Working with your Corporation Part 1: Introduction

In our last blogs, we discussed the steps to incorporation.  Once you are incorporated, now what?  Now, it is time to run business, and there are some key things that you want to have in place.  At this point, you should have your corporation registered, your bank accounts set up and any required licensing registered.  Over the next few blogs, we will discuss some of the keys things you should know in working with your corporation.  We will talk about how you can keep up with your financial tracking and reporting, how you can pay yourself, how you can pay for your expenses and other important topics that will help you get on the right foot in working with your corporation.

Hopefully in your business plan, you’ve considered what things you can do yourself and what you will have to hire out.  The following are the key areas of the business that you must look at: Management, Marketing, Sales, Financial & Accounting, Customer Service, I.T. and Administration.

Right from the beginning of your business, you must have a plan to ensure you have a way to track the finances of the business, including Cash Flow, budget monitoring, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable.  Since you have a Corporation, proper and regular bookkeeping must be done in accounting software such as Quick Books. This could be you the business owner doing it, a bookkeeper or an accounting firm such as Kustom Design Professional Services Corp. This is different than a Sole Proprietorship where you can simply get away with adding up your income and expenses at the end of the year (although regular tracking is still recommended for Sole Proprietorships).  You must also have a plan for reporting to CRA and the Provincial authority on time each year. 

We will continue our blog series on “Working with your Corporation” in my next post.  Please check back for some helpful pointers on bookkeeping and GST remitting.