Hi and welcome to our first episode of always up to date. My name is Yara Martinez, and I’m with my colleague, um, Denise, me, tra, and we’re here to talk about, um, why you need a bookkeeper. So since this is our first video, I wanted to do some introductions. Um, again, my name is [inaudible]. I am, uh, working in a public accounting firm and if we’re, uh, in public practice for about three years now, I’m also in, uh, in the CPA program during the first module. Um, so Denise, tell us about yourself with Edmonton Bookkeeping.

Yeah, so my name is Denise. I also work in an accounting firm. Um, I’ve been working here for almost seven years now. Um, yeah. And uh, we actually opened, always Edmonton Bookkeeping about eight months ago and y’all way in, I took over probably two months ago. So we’re excited to, um, to start that adventure and just, um, again, starting are always up to date videos and just kind of, um, trying to get you more informed about who we are and just some things about, um, hiring books.

Absolutely. So, uh, for these episodes are, we normally would start with a quote and then we give you some statistics that’s related to the quote and we’ll give you a little bit of a story based on her, um, actual experiences. So our quote for today is from Jim Collins. He’s the author of six books and the quote is great fishing without great people is irrelevant. And our statistics, um, 50% of Canadian business fail and only 11% seek professional help. So Denise, why don’t you tell us, uh, kind of like, Ugh, that’s related to our topic today. Yeah, for sure. Um, so you know, y’all way, we’ve had plights that have come in, um, with the, they drive around in their truck, that’s their office. And um, they have their receipts. They just kind of throw them in a to their truck or just shove them in a bag or a box without Edmonton Bookkeeping.

And, um, they come into the office with these bags and boxes shoved full of receipts, maybe some bank statements. Um, and they’ve received a letter from the CRA and they’re getting audited and now they don’t know what to do. And so they brought us this big mess of receipts to, to deal with. Yeah. This is actually very common, you know. [inaudible] so, um, I have some questions, uh, that I, that we have laid out that you should be asking when you are trying to hire a bookkeeper. So the first one is can being this organized cause you to file weight and trigger penalties? Yeah, for sure. Being disorganized, you’ve, I mean, you’ve get this letter from the CRA and they’re asking for a certain period of time and now we’ve got this bag full of receipts, a box full of receipts. Um, we have to go through them and try to figure out which ones relate to which period.

And I’m, if it’s what the CRA is looking for, um, lots of times there’s a receipts missing. Um, yeah. And for sure if, if we don’t get that stuff into the CRA on time, they’re going to give you a penalty for sure. Absolutely. Um, so how long the CRA normally give you to respond to an audit query? So, um, normally what the CRA does is they’re going to send you a letter about Edmonton Bookkeeping.

You’re going to get it in the mail and it’s going to tell you that you have 30 days from the day that it was mailed or that you received it. Um, no, sorry. I think it’s from the date of the letter. It is, yeah, from the date of the letter. So you have 30 days. Sometimes you can get an extension, um, maybe two weeks. But the CRA doesn’t really like extensions and they don’t really give them to you very often.

Is it true that if you don’t respond due, we’ll assess you tax as the fit? Yeah, absolutely. Lots of people think that if they just ignore it, it’ll just go away. They don’t have to worry about it. But the CRA isn’t gonna let it go away. If you don’t respond to it, then they’re just going to go with what they think is, is right. They usually, they look at, um, what you did in the prior year and they’ll base it on that. So, um, it’s really important to get that information into them on time with Edmonton Bookkeeping.

I’m actually a, now that I think about it, a great example of it is a GSD. When they give you a GST pre assessment before you file, they predetermined the number of or the cost of how much you need to pay even before you finally get a return. So I think, um, it’ll be the same case for an audit query.

If you don’t respond to them, they already had that amount even before you file or you don’t. Right, right. So, um, is it costlier to file at year end with your accountant if you’re disorganized? Yeah, absolutely. Again, here we have these boxes of receipts. Now we have to have somebody that goes through the boxes or the bags and try to decide what receipts are relevant if they’re actually part of this particular year ends that we’re dealing with Edmonton Bookkeeping.

Um, so you’re going to, your accountant is going to charge you for the, that time that they’re spending organizing your box of receipts where if you had a bookkeeper that had it all organized for you beforehand, you would just take it into your accountant much less time that they’re going to need to use up. And so then your bill at the end of the day is going to be a lot cheaper for sure.