepare workpapers for both returns together so the numbers are consistent across them, then hand the complete package to your registered preparer for review and filing.

Yes. Work is billed and branded under your firm, delivered inside your own practice-management workflow, so nothing carries the Finbryn name back to your client. Whether and how you disclose the arrangement to your client is entirely your firm's decision.

We build workpapers and reconciliations to match your firm's existing review checklist and chart-of-accounts standard, since your firm's practice standards, not ours, are what the final review and sign-off need to satisfy. We adapt to your process rather than asking you to adapt to ours.

Yes. Firms typically bring in extra capacity in the weeks before the April 30 and June 15 deadlines and scale back afterward. Ramp-up is agreed ahead of the season based on your expected file count, not decided file by file as the deadline approaches.

Your firm's credentialed preparer reviews and signs every return before it is filed, and that review is the point where responsibility for the filed return sits. We prepare workpapers and a draft to support that review; we do not sign or file on your firm's behalf.

Yes. We build to whatever coding convention your firm already uses for GST, HST or provincial sales tax rather than applying a generic default, so your reviewing staff see the same structure across every file, whether it came from your team or ours.

Tell us what changed in scope or deadline and the file's workflow adjusts from that point forward. Since work runs inside your firm's own practice-management system under your engagement letter, a change on your side does not require a separate agreement with us to take effect.