Who's behind this, and how the numbers get checked
Bookkeeping is an unregulated profession in Canada, and most sites in this space tell you nothing about who wrote them. This page is the opposite of that.
This site is published by Small Biz Books, a bookkeeping practice serving Canadian small businesses. The person responsible for the work and for what's written here is Kelly Lao, who has worked in accounting since 2022 and holds a Diploma in Accounting, completed in 2025.
Who does the work
Kelly Lao has worked in accounting since 2022 and holds a Diploma in Accounting, completed in 2025.
What she does not hold, stated plainly because this site tells you to ask: she is not a Chartered Professional Accountant, and she does not currently carry the CPB Canada designation. Neither is required to do bookkeeping in Canada. Both are worth knowing before you hire anyone, which is why the question is on the vetting checklist — and why it gets answered here rather than left for you to work out.
The practical consequence is the scope line this site keeps returning to. Bookkeeping is the day-to-day record keeping: transactions coded, accounts reconciled, GST/HST and payroll filed on their real due dates, and a clean package handed to your accountant at year-end. Tax planning, the salary-versus-dividends decision, incorporation strategy and anything requiring an audit or review engagement belong to a CPA, and the services page lists what gets referred out.
That matters more in this trade than in most, because there is no licence to check. CPB Canada, the national body that certifies bookkeepers, states it directly on its own site: "The bookkeeping profession is unregulated, which makes the national standard set by CPB Canada vital." No exam is required to use the title. No insurance is required. No governing body can strike anyone off.
So the only meaningful assurances are the ones a practice volunteers and you verify. The page on how to vet a bookkeeper lists the questions worth asking — of us, and of anyone else you're considering.
Source: CPB Canada, "What is a CPB?" FAQ.
How the numbers on this site get checked
Every dollar figure, percentage, threshold and deadline published here comes from a primary source — canada.ca in almost every case, Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey via Job Bank for wage data, and CPB Canada for statements about the profession itself. The method is deliberately boring:
- The claim gets traced to the government page that states it, not to another article that repeats it. Secondary sources are where errors breed.
- The source page's own last-updated date gets recorded alongside the figure, because several widely-cited CRA documents are stale and contradict CRA's live web pages.
- The figure goes into a fact file that every page is written from. If a number isn't in that file with a source attached, it doesn't get published.
- The build refuses to publish an unsourced figure. This is enforced by a script, not by good intentions — any dollar amount or percentage that isn't traceable to the fact file fails the build.
The footer of every page carries the date the figures were last verified against source. Where a figure changes on a known cycle — the prescribed interest rate quarterly, CPP and EI maximums every January — the page says so and links CRA's index rather than a single quarter's page, so you can tell at a glance whether you're reading something current.
Three corrections this method has already caught
Most published guidance on input tax credits still quotes documentation thresholds of $30 and $150. Those were replaced by $100 and $500 on April 20, 2021. A CRA memorandum that still shows the old figures has not been updated since 2012 — which is exactly how the wrong numbers keep circulating.
The business-use-of-home test is widely described as a two-part test. CRA's own wording makes it a meet either of two conditions test, which is a materially different and more generous rule.
The vehicle logbook sampling tolerance is often written as "within 10 percentage points." CRA says "within 10%." Those are not the same tolerance.
Sources for the three above: CRA, input tax credit documentation requirements (CRA page updated 2024-11-19); business-use-of-home expenses (2026-08-31); motor vehicle records (2026-08-31).
What this site deliberately doesn't do
- It doesn't publish a list of CRA audit red flags. CRA doesn't publish one. Every confident list you've read is somebody's guess, and the page on audits explains what CRA does say instead.
- It doesn't quote competitors' rates as fact. Every published Canadian bookkeeping rate is a company's own self-report, not survey data. Where market rates come up, they're described as exactly that.
- It doesn't give tax advice. Bookkeeping and tax planning are different jobs. The services page lists what gets referred to an accountant, every time, without exception.
- It doesn't invent reviews. There are no testimonials on this site because there are none to publish yet. A fabricated one would be worth less than nothing.
Where AI fits in
Research and drafting for these pages were done with AI assistance. Every factual claim was then verified against its primary source by hand, and the source is linked on the page so you can check it yourself rather than take anyone's word for it. Google's own guidance on content quality asks publishers to be transparent about how automation was used, and this is that disclosure.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date, or missing a caveat that changes the answer, say so. Corrections get made and the verification date gets bumped. Tax figures move, CRA rewrites its pages, and a site that publishes numbers has an obligation to keep up with both. The contact page has the address for it.
Get books kept to the same standard as these pages
The same discipline that goes into these pages goes into the ledger — reconciled every month, filings made on their real due dates, and a plain answer when something is outside a bookkeeper's scope. Tell us what your business looks like and you'll get a fixed monthly quote rather than a range.
Questions people actually ask
Who is responsible for the accuracy of my records — me or my bookkeeper?
You are. CRA's record-keeping obligations are written at the business owner: the six-year retention period runs against your records, and they have to be kept at your place of business or your residence in Canada unless CRA gives written permission otherwise. During an audit CRA says it may request input from your accountant or bookkeeper — input, not accountability. Reading those two rules together, hiring someone transfers the work and not the obligation. The page on how to vet a bookkeeper sets both sources out with links.
That has two practical consequences. You should be able to get a full copy of your own records at any time, in a usable format. And it is worth understanding roughly what your books say, even when someone else maintains them — the page on twelve signs your books are wrong is written for exactly that purpose.
Are you accountants?
No. Bookkeeping is the day-to-day record keeping — coding transactions, reconciling accounts, filing GST/HST returns and payroll remittances, and preparing a clean year-end package. Accounting is preparing and filing the tax return, and advising on structure, tax planning and the decisions that follow from those.
Those roles overlap in conversation and not at all in qualification. Anything that belongs to an accountant gets referred to one, and the services page lists what falls in that category so there is no confusion about it partway through a year.
Why does this site cite the Job Bank for wages instead of quoting industry rates?
Because Job Bank publishes real data and the industry does not. The wage figures come from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey, cover the occupation nationally and by province, and are updated on a published schedule.
Every Canadian bookkeeping rate you will find quoted online is a company describing its own pricing. That is useful context but it is not a market survey, and pages that present it as one are the reason those figures contradict each other so badly.
Can I use the information on this site for my own business decisions?
Use it to understand the rules and to ask better questions. Every figure is linked to its government source specifically so you can verify it against your own situation.
What it can't do is account for the specifics — your province, your business structure, your fiscal year, the details that change the answer. General rules are genuinely useful right up until the point where they aren't, and for anything with a tax consequence attached, that is the point to involve an accountant.