Financials picks up where the bookkeeping stops. Journal entries, a guided year-end close, a trial balance with last year beside it, statements laid out the way your firm presents them, Excel working papers, and a GIFI coded trial balance your T2 software can import. Every figure on every screen opens to the transactions behind it.
Trial balance · Working papers · Financial statements · GIFI for T2
Trial Balance
Opening balances are carried forward from the year you finalized last time, so nothing is re-keyed. A comparative column puts prior year next to current, and Big movers highlights anything that moved more than your firm's threshold.
| Head | Opening DR | Current DR | Current CR | Prior net | Δ% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scotia Chequing | 12,480.11 | 418,902.44 | 407,238.86 | 10,904.20 | +7% |
| I. Sales | — | — | 386,240.00 | 341,118.00 | +13% |
| Fuel & Oil | — | 118,442.60 | — | 86,220.14 | +37% |
| Insurance | — | 14,220.00 | — | 13,860.00 | +3% |
| HST payable | — | 18,204.12 | 21,846.99 | 3,102.44 | +17% |
| Retained Earnings | — | — | 41,006.28 | 28,440.10 | +44% |
| Total | 12,480.11 | 856,331.28 | 856,331.28 | ✓ balanced |
A reviewer asking "where did this come from" should take one click to answer, not a morning of searching. Every figure on the trial balance, the final sheet and the statements opens to the transactions inside it, and every transaction remembers the page it was read from.
Fuel & Oil · Q2
DRILL-THROUGHPETRO CANADA #4412
Aug 16 · transaction
Trans 99 settlement, fuel deduction
Aug 31 · settlement
Cash fuel receipt, owner card
Sep 09 · invoice
HOME DEPOT #2201
Sep 14 · transaction
Four Ways to Look at the Same Year
The full working view: opening debit and credit, current debit and credit, totals, and a prior year column with a percentage change. This is the one you review from.
Every account netted to one side, zero balances dropped, each line tagged with its statement group. When it does not balance it names the likely causes in order rather than just flagging it.
Income statement and balance sheet side by side with net income, every line drillable. This is the quick internal read before you produce anything formal.
Presentation-ready statements through your firm's own layout, with whole dollar rounding, a comparative column and a balance confirmation. This is what goes to the client.
Journal & Year-End
A journal entry either balances or it does not post. There is no way to save a one-sided entry and discover it three screens later when the trial balance is out. Drafts are allowed, so you can park a half-finished entry, but a draft is excluded from the trial balance and raises a warning until you deal with it.
Year-End Close
CHECKLISTFour steps, ticked off as the entries land: depreciation and CCA, accruals and prepaids, the tax provision, then closing net income to retained earnings. The panel shows the trial balance difference before the close and after it, so you see it landing before you commit.
Pick a class, put in the opening undepreciated capital cost and this year's additions, choose whether the half-year rule applies, and it computes the allowance and builds a draft depreciation entry against the accounts you pick. Class 8 at 20 percent, class 10 at 30, class 10.1, class 12 at 100, class 16 at 40, class 50 at 55, class 53 at 50, or your own rate.
It is a calculator, not a tax engine, and it says so on the screen. It does not model the accelerated investment incentive, immediate expensing, recapture, terminal loss or per-vehicle class 10.1 pooling, so on a year with additions the plain rate can understate the claim. The computed figure is an editable amount to post with a reset button, and if you override it the entry records that you did.
Amortization / CCA
Class
Opening UCC
Additions
Statement kinds you can lay out
Your presentation, not ours
Every firm has its own house style for a balance sheet: which accounts group together, what gets a subtotal, which lines carry a note reference, where a sign is inverted for presentation. A statement layout is a line tree you build once, map your accounts into with an auto-map to start you off, and reuse on every client from then on.
Exports
Whether the corporate return is done down the hall or by another firm, what gets handed over is the same package every time.
Six sheets in review order, all plain values with no formulas to break when someone opens it on a different machine.
The trial balance sheet ends with a verdict in plain English: in balance, or out of balance by an amount with a warning not to file from it.
A statement set with the client name, the fiscal period, a statement of income and a balance sheet grouped the way you laid it out.
It carries an honest footer rather than an implied assurance: prepared from the records supplied by the client, amounts in Canadian dollars, not audited or reviewed and no assurance expressed.
If the underlying trial balance is out, the PDF says so in words on the document itself and warns against relying on the figures. It will not quietly print an unbalanced set.
A CSV with the GIFI code, account code, account name, debit, credit and net, one line per account, plus a .gfi file for software that takes it directly.
GIFI codes are set on each account in your chart, once, and then follow every client using that chart.
Accounts you have not coded yet export with a blank GIFI rather than being dropped, so the preparer sees exactly what is left to map instead of wondering why the totals are short.
Before You Finalize
Finalizing snapshots the closing trial balance and turns it into next year's opening balances, so a mistake carried through finalize follows the client into the future. The blocking issues are listed in full on the screen, not summarized as a count.
Blocks finalize until fixed or overridden with a written reason
A trial balance that does not balance. The screen says it plainly: this one cannot be overridden, because finalizing would carry the difference into next year's opening balances. Every other issue can be overridden by typing a reason, and that reason goes into the engagement audit log with your name on it.
Duplicates, rows outside the fiscal year, a reconciliation difference between the computed and printed closing balance, a draft journal entry, an uncleared or over cleared balance from a payer, and expense accounts that moved by half or more against last year. These are shown so you can judge them, not to stop you.
Year End Engagements
Alongside the bookkeeping board there is a Year End board for compilation, review, audit and plain paper engagements. The trial balance can come straight from Bookkeeping, be imported from a spreadsheet with column mapping, or be carried forward from last year, so it works for the clients you do not do the books for as well.
Working papers per balance with the tick marks a reviewer expects to see, so the file reads the way a file is supposed to read.
An engagement index with prepared by and reviewed by sign-offs, checklists per engagement type, grouping schedules, bank confirmations, and an independence declaration. A readiness check tells you whether the file is actually in a state to issue.
A reusable note library, suggested notes based on what is in the file, and automatic renumbering when you insert or remove one. Write the note once and it is there for every client it applies to.
Accountant's communication, engagement letter, representation letter, independence letter, minute book letter, management letter and the T2 engagement letter, generated from editable templates with merge fields, so the wording stays your firm's.
Assets by CCA class with additions, disposals, the half-year rule, gain on disposal and a short-year factor, and a one-click amortization entry posted from the register rather than typed by hand.
An HST reasonableness test against the books, ratio analysis with a breakeven figure, and a multi-year trend with a projection. The things a reviewer would ask about, calculated before they ask.
Normal, initial, short, final and amalgamation, because a first year, a stub period and a wind-up all present differently and pretending otherwise creates work later.
When the file is ready, issue it, then roll it forward to next year so the index, the checklists and the balances start where you left off instead of from an empty folder.
A year end can be linked to that client's bookkeeping engagement. The trial balance is then pulled live from the books, including last year's comparatives, so nothing is re-keyed and nothing drifts while you are still posting adjustments. Linking lines the year end up with the fiscal year the books actually cover.
Change your mind and you can unlink it, which switches the file back to an imported trial balance without losing the work already done in it.
If the books live somewhere else, download a CSV template built from your own chart of accounts. It arrives with one row per account, already carrying the code, the name and the GIFI code, and two blank columns for debit and credit.
Fill it from the old system, upload it back, and every row matches its account on the way in. No column mapping, no unmatched-account cleanup afterwards.
The reporting engine, the close, the exports and the year-end file are built and covered by tests, and firms are using them now. Client situations and firm presentation preferences vary widely, so we would rather set your first year end up with you than have you switch it on cold.
Financials works best with Bookkeeping, since the books flow straight into the trial balance, but it also takes a trial balance imported from a spreadsheet for the clients whose books you do not keep.
Questions
It takes the reviewed books from Bookkeeping and produces everything you need to finish the year: a trial balance with prior-year comparatives, journal entries, a guided year-end close, an income statement and balance sheet, presentation-ready financial statements laid out the way your firm presents them, Excel working papers, a PDF statement set, and a GIFI coded trial balance your T2 software can import.
Yes. Every figure on the trial balance, the financial statements and the final sheet is a button. Click it and you get the underlying transactions with their date, description, source, debit and credit. Each row carries the page it was read from, so one more click opens the actual page of the original bank statement PDF. If a row is on the wrong account you can recode it right there in the drill-through instead of hunting for it.
It is a four-step checklist: depreciation and CCA, accruals and prepaids, tax provision, then close net income to retained earnings. The panel shows your net income, the trial balance difference before the close and the difference after it, so you can see it landing before you run it. The close itself posts a real balanced journal entry you can inspect and unpost.
There is a CCA helper with the common classes built in, class 8 at 20 percent, class 10 at 30 percent, class 12 at 100 percent, class 16 at 40 percent, class 50 at 55 percent, class 53 at 50 percent, plus a custom rate, and a half-year rule toggle. It is deliberately a calculator, not a tax engine. It does not model the accelerated investment incentive, immediate expensing, recapture, terminal loss or class 10.1 pooling, and the product says so on the screen. The computed figure is editable so you can post the number from your own CCA schedule, and any override is recorded on the entry.
Three things. An Excel working paper file with six sheets: trial balance, financials, HST, settlements, journal and transactions, all as plain values with no formulas to break. A PDF financial statement set. And a GIFI coded trial balance for import into T2 software, plus a .gfi file. Accounts you have not given a GIFI code yet export with a blank code rather than being silently dropped, so the preparer can see exactly what still needs mapping.
A list of checks runs before finalize and they are shown in full, not just counted. Blocking issues include transactions with no account, a statement still held for confirmation, a continuity gap, a payer deposit coded to sales, an unverified settlement, an adjustment with no balancing entry, and a year-end close that has not been posted or has gone stale. You can override most of them by typing a reason, which is written to the audit log. The one thing you can never override is a trial balance that does not balance, because finalizing would carry that difference into next year's opening balances.
Yes. Alongside bookkeeping there is a Year End board for compilation, review, audit and plain paper engagements. It holds the engagement index with prepared and reviewed sign-offs, checklists, leadsheets with the standard tick marks, grouping schedules, notes to the financial statements from a reusable library, bank confirmations, a capital asset register, and generated engagement documents such as the accountant's communication, engagement letter and representation letter from editable templates. The trial balance can come from Bookkeeping, be imported from a spreadsheet, or be carried forward from last year.
Bring one file you are working on now and we will take it through to a trial balance, a statement set and a GIFI export with you. You will know quickly whether it fits the way your firm finishes a year.