Corporate Year-End Document Checklist Calculator
The surprise line on a year-end invoice is almost always bookkeeping nobody agreed to. Score your file before you hand it over, see which gaps cost the most, and find the last date you can deliver records and still file on time.
completeness score
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Gaps Ranked by Cost
| Item | Position | Hours Added | Cost |
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The Dates
| Event | Rule | Date |
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What to Send
| Document | Covering | Status |
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Points That Decide This
What to Do Next
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Disclaimer: A corporation’s T2 return is due within six months after the end of its taxation year under subsection 150(1) of the Income Tax Act. The balance of tax is due earlier, generally two months after the year end, or three months for a Canadian-controlled private corporation meeting the conditions in subsection 157(1.1), so a corporation with tax to pay cannot safely wait until the filing deadline to begin. The late-filing penalty under subsection 162(1) is 5% of the tax unpaid at the due date plus 1% for each complete month the return is late, to a maximum of twelve months. The hours, rates and turnaround estimates on this page are illustrative modelling based on typical owner-managed files and are not a quotation; actual time depends on transaction volume, the state of the records and the complexity of the business, and your accountant’s own estimate should always be preferred to this one. The completeness score is a planning aid rather than a measure with any standing. Inventory must be counted at or near the year-end date and cannot be reconstructed afterwards, so where a count was not taken the position needs discussing rather than estimating. This page is general information, not tax advice.
The Quote Assumed a Clean File
Year-end fees are usually quoted for preparing financial statements and a T2 from records that are complete and reconciled. That is the work the number covers. When the file arrives with four months unreconciled and a shareholder loan nobody has looked at, the preparation work has to happen first, and it is billed because it was never in the quote.
Almost nobody is trying to surprise anyone. The gap is that the client thinks they are buying a year end and the accountant is quoting for a year end, while the actual job turns out to be six weeks of bookkeeping followed by a year end.
The fix is to find the gaps before the handover rather than after the invoice. Everything on this page is work that has to be done by someone. Doing it yourself in advance is almost always cheaper than paying a professional rate to do it in arrears, and it is the only version where you control the cost.
Reconciliation Is the Largest Single Variable
An unreconciled month is not a small thing. Every transaction in it has to be matched to the statement, coded, and chased where it does not match. Multiply that by the number of accounts and it becomes the biggest number on the invoice.
Three accounts with six months outstanding is eighteen account-months of work. The same business with everything reconciled hands over a file the accountant can start on immediately, and the difference between those two positions is usually larger than the base fee.
| Position at Handover | What the Accountant Does First | Effect on the Fee |
|---|---|---|
| All months reconciled in software | Starts the year end | Base fee |
| Reconciled but in a spreadsheet | Rebuilds a trial balance | Moderate addition |
| Part year reconciled | Finishes the bookkeeping | Large addition |
| Statements in a folder | Builds the books from scratch | Bookkeeping engagement first |
The Shareholder Loan Is the Expensive Gap
It is one line on the balance sheet and it takes longer than almost anything else. Every transfer between the owner and the company has to be identified, classified as a draw, a repayment, an expense reimbursement or a dividend, and then agreed to what the owner believes happened.
It matters beyond the time. The balance drives whether an amount has to be included in the owner’s personal income, whether a dividend should have been declared, and whether the personal return needs to change. An unreconciled loan account is not just unfinished bookkeeping; it is an unanswered tax question sitting on the file.
Inventory is the one gap that cannot be fixed later. A count has to be taken at or near the year-end date. If nobody counted, there is no way to reconstruct it accurately afterwards, and the position has to be estimated and disclosed rather than measured. Everything else on this page can be caught up; this one cannot.
HST and Payroll Have to Agree
Revenue reported on the HST returns should reconcile to revenue in the financial statements, and the T4 slips should agree to the wages in the ledger. Where they do not, the difference has to be found and explained before anything is filed, because a mismatch is one of the more reliable ways to attract a query.
Finding it after the fact is slow work. It usually means rebuilding both sides of the comparison from source records, and the cost of doing so lands on the year-end invoice even though the cause was a filing made months earlier.
Two Deadlines, Not One
The return is due six months after the year end. The balance of tax is due earlier, generally two months after, or three for a Canadian-controlled private corporation that meets the conditions. Interest runs from the payment deadline regardless of when the return goes in.
So a corporation expecting to owe tax cannot treat the six-month date as the start of the process. The numbers need to be close enough to make a sensible payment months before the return is filed, which pulls the whole timetable forward.
| Deadline | Timing | What Happens If Missed |
|---|---|---|
| Balance of tax | Two months, or three for an eligible CCPC | Interest from that date |
| T2 return | Six months after year end | 5% plus 1% a month on unpaid tax |
| T4 slips | End of February | Per-slip penalties |
| Annual return | Separate provincial or federal filing | Dissolution risk |
What a Clean Handover Looks Like
- Bank and credit card statements for all twelve months, every account, including accounts closed during the year
- Reconciled books to the year-end date, with the closing balances agreeing to those statements
- Receipts for anything significant, particularly capital purchases and anything unusual
- Loan and finance agreements, so interest and principal can be split properly
- Payroll records and the T4 summary, agreeing to the wages in the ledger
- HST returns filed for the year, with the revenue reconciling to the statements
- The shareholder loan account, with every owner transaction identified
- An inventory count taken at the year-end date, where the business carries stock
- Last year’s financial statements and T2, if a different firm prepared them
Ask for the fee to be re-quoted once the file is clean. A good accountant will happily give a lower number for a file they can start on immediately, because it is genuinely less work. That conversation is worth having before the handover rather than after.
What This Calculator Does Not Cover
- Transaction volume, which drives the hours as much as the gaps do
- Your accountant’s actual rates and scope, which should always be preferred to these estimates
- Prior year issues carried into this one, including opening balances that were never right
- Tax planning, which is separate from preparing the file
- Multiple corporations or a group, where intercompany balances must agree
- Audit or review engagements, which have their own requirements well beyond this list
The cheapest year end is the one where nothing has to be rebuilt. Our corporate year-end service quotes a fixed fee against the file you actually have, so the number is known before the work starts rather than after.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions on preparing for a corporate year end.
Related Calculators and Guides
More tools for corporate year ends and filing deadlines.
Get the Number Before the Work, Not After It
Send us your statements and whatever books exist. We will tell you what is missing, what it will cost to finish, and quote a fixed fee for the year end and the T2 so nothing lands on the invoice that you did not agree to first.