Accounting for retail stores in Ontario
Retailers live on inventory turnover, POS sales across channels, and margin per SKU, so clean cost-of-goods and reconciliation are everything.
CRA EFILE authorized · Every filing signed by an accountant · Switching is free — about an hour of your time
taxifi · Retail Stores
This month
- Bookkeeping Current
- Payroll & source deductions Filed
- HST Filed
- Year-end tax (T2) On track
The problems we take off your plate
Sales across every channel
In-store and online sales are reconciled together so your revenue and margin are accurate.
Inventory and cost of goods
Inventory and COGS are tracked so you know true margin per line, not just the bank balance.
Staff payroll
Retail staff are paid on schedule with source deductions remitted to CRA on time.
What’s included
Published prices for incorporated Ontario retail stores. Everything below is handled.
- Daily POS and online sales reconciled
- Inventory and cost-of-goods tracked
- Payroll for retail staff
- HST returns prepared and filed
- Year-end corporate tax (T2), from $1,000 a year
| Area | A typical setup | With taxifi |
|---|---|---|
| Your books | Weeks or months behind | Current every day |
| Year-end (T2) | A spring scramble, billed extra | Included, no surprise invoice |
| Your accountant | Metered by the hour | Unlimited questions, flat monthly |
Inventory is where retail profit hides
A retail store's real profit lives in inventory accounting, and it is the account most likely to be wrong. Cost of goods sold only makes sense when opening inventory, purchases, and closing inventory reconcile, and shrinkage, damage, returns, and supplier rebates all move the number. A store can look profitable for three quarters and discover at year-end that the inventory count says otherwise.
The HST side is more mechanical but no less important: tax collected on sales, input tax credits on purchases, and the awkward middle cases — returns, gift cards redeemed later, promotional giveaways. Books reconciled monthly against actual counts turn all of this into routine reporting. Books reconciled once a year turn it into an argument with the past.
Common questions
Can you reconcile my POS and online sales?
Yes. Sales across channels are reconciled so your revenue and margin are accurate.
Do you work with incorporated retailers?
Yes. Incorporated retail stores are a core fit.
How should a retail store handle inventory for tax purposes?
Inventory generally must be valued and reconciled so that cost of goods sold is accurate, with shrinkage, damage, and returns accounted for rather than absorbed silently. Monthly reconciliation against real counts is what keeps gross margin honest; annual-only counts routinely produce a year-end correction nobody planned for.
Are gift card sales taxable when sold?
Generally, the sale of a gift card is not itself the taxable supply — HST typically applies when the card is redeemed for goods. That means gift card sales are a liability in your books until redemption, not revenue. Retailers who book them as immediate revenue overstate the month they were sold.
Books and taxes for your retail store, done
Bookkeeping from $99 a month, accountant-reviewed from $299, corporate T2 from $1,000 a year. Prices are published; a call confirms the fit.
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