Updated Checked by the Tax-Services.ca editorial team How we check
Cloud accounting pays off when you use it on a schedule: a short weekly check of bank matches, a monthly look at sales tax and payroll, and a year-end export. Set up that way, a small business can see its GST/HST owing and its payroll cost at any point, which is what makes cloud accounting worth having.
What should you do each week and month?
Weekly is short. Ten minutes will do it. Match the bank lines the software has pulled in, drop receipts against the ones it can’t match, and flag anything you don’t recognize. Do it over a coffee on Friday, before the week gets away on you. It also means tax time is a quick export and not a shoebox.
Monthly takes longer, and it’s where the value shows for anyone with staff or sales tax to file. You check sales tax collected against sales, look at payroll, and compare profit with what you expected. The table lists what to review and what to compare it with.
| Task | Check it against |
|---|---|
| Sales tax on the month’s sales | The rate for your province |
| Payroll held back and employer share | Your payroll remittance total |
| Profit on what you sell | The margin you priced for |
| GST/HST return, monthly or quarterly filers | Due one month after the period ends |
| Owner pay and instalments | Your expected tax for the year |
The one-month rule for monthly and quarterly GST/HST filers is on the CRA’s quick reference to business filing and payment deadlines. Annual filers get more time, and the exact date depends on your fiscal year end and whether you’re self-employed, so check your own reporting period before you plan around it.
Can you trust the sales tax the software adds?
Usually, if the tax code on each item is right. Spot check one sale a month, and do it before you file, not after a notice arrives.
Say an Ontario shop sells $12,400 before tax. The GST/HST calculator puts the HST at $1,612 and the total at $14,012. If your books show a different figure for the same sales, find out why before you file. Other provinces mix GST with PST or QST, so one code doesn’t fit everywhere. Our BC GST/PST tool applies 12% to everything, which overstates the tax on items like restaurant food, so don’t lean on it there.
How do payroll and margin look in the same file?
A payroll of three people at $3,000 every two weeks in Ontario costs $2,883.10 per pay period to remit, per the payroll remittance calculator. The total cost of that payroll for the period, including wages, is $9,685.24. If your cloud reports show a lot less, something’s missing, usually the employer share.
On the sales side, a $100 item that costs $60 to buy leaves a 40% margin, and a 66.7% markup, in the profit margin calculator. The two figures get mixed up all the time. Margin is measured on the selling price, markup on the cost, so markup is always the bigger one.
What does a good month-end look like?
Picture a small landscaping crew in Saskatoon. On the last business day, the owner clears the unmatched bank lines, glances at the sales tax balance, and prints nothing. Then she exports the month’s reports to a folder, because an export on your own drive is a record you control. If a number looks odd, say tax collected that seems low for the month’s sales, she opens the transaction list and looks for an item coded as exempt by mistake.
That’s the whole routine. No fancy dashboards, about half an hour, and a month that’s closed before the next one starts.
What are the limits of cloud accounting?
It records what you tell it. It doesn’t know a supplier invoiced you twice, or that a customer paid for a different job.
Bank feeds can pull personal spending into the business. Automatic rules can code a new supplier wrongly for months before anyone looks. And a tidy dashboard can hide a missing invoice, so read the transaction list now and then, and don’t stop at the graphs.
We couldn’t confirm any feature, price or ranking for a named product, so this page makes none. Try a free trial with your own data if one is offered, and judge it on how your month-end routine feels after two or three cycles, since a tool that looks good in a demo can still slow you down.
Sources, and how we checked them
Filing dates come from the CRA‘s deadlines pages for businesses. HST, payroll and margin figures come from our calculators, using 2026 published rates. No government body has reviewed or endorsed what you read here.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I review my cloud accounting file?
A quick bank match each week and a fuller review each month works for most small firms. The monthly review is where errors in tax codes and payroll show up.
Can I check the HST my software calculated?
Yes. Work out the tax on a sample sale by hand or with a GST/HST calculator and compare. Ontario is 13%.
When is a GST/HST return due?
Monthly and quarterly filers file one month after the reporting period ends. That's from the CRA's list for the 2025 tax year.
Does cloud accounting include payroll?
That depends on the product and the plan, and we couldn't confirm it for any named product. Check what your plan covers before you rely on it.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Margin is profit as a share of the selling price. Markup is profit as a share of cost, so it's the larger number.
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