HST Workflow (QBO era)

Replaces HST-Process.md, which was written for QuickBooks Desktop 2017 and marked “do not extend — replace” once a QBO-based workflow existed. Its Desktop-specific how (Ctrl-T memorized transactions, Banking→Reconcile menu paths, Moneris steps) is retired with it; everything below the workflow is the durable what, migrated verbatim in substance.

QBO “how” is deliberately thin. Talbot fills in the click-path detail as he works through a real cycle. This doc owns the sequence and the tax facts, not the UI.

Accounting model: as of 2025-06-01 all Bills are treated as Expenses (cash basis) — QBO EasyStart cannot process Bills. Deferred-payment bills (Rogers) are entered as Expenses on the credit-card transaction date, never the bill’s own “Required Payment Date”.

The cycle

Run /hst-assistance --from YYYY-MM --to YYYY-MM first. It generates Reports/HST-assistance_<range>.md, sectioned in exactly this order — each step below names the artifact section that holds its data, so no figure is re-derived from a PDF by hand.

1. Download + print

(artifact Part 1 — Prep, which lists what it found and what’s missing)

Statements — credit card + chequing, into D:\FSS\Accounting\Statements\{CreditCard,Chequing}\, named BMO_YYYY-MM-DD.pdf
Expense receipts — per-vendor retrieval instructions are in the generated Vendors under Where to get each receipt. SSOT is D:\FSS\KB\Core\Accounting\Config\vendors\vendors.yaml — add a receipt_source: there when a new vendor appears; never edit the generated view.
- Vendors seen historically but not currently in vendors.yaml, kept here so the knowledge isn’t lost: Shiptime — receipts are emailed and also retrievable from the account.
- Also check that all reimbursable travel/mileage has been recorded.
eIncome — D:\FSS\Accounting\eIncome\. Amazon Kindle royalty payment reports: log in to Kindle Direct Publishing (credentials in SystemData.xlsx), Reports → Payments → download. Kindle royalties are not an HST supply — the vendor handles tax (concluded 2021-07-12; accounts 4340 eBook Royalties FFWS/Lev/SDC).
Vendor bills — D:\FSS\Accounting\Bills\ (Rogers etc.), needed for anything the artifact flags TBD.

2. Enter expenses — by vendor

(artifact Part 2)

One vendor at a time, all months at once: enter the first Expense, then Copy → Duplicate → change the date and amount. The artifact’s per-vendor blocks state account and tax code once in the header and vary only date/amount/pretax/HST per row.

Rogers is auto-split from Config/vendors/rogers.yaml’s steady_state_periods — recorded, bill-confirmed Internet/Wireless splits, matched on exact amount and charge date within the period window. Rogers is flat for the length of a commitment term (~2 years); anomalies cluster at term end, and anything outside a confirmed period is flagged TBD for manual entry against the bill PDF rather than split at a guessed rate.

Meals & entertainment need the 50% ITC 3-line treatment (subtotal with HST, tip untaxed, then a third line for the ITC-half adjustment) — not a single-line Expense. Memo who was met and the purpose.

3. Enter eIncome

(artifact Part 3)

Only what isn’t already invoiced. The artifact lists the bank-side deposits it parsed and the KDP files on disk, but deliberately does not parse the royalty spreadsheets — which payouts were already invoiced is a judgment call, and Accounting never guesses a figure.

4. Reconcile the credit card — by month

(artifact Part 4, one section per statement)

Work each statement in order. Use the transaction date, not the posting date. Each statement section ends with its Pay CC Bill line: the payoff amount and the actual chequing withdrawal date, so the payment gets entered on the date money really moved.

5. Reconcile the chequing account

(artifact Part 5)

Bank fees (Plan Fee, Deposit Contents fee) are HST-exempt. CC-payoff transfers and CRA tax payments are not expenses. GST/HST refund deposits are not revenue — they get their own bucket, never a sales account.

6. Work the Issues list

(artifact Part 6)

Missing statements, parse failures, unconfirmed tax codes, credit lines, unmatched vendors. Nothing in this list is a figure the tool guessed — each one needs a human call.

Notes and progress go in Notes/HST-assistance-notes.md (date | amount | note), which the generator merges into a Status column. Never hand-edit the artifact — it is rewritten on every run.

7. File with CRA

Generate the HST return figures from QBO, save the PDF alongside the working papers
File at CRA My Business Account (login details in KeyInfo2.docx)
Save the filed PDF; print a copy for the file
Payment or refund: pay from the business chequing account (pre-authorized debit), or record the refund when it lands. A refund deposit is not revenue (see step 5).

HST rates

Corrected 2013-11-25 · CRA rate table

Province(s)	Rate
ON, NF, NB	13%
AB, BC, SK, MB, NT, NU, YT	5%
NS	15%
QC	14.975% (effective, 2012-01-01)
PEI	14% (effective)

Tax-treatment notes

No HST on bank or credit card fees (and on their refunds) — Exempt.
Books, booklets, and audiobooks are GST only (5%) — not 13% HST. Note: the QBO sandbox has no GST-only tax code configured, so Chapters/Indigo-type purchases can’t be auto-split until one exists; they stay TBD.
Pamphlets do NOT get the books rate — they are digital products subject to full HST.
Shipping is taxed at the rate of the province it’s delivered to.
Meals & entertainment: 50% ITC, entered as 3 lines (see step 2).
Amazon Kindle e-book royalties are a royalty, not an HST supply — the vendor handles tax (2021-07-12).

Foreign (US) digital-subscription vendors

Migrated intact from HST-Process.md (which had itself absorbed it from HST-Processing.md in a 2026-07-29 de-duplication — this is its only home). Case: Claude.ai (Anthropic, PBC) vs. Cursor (Anysphere, Inc.), both San Francisco SaaS billed to the Ontario company.

Anthropic charged 13% HST on receipts through at least May-2026 but printed no GST/HST registration number on any receipt Dec-2025 → May-2026 — verified directly against the rendered PDFs, not inferred. The 2026-06-29 receipt is the first to print one (797870227RT9999), i.e. registration is only documented starting FY27. For the FY26 filing (Jun 2025 – May 2026), zero Claude.ai receipts have a supporting registration number (6 receipts × $3.64 ≈ $22 of ITC at stake).
Cursor / Anysphere charges in USD with no tax line at all, yet its receipts print a Canadian Business Number (889637773) — the opposite of what the tax treatment alone would predict.
Treatment (Talbot’s decision, 2026-07-29, on QBO AI’s practical guidance): record Anthropic’s charged HST as a normal ITC (5407 Computer AI Tools, HST ON); record Cursor with no ITC (Out of Scope, full USD-converted amount as a pure expense). QBO AI’s stated reason for the Anthropic ITC — a printed registration number — was checked against the actual receipts and does not hold for FY26. The treatment stands on Talbot’s decision, not that justification. Open action: ask Anthropic for their GST/HST registration number to make the FY26 ITC properly supportable (same standing ask as Cursor).
Whether a non-resident SaaS vendor is supposed to charge Canadian HST is a vendor compliance question, not a bookkeeping one — cross-border digital vendors must register once they exceed $30,000 CAD in taxable Canadian sales. A receipt with no registration number is consistent with, but does not prove, non-registration.

Logs

Notes worth keeping were historically stored in Maximizer under “QuickBooks Canada Ltd.”

Related: hst-assistance (tool doc) · Vendors (generated) · HST-assistance (FY26 working note + open filing decisions) · Config/vendors/vendors.yaml + rogers.yaml (SSOT)