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CSV: agency accounts with Quebec-correct QBO codes and the contractor and client-map notes.
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Take a services business, run two value-added taxes through it, and hand the administration to one agency: that is Quebec, and it is friendlier than it sounds, because the taxes recover and the returns consolidate. What remains for the bookkeeper is pattern recognition, contractors, clients, and a short list of no-recovery accounts, which this QuickBooks Online chart of accounts turns into defaults.
Contractors: three patterns, learned once
Freelancer and contractor costs anchors at GST/QST QC for Quebec-registered contractors, both halves recoverable. The GST code records rest-of-Canada freelancers outside QST registration, and no-tax lines record small suppliers. Onboarding collects registration status for both taxes; quarterly review catches the contractor who crossed a threshold. Pass-through media and ad spend isolates client-billed platform money with its per-vendor recovery story.
Clients: the roster is the rate card
Services income defaults to the pair for home clients, both registration numbers printed, and expects the map: HST ON for Toronto retainers, other provinces at theirs, Z for qualifying export work. Each new client province is a one-time enable under Taxes. Retainer tax lands at the earlier of invoice and payment, so deferred revenue kept visible keeps the combined filing aligned with paper.
The no-recovery shortlist
Quebec agencies memorize three exceptions and move on. Meals and entertainment: half the recovery under both taxes at once. Club memberships: nothing, ever. Insurance: exempt premiums carrying Quebec’s own premium tax as cost. The software stack, by contrast, recovers in full at the pair, with the note handling foreign vendors whose regimes need your numbers on file.
The pass-through account earns one extra habit: reconcile it to client campaign budgets monthly, because spend that drifts from its campaign is both a margin problem and a recovery-tracking problem at once.
Assembly and habits
- Enable sales tax; the Quebec codes provision natively.
- Import the chart (Settings, Import data, Chart of accounts); circulate the readable CSV as the coding sheet.
- Put both registration numbers in the invoice template on day one.
- Use billable expenses for rebills, the rebilled line taking your code.
- Reconcile the combined GST/QST liability to the single Revenu Quebec return each period, and sweep the meals account before filing; stereo overclaims are the province’s signature error.
- Keep client-facing templates aligned with Quebec’s French-language expectations from the start; retrofitting a season of invoices is nobody’s favourite sprint.
Payroll deserves its own respect in Quebec, with provincial source deductions and employer contributions beside the federal set, all out of scope for consumption taxes and all tracked in the dedicated liability account this chart provides.
Two growth patterns keep the chart stable while the agency changes shape. White-label engagements, taking overflow from or handing overflow to other studios, are taxable services between registered practices in both directions, billed with both numbers and recovered by the payer; they run through the contractor and income accounts without new structure. And the annual subscription cull doubles as a tax audit: every recurring charge in the software account should have an owner, a purpose, and taxes that match its vendor’s regime, and the orphans that fail the first two tests are routinely the lines leaking unclaimable tax on the third.
The daily stream of small invoices is where dual-tax discipline erodes first. Dext anchors recurring vendors with rules. ExpenseFlow reads each bill, recognizes the three contractor patterns and the client map, applies the stereo half-recovery where it belongs, and posts coded entries into QuickBooks that tie to the combined return. Hubdoc keeps the documents filed against the trail.
Prefer Xero for the studio? That build, with Quebec’s custom rates, is at Quebec agency chart of accounts for Xero. The code list is the Quebec QuickBooks sales tax reference.