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CSV of store accounts with BC-correct Xero defaults for stock, fees and cross-province sales.
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An online store based in British Columbia gets the province’s best tax break and its most modern tax expansion in the same ledger: inventory arrives PST-free under the resale exemption, while the marketplace fees charged to sell it carry PST under rules written for the platform era. This Xero chart of accounts keeps both flows, and the cross-country sales map, correctly coded from the first order.
Stock: the exemption that funds margins
Cost of goods sold defaults to the custom GST on Purchases (5%) rate, because resale goods bought with your PST number attached are PST-exempt: the whole tax load on inventory is creditable GST. The account note makes the operational point, that this is a purchasing discipline before it is a coding one; every supplier onboarding includes the PST number, or the 7% starts leaking into landed cost. Inbound freight and import charges stays out of scope by default, with import GST claimed from the CBSA’s B3 entry or broker statement and duty permanently outside the system; international freight legs are zero-rated.
Selling: the buyer’s province writes each line
Online marketplace sales defaults to BC - GST/PST on Sales for home-province orders from a PST-registered seller, with the custom GST-only rate for PST-exempt goods, other provinces’ seeded pairs for their deliveries, and Zero Rated for exports. The platform computes per-order tax; the account’s job is to accept the full mix and reconcile monthly against the platform’s tax report, with collected PST landing in its own payable account for Victoria.
Fees: the modern PST frontier
- Marketplace and selling fees default to the 12% pair: BC applies PST to online marketplace services, so the commission line costs its sticker plus an unrecoverable 7%. The GST-only and out-of-scope alternatives cover platforms billing outside that regime.
- Payment processing fees stay exempt as financial services, taxable service portions flagged.
- Fulfilment and warehousing defaults GST-only for Canadian 3PL services.
- Packaging and shipping supplies carry the 12% pair; consumables are goods, though packaging shipped with resale product may qualify for exemption, a question worth one accountant conversation.
Assembly and rhythm
- Create the five custom rates in Xero (GST on Purchases and Sales at 5%, plus the three zeros) under Tax settings; then import via Accounting, Chart of accounts, Import.
- Wire the storefront connector to these accounts and reconcile its tax report to the sales account monthly.
- File broker statements with freight entries; audit fee accounts quarterly for platforms whose billing regime changed.
- Watch the PST payable account against the provincial return; it moves on liquor-free, PST-registered goods sales and nothing else.
One exemption-shaped trap: stock taken out of inventory for the business’s own use. The resale exemption applied because the goods were for resale; the demo unit on the office desk and the samples handed to influencers were not resold, and PST generally self-assesses on that change of use. Run own-use withdrawals through an inventory adjustment with the provincial share recorded, and the exemption stays clean end to end.
Refunds reverse with their original codes via credit notes, keeping the 12s and 5s honest in both directions. Currency noise from USD settlements belongs in an FX account, never in revenue.
Store volume turns every small coding rule into a thousand small chances to break it. Hubdoc captures the documents. ExpenseFlow reads each bill and statement, applies the resale exemption and marketplace-PST logic per line, anchors import claims to customs paper, and posts coded entries into Xero against these accounts. Dext keeps recurring suppliers ruled and consistent.
The QuickBooks mirror is at BC ecommerce chart of accounts for QuickBooks; the rate reference is the BC Xero tax rates list.