This weeks video walks through the steps to prepare your GST sales tax return in QuickBooks Online, then file it with Canada Revenue Agency.

Tips to help with your GST or HST filing in QuickBooks Online

1. Review your balance sheet to ensure all accounts have been reconciled. If everything is up to date, you should have captured all of the GST or HST you have collected and paid during the period.
2. Make a note of the balance of the GST HST account on your balance sheet at the end date of the return period.
3. Compare the balance of the account to the amount of the return you are filing. If they don’t agree something is not right!

You can follow the steps in the video to complete your filing.  If you need help reconciling your account feel free to reach out for assistance.

The website to file with CRA is: www.cra.gc.ca/gsthst-netfile

Let me know how you get on!  Comment below, I would love to hear from you.

 

Transcript:

Hi! Kerry here from MyQuickBookKeeping.

My GST return is due so I thought we’d prepare it together.

The first thing I do before starting any submission to the government is to ensure all my accounts are up to date. I do this by reviewing my balance sheet on the last date of the period we’re doing a return for. For example, for me now, that’s May 31^st.

I’ve made a previous video to show you how to run your balance sheet. So if you’re not sure how to do that, you can select that video in my channel below. As I’ve already reconciled everything, we can go the screen and complete the return.

Before I start, I always run balance sheets. So we pop in the Reports and I have this, one of My Custom Reports. We’re going to need to run it for the period that I’m doing a return for. So that would be, 1^st of March to the 31^st of May. Here we go. I run that report.

I scroll down and have a look and see what the GST payable is. For that period, it is $135.56, so I make a note of that on a piece of paper. Then, I select sales Tax on the left hand margin. You can see here Receiver General, the one that has come up. There’s also an option here for Minister of Finance, which is PST.

But today, we’re filing the GST return so this is the one that I want. So the Next return to file here is the one beginning the 1^st of March, it doesn’t have the correct ending date. Going to pop into Prepare return. I’m going to change this end date to the 31^st of May. Here it is. And here we go. The amount is exactly the same as what we wrote down from the balance sheet. It’s just always a nice double check to make sure you’re in line.

So now here, we have a breakdown of tax collected, tax paid and the amount that is due. So we now mark as filed. So all done. This will mark my return as filed and close the books for the period. So I’m going to Continue.

Now, we need to file that return with the Receiver General. And I’ll actually do it on the CRA website.

So let’s open up this return so we have a little summary.

This is the information we’re going to need to enter into the website.

This is the Government of Canada website for GST/HST NETFILE and I’m ready to file. So read through these points here. Make sure they’re all okay before you click continue. Then you come up to the screen where you enter your business number, access code and reporting period. I’m not going to film those bits. I’m just going to do them and then we’ll move to the next screen together.

So after entering the information about your particular business, you come to this screen where you are able to enter in all of the information from the return we just prepared in QuickBooks. Once you’ve done that, make sure that the amount here at the bottom agrees to the amount that we’ve written down on a piece of paper and it is the bottom of your sales tax return. I’m just going to do that right now.

Now, let’s press calculate. Here, we have the same $135.56. Yes, I will make a payment within the next five days and everything is accurate so I submit the return. And now, the return is filed. We still need to go and make a payment though so I don’t know if you’re either going to do that online or if you’re going to be able to do that through internet banking. But one way or the other, that payment still needs to be made by the due date. As you can see here, mine is the 30^th of June.

If everything has been set up properly in your QuickBooks Online file, then that should be a very smooth exercise. If not, we can help. I’ll also be adding a video to show you how you can set up products and services in your QuickBooks file that will help you to keep your taxes in order. If you’ve watched me post imported transactions in a prior video, you’ll see how that can make life much easier.

If you like to sign up for QuickBooks, you can do so using the link below. If this has been helpful, be sure to click Like and Subscribe to my channel. If there’s anything else you’d like to know about, please make a note in the comments below. My next video could be for you. Cheers!