Cleaning up and getting current
Most of the work we are asked to do first is not advice. It is finding out what is actually true, and then making the record say it.
Your records are months behind, and by the time you see a number the
decision it was for has already been made.
Returns are outstanding — GST, corporate, or both — and nobody has wanted to open the file.
The shareholder loan account has quietly been the cheque book, and nobody has told you what that costs.
Receipts are in a drawer, a truck, or an inbox, and nothing is attached to
anything.
Year end is a fire drill, and the bill reflects it.
None of that is unusual and none of it is a reason to be embarrassed.
It is the ordinary result of a business growing faster than the admin behind
it.
If this is where
you are
WHAT WE DO FIRST
Each level of engagement has its core, and the rest is built around your
business. Not everything here is in every package — what goes in is what
adds value for you. It is a fixed fee either way, and if the scope changes
the price changes with it.
We find out what is true. A full reconstruction of the books to the
point where the ledgers agree with the year-end financial statements —
agree, not approximately agree.
We bring the filings current. Overdue GST and corporate returns
prepared and filed, in order, on a schedule you can see.
We make the shareholder loan visible. From then on the account is
managed deliberately: what goes through it, what it does to your taxes, and what it should look like at year end.
We fix the plumbing. Payroll run properly, including commission and
contractor payments and the T4A reporting that goes with them. Bills and receipts attached to the transactions they belong to, so nothing has to be reconstructed from memory later.
We straighten out the things nobody wanted to touch. Vehicles, financed
assets, and the interest on the borrowing used to buy them — treated
properly and tracked from then on rather than argued about at year end.
Then the rhythm starts
Once the record is reliable the work changes. A short KPI pack you will
actually read. A cash buffer target and the discipline to hold it. Tax
planning that happens through the year instead of in the last week of it,
aimed at what you want out of the business rather than only at what the
return needs.
You can expect to talk to us regularly. That is not an upsell — it is the
only way any of this stays current.
Why this matters
Alberta is full of owner-managed businesses that grew faster than their
financial infrastructure. The pattern is the same every time: compliance
slips because it is nobody's job, the numbers arrive too late to use, and
every decision gets made on instinct with a knot in the stomach.
Getting the record clean is not the interesting part of finance. It is the
part everything else stands on. Until the books are true, advice is
guesswork wearing a suit.
The other half of the job:
Running the finance function with you
If this sounds like you,
the next step is simple.
email us: hello@cv-cpa.ca