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CSV: nonprofit accounts with Quebec-correct QBO codes and notes on funds, programs and rebates.
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QuickBooks Online treats every organization like a business until the chart of accounts says otherwise. For a Quebec nonprofit, “otherwise” means three things at once: equity that tracks donor restrictions, revenue split by the taxable-exempt line under two taxes, and cost accounts that remember the parallel rebate systems waiting at filing time. This chart says all three.
Equity for stewardship
Unrestricted funds and restricted funds replace owner equity, putting the restricted-money answer on the balance sheet where funders, auditors, and incoming treasurers look first. Classes carry the program dimension; the account list stays small enough to learn in a sitting.
Revenue in three registers, twice-taxed edition
Donations and grants: Out of scope, invisible to both taxes. Program and membership revenue: defaults to GST/QST QC with E and Z as normal alternatives, because a taxable stream invoiced without both taxes is a liability discovered late, while an exempt one accidentally taxed is merely refundable. One classification per stream, recorded at launch, with the boundary cases, benefit-bearing sponsorships, gala tickets, member perks, decided rather than improvised. Taxable invoices carry both registration numbers.
Costs and the parallel rebates
Quebec doubles the nonprofit recovery story symmetrically: ITCs and ITRs for commercial-activity costs, federal and Quebec public-service-body rebates for qualifying bodies’ exempt-activity costs, plain cost for the rest. The chart keeps the sorting inputs honest:
- Program delivery costs at the pair, dual-rebate flag in the note,
EandZfor the exempt and zero-rated purchases inside programs. - Fundraising costs and advertising at the pair, apportioned where activity mixes.
- The stereo exceptions: meals at half under both, club dues at none, insurance exempt with Quebec’s premium tax as cost.
- Payroll
Out of scope, Quebec deductions tracked beside federal in the dedicated liability.
Standing it up, keeping it standing
- Enable sales tax first; Quebec’s codes provision natively, and every later step assumes they exist. Then walk the readable CSV once with whoever will actually code, because the classification notes are the training course in miniature.
- Import the chart (Settings, Import data, Chart of accounts); the readable CSV becomes the coding sheet and, annotated, the treasurer-handover file.
- Configure classes per program and route fund movements through the fund accounts.
- Code volunteer reimbursements to underlying accounts with true treatments; both rebate calculations depend on it.
- Reconcile the combined liability to the single Revenu Quebec return, and give the auditor the annotated sheet on day one.
- Have departing treasurers annotate why each stream was classified as it was; the reasoning is harder to rebuild than the numbers and cheaper to write down than to rediscover.
Grant budgets should carry the unrecovered shares, rebate gaps and premium tax, as real delivery costs; funders accept arithmetic they can see.
In-kind donations move value without moving tax: donated goods and services create no GST or QST event on receipt, and any fair-value recognition the organization records for reporting purposes is an accounting entry, coded Out of scope, not a supply. Keeping in-kind recognition in its own revenue line beside cash donations preserves both the tax cleanliness and the story the annual report wants to tell about community support.
What kills nonprofit books is turnover, not complexity. Dext keeps recurring suppliers ruled through personnel changes. ExpenseFlow reads each document, applies the dual-tax treatments and classifications this chart encodes, and posts coded entries into QuickBooks so the standard survives the busy season and the board transition alike. Hubdoc files the originals against the audit trail.
Running Xero? That build, with Quebec’s custom rates, is at Quebec nonprofit chart of accounts for Xero. Codes are explained in the Quebec QuickBooks sales tax reference.