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CSV of nonprofit accounts with fund structure and Quebec-correct Xero defaults.
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A Quebec nonprofit reconciles three vocabularies: the funder’s (restricted or not), the CRA-and-Revenu-Quebec pair’s (taxable, exempt, zero-rated, out of scope, twice), and the board’s (what can we spend). This Xero chart of accounts translates among them structurally, so the treasurer’s successor inherits a system rather than a folklore.
Stewardship in the equity section
Unrestricted funds and restricted funds replace owner equity: donor-restricted balances are promises, and the balance sheet is where funders look for them. Program-level reporting rides Xero tracking categories over a deliberately small account list.
Revenue: one classification per stream
Donations and grants code Out of Scope, untouched by either tax. Program and membership revenue defaults to the pair with Exempt and Zero Rated as first-class alternatives, because Quebec nonprofit income spans the full range and each stream deserves one recorded decision: the exempt community program, the zero-rated publication, the taxable workshop series invoiced with both registration numbers. The gala splits as galas do, donations out of scope, benefit-bearing tickets classified.
Costs: the dual-rebate fork
GST on costs takes its familiar three exits, credit, rebate, cost, and Quebec mirrors the middle one: qualifying bodies may recover shares of unclaimable GST and QST through parallel public-service-body rebates, each at its own rates. The structure keeps the sorting inputs clean:
- Program delivery costs at the pair with the dual-rebate flag and the exempt and zero-rated alternatives for mixed program purchases.
- Fundraising costs and advertising at the pair, apportioned honestly across mixed activity.
- The stereo exceptions: meals at half recovery under both taxes, club dues at none, insurance exempt but bearing Quebec’s premium tax as cost.
- Payroll out of scope, with Quebec source deductions tracked beside federal in the dedicated liability account.
Setup and continuity
- Create the four custom rates in Xero (Tax menu, Tax settings, Tax rates) before importing; donations and the funds depend on the zeros existing first. Then walk the readable CSV with whoever codes; the classification notes are the whole orientation.
- Import via Accounting, Chart of accounts, Import, then layer tracking categories per program so budget-versus-actual reads by activity without multiplying accounts.
- Record every stream’s classification in the readable CSV at launch, and have departing treasurers annotate their reasoning before they go; the reasoning is the hardest knowledge to rebuild and the cheapest to write down.
- Code volunteer and staff reimbursements to the underlying expense accounts with their true treatments, keeping both rebate calculations grounded in the real receipts behind them.
- Reconcile the combined liability to the single Revenu Quebec return each period.
- Keep funder-facing documents aligned with Quebec’s French-language expectations alongside the tax formalities; both files answer to provincial review.
Registration remains a considered decision, with public service bodies enjoying friendlier thresholds, and grant budgets should note that unrecovered tax shares (the rebate gaps and the premium tax) are genuine delivery costs.
Board and AGM costs deserve their own small discipline: venue rental and catering for governance events code like any purchase (the pair, with catering’s consumption caveat), but they belong in a governance line rather than program costs, because funders read program-cost ratios and governance spending misfiled as program delivery distorts the story in both directions.
Continuity is the treasure nonprofits cannot buy, and coding consistency is most of it. Hubdoc captures and archives the paper. ExpenseFlow reads each receipt and bill, applies the out-of-scope, exempt, and dual-tax treatments this chart encodes, and posts coded entries into Xero, holding the standard through volunteer turnover. Dext adds rules for recurring suppliers.
The QuickBooks build is at Quebec nonprofit chart of accounts for QuickBooks; the rates are documented in the Quebec Xero tax rates reference.