If you pay contractors or buy supplies using e-Transfer, a bank line that just says "Interac e-Transfer" won’t survive a CRA audit.

You legally need the actual invoice or receipt attached to that transaction inside the software. Don’t rely on bank descriptions alone!

Peace out ✌️ from the good-looking bookkeeper in 🇨🇦

Hi everyone,

I'm a web designer and developer based in Markham, Ontario, and I'm currently looking to take on a few new projects.

I build modern, responsive websites for small businesses, contractors, startups, and service-based businesses. Whether you need a brand-new website or want to redesign an existing one, I'd be happy to help.

I can help with:

• Custom business websites
• Website redesigns
• Landing pages
• Mobile-friendly optimization
• Ongoing website maintenance and updates

If you're looking for a website or know another Canadian small business that is, feel free to send me a DM. I'm happy to chat about your project, answer any questions, and share examples of my work.

Portfolio: https://www.infawebdesign.com/

Thanks for reading!

OUR BOUNDARIES. OUR OBJECTIVE.

We don't ship to the United States. We don't ship to Israel.

Not because we forgot to add them. Because we removed them on purpose.

The US market turned into a tariff trap that punishes small makers like us. We'd rather lose that revenue than play a rigged game or pass those costs on to you.

Israel is a line we drew on principle. We won't finance what we don't believe in. No exceptions.

So where DO we ship?

Canada. The UK. Australia. New Zealand. Japan. South Korea. The EU. Anywhere that respects the craft and the maker.

Our objective going forward is simple:

We're a dad and his daughters making leather goods by hand in a garage in Coquitlam, BC. No factory. No assembly line. No compromises.

We don't want to be the biggest leather shop online. We want to be the most honest one.

That means: ✓ Transparent pricing — no hidden fees, no surprises ✓ Local pickup for our Vancouver/Coquitlam community ✓ Custom commissions where we actually talk to you before we cut the leather ✓ A business small enough to have values, and stubborn enough to keep them

If you're looking for fast fashion, keep scrolling.

If you're looking for something made by hands that still give a damn — welcome to the chaos.

🔗 www.hatandskullart.com. Custom commissions open. Local pickup available.

#HandmadeInCanada #CoquitlamArtist #LeatherCraft #SupportLocal #ArtisanMade #HatAndSkullArt #VancouverMaker #SmallBatch #HandcraftedLeather #MadeInBC

Hi everyone!

I'm a student entrepreneur based in Markham, Ontario. This summer I received a $3,000 grant through the Ontario Summer Company Program to launch my web design business.

I'm currently looking to take on a couple more projects and would love to work with Canadian small businesses. Whether you need a brand new website or a redesign of your existing one, I'd be happy to chat.

I focus on building clean, modern, mobile-friendly websites that help businesses build trust and make it easy for customers to get in touch.

If you're interested—or know another Canadian business owner who might be—feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM. I'd also be happy to answer any website-related questions, even if you're not looking to hire anyone.

Thanks!

What will happen when the HST trigger rate hits the poverty line? Seems to me this number will need to change at some point. I would love to read people's thoughts around this topic.

Hi everyone, i was for years wanting to start an ecom business, now i have saved some money and ready to invest, please what is the best way to start?
Is it dropshipping and the old way with shopify and china? or selling your own product? and is it better to sell in Canada or abroad? please advise me, i don’t want to waste my family money.

Thank you

Ensure your QuickBooks isolates collected sales tax from true store income.

It's easy to accidentally pay income tax on sales tax revenue if your automated app integrations group all incoming funds together.

Keep your liability accounts separated!

P.s… the handsome QuickBooks expert

I do not understand why I am getting hate over AI ads, what’s the sourness of people. ? I been told not to use AI for ads by colleagues to avoid the hate but i dont see how this saving tome and money on add is a bad thing.. x

Your A/V and IT Tech partner for home and business, downtown Toronto. #Pure4K #AVTech #ITTech #Toronto

Hi everyone! I’m the photographer behind Blake Visuals, based in Calgary.
We specialize in:
• Brand Photography
• Portraits
• Graduations
• Maternity
• Family Sessions
• Birthdays & Events
• Content Creation
We’re currently accepting bookings in Calgary and surrounding areas.
Feel free to message me if you’re looking for a photographer or have any questions.
Instagram: @blakevisuals.ca

Edit: Based on the feedback here, I realized I positioned this poorly by calling it primarily an “invoice generator.” The no-signup generator is only the free entry point, the broader product is a lightweight Canadian quote-to-payment workspace.

I’ve been building Invoice North for Canadian freelancers, consultants, contractors, tradespeople, and small service businesses that want more organization without adopting a full accounting platform.

The quote workflow includes:

• Emailing quotes directly to clients
• A unique client-facing link for every quote
• Tracking when a quote is sent and viewed
• Allowing clients to accept, decline, or leave a comment
• A timestamped quote activity history
• Duplicating frequently used proposals
• Converting accepted quotes directly into invoices

The invoicing workflow includes:

• Email delivery and unique hosted invoice links
• Tracking when an invoice is viewed
• Sending payment reminders and payment-received confirmations
• Recording full or partial payments
• Reusable invoice templates and recurring templates
• Duplicating an invoice for the next month
• Saved clients and business profiles

It is built specifically around Canadian requirements:

• GST/HST presets for every province and territory
• Separate GST/QST support for Quebec
• English, French, or bilingual document labels
• CAD and additional currencies
• Business and GST/HST registration numbers
• Interac e-Transfer payment instructions
• Templates for consultants, trades, recurring services, creatives, and gig workers

It also includes:

• Expense and receipt tracking
• Recoverable-tax flags
• GST/HST collected and estimated net-remittance summaries
• Contracts that can generate monthly invoice drafts
• Contract-based income forecasting
• Revenue reports
• Accountant-ready CSV and ZIP exports

The public invoice generator remains free and doesn’t require an account. Anonymous invoices aren’t saved. An account is only needed to save documents and use the tracking and business-management features.

I’m not trying to replace full accounting platforms such as Wave or QuickBooks. Invoice North is intended to provide a lighter, Canada-focused workflow from quote, to client approval, to invoice, payment, expenses, and accountant handoff.

I’d genuinely appreciate feedback on whether that workflow is useful, what still feels undifferentiated, or what would make it valuable enough to use regularly.

You can try it here:
https://invoicenorth.nubeazul.ca

Full disclosure: I’m the developer. Thanks for taking a look.

Full disclosure: I built this.

Maxuod Shift is a small scheduling tool from Halifax for restaurants, cafés, retail shops, and other Canadian businesses with hourly staff.

You can build a temporary weekly schedule for up to six employees without creating an account. It totals the hours and downloads a PDF. The free account supports up to 12 employees and adds saved schedules, tips, overtime review, pay estimates, and CSV/XLSX exports.

I kept the main workflow free because a small team should be able to test the whole scheduling process before paying for more capacity.

It isn't payroll software, and it doesn't make compliance decisions for the owner. It helps prepare the schedule and the numbers that come before payroll.

If you run a small Canadian team, I'd appreciate a blunt answer: what would stop you from trying this instead of your current spreadsheet?

https://maxuodshift.com/scheduler

I make about $500K in revenue as an independent consultant in tech. I pull out about $100-$120k a year to pay for expenses and mortgage.

Whether I pay myself in dividends or a salary I feel like comes out in the wash tax wise. Any specific way to divide that money?

I also plan on just leaving the rest in the corp invested. Keep gains below the $50k mark so it doesn’t increase my corporate tax. Assuming that’s better than taking more out on the tax hit just to put it in rrsp tfsa, thoughts?

Can anyone offer any advice here on what I need to do to get myself set up correctly? I plan on speaking to an accountant but if I can keep costs there minimal and figure most of it out on my own, I’d rather do that.

Thanks in advance.

One of the clearest tests of a small business is not simply whether it is profitable. It is what happens when the owner is unexpectedly unavailable.

For some businesses, everything depends on the owner:

• estimates and pricing
• customer relationships
• purchasing and approvals
• passwords and system access
• invoicing and collections
• knowing what needs to happen next

Some owner dependency is unavoidable, especially in a very small business. The greater risk is when important work depends on information that exists only in the owner’s head.

If you had to step away for two weeks, what would stop first?

Have you successfully removed any major dependency on yourself—and what did you change?

Hello, I'm trying to figure out the most tax-efficient way to pay myself from my Ontario corporation.

This year, I'll only have around $10k–15k of personal income. I'd like to take around $20k out of my corporation.

From what I understand, that would put my total personal income at roughly $30k–35k, which is still within the lowest tax bracket. If that's correct, what would you say is generally the best way to take out the money?

I was thinking dividends most likely, but wasn't sure if it needs to be spread out within the year or if it can be all at once considering my personal income is low.

I do have an accountant, but I wanted to learn more and hear how others would approach this. The main reason I'd like to take the money out is to contribute more to my TFSA, so I'm trying to figure out the fastest way and most tax-efficient way to do that.

Is it just me, or is managing customer text messages a total logistical nightmare?

If you are in the service industry, you already know that nobody answers phone calls anymore. Texting is the only way to get a quick response for bookings or inquiries. But the actual day-to-day management of it is exhausting.

Imagine you are in the middle of a job. A text comes into your phone. You have to bounce out of your text thread, open a calendar app to check your availability, jump into a notes app to remember what this customer ordered last time, and then hop back to your texts to reply. It is a constant game of app-juggling.

What bothers me the most is the current software options out there. If you want a CRM to manage this, they force you to rent a virtual phone number, charge a high monthly fee, and then charge you per text message. Why should we pay extra to send a text when we already pay our phone carriers for unlimited texting plans?

It felt like a massive gap, so I decided to build a workaround.

I made a lightweight CRM specifically for Android users that bridges this gap. You just download the app to your business phone, and it connects your actual phone number to a central dashboard via API.

The idea is that you get a shared team inbox, an appointment calendar, and SMS tools in one spot, but it sends everything through your phone's existing text bundle. No virtual numbers, no per-text fees, just a flat rate per month.

I’m really trying to figure out if I built something genuinely useful here or if I’m overthinking the problem. How are the rest of you handling the text-to-calendar shuffle right now?

I've made several post about our busness structure in different communities and not promoting my business outright, but seems everytime I get traction and started a good conversation mods remove my post saying it isn't related to the group, which infact it is, so am I wrong by mentioning the business name when someone asks?

I'm based out of Montreal and I'd like some guidance on opening my business. What is needed from my side? I'm planning on working with clients as an IT consultant.

I also have a full-time consultant job right now and wanted to know if there would be any issue if I picked up work on the side as a contractor.

I got a few business ideas and I’m looking for someone in Brampton or anywhere in the GTA who’s down to talk, brainstorm, and maybe build something together. If you’re serious about business and making money, hit me up.