Closed When the Year Closes
The expensive part of most year-ends is not the filing. It is everything that has to happen before anyone can file. Twelve months of transactions reviewed at once, balances questioned long after the person who could explain them has forgotten, judgement calls made under deadline pressure by somebody billing by the hour.
A year-end package makes all of that unnecessary. What gets handed over is:
- A closed trial balance, every account agreed to its support
- Working papers behind each balance sheet account
- Year-end financial statements
- Aged receivables and payables
- Fixed asset and depreciation continuity schedules
- Inventory valuation, where you carry stock
- Shareholder loan continuity
- Sales tax and payroll reconciled to what was actually filed
Whoever is filing can then begin with the return rather than with your books. Where we prepare the corporate return, that package is what we work from. Where you have an accountant you want to keep, it is what they receive.
The fee you are quoted depends on what you hand over
Accounting fees have been climbing hard and owners have noticed. Increases of a third in a year, hourly rates that turn a five-minute question into a line item, firms quietly shedding smaller clients because the work is not worth the trouble at the price.
Very little of that is about the return. A corporate return is a contained job once the numbers underneath it are settled. What accountants are pricing is uncertainty: how many hours go into finding out what a balance represents, chasing missing support, and correcting entries before any tax work can start. Hand over a closed, supported year and that uncertainty leaves the quote.
Inventory and equipment are what make a year end real work
Walk along Murray Street in Port Moody and there are five or six craft breweries inside about four hundred metres. A business like that closes a year across production and a taproom at once: beer costed through raw materials and work in progress, excise duty on what was produced, tanks part way through their depreciation, food service and retail sales carrying different tax treatment, and payroll split between two kinds of work.
None of that resolves itself in March. Inventory has to be counted and valued while the count still means something, and capital purchases classified in the year they happened, because the depreciation schedule follows them for years. For businesses carrying stock and equipment, doing the work as the year runs is the only version that produces a number anybody should sign.
No large round-number entries in March to make it balance
There is a particular kind of year-end journal entry reviewers look for: a big, round, unsupported adjustment posted at year end to force the books into agreement. It is the fingerprint of records that were never maintained, and it invites exactly the attention nobody wants.
Nothing in your package needs one. Every balance is supported by a schedule and every schedule reconciles to source documents filed as the transactions happened. Adjusting entries still exist, because accruals, prepaids, and depreciation are legitimate work, but each is calculated and documented rather than plugged. Your year end should explain itself to a stranger without you in the room.
It is the last month, not a separate project
The reason this works is that nothing is left for the end. Every item on that list is produced as the year runs, not assembled once it closes.
By the time your year end arrives, the package is the year-end version of the financial statements you have been receiving all year, so closing the year is closing one more month plus the entries that genuinely belong to a year end. Our founder is blunt about it: the two-month scramble this industry accepts as normal is a scheduling failure, and work done in a panic is worth less than the same work done in November.
Year-End Package Preparation FAQs
Yes, and a lot of clients do. Your CPA handles tax strategy and files the return, and we hand them a closed, supported year end to work from. It is the version of a client file most accountants would rather receive, and it is generally the version they spend the least time on, which shows up in what they invoice.
Weeks rather than months, because eleven of the twelve months were closed as they happened. The final close still takes real work, including inventory, accruals, depreciation, and any shareholder transactions from late in the year. What it does not include is rebuilding periods that should already have been finished.
No. Your T2 is due six months after year end and the balance owing is due earlier than that, so there is likely interest running, but the work is the same work. It starts with getting the periods reconciled and closed, then the package is assembled from there. Filing on top of records that were never closed is the version worth avoiding.
One package rather than a folder of loose exports, with the full contents listed further up this page. If your accountant works from their own checklist, or wants a schedule presented a particular way, that is worth raising in advance rather than in March. We build the package to match what they actually need.
No. A corporation picks its own fiscal year end, and December is simply the most common choice rather than a requirement. A year end set outside the February to April crush can mean more attention on your file from everyone involved. Changing an existing one needs CRA approval and a genuine business reason, so it is worth deciding well rather than changing later.
