A potential new client comes to you with a “mess”. Maybe they haven’t kept good books, maybe they don’t have time to filter and file. They haven’t filed income tax returns (or maybe GST, PST or even MRDT returns) for 2, 3, possibly even 10 years. Now a negative event such as a CRA demand or audit, a divorce or lawsuit, has put them in an impossible situation and they’ve turned to you for help.

We do. Our specialty is rescue missions. We turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse – analyzing the client’s business and book-keeping needs, figuring out what’s happened from bank and credit card statements, ploughing through receipts, finding out what went where. Often in these situations personal and business transactions are co-mingled in the same accounts, on the same credit cards, and so on. We not only sort the past, but develop a comprehensive plan to keep things straight in the future. If your client is happy, we can continue to do their book-keeping in a timely and proper manner for the foreseeable future.

Although we will need to work directly with your client, they remain your business relationship and we present our work, once we’re satisfied that it is as organized as it can be, to you. You then take on the heavy lifting work of providing financial statements, tax advice and returns. We are exclusively B2B.

We fully understand the need for confidentiality. We report only to you, our services are provided to instructing practices only; we will never contact any provider or tax authority without express permission.

A tightly-knit group of top accounting students from UBC, supervised by a fully licensed CPA and with access to an unparalleled suite of legal and technical resources. We are familiar with Sage 300 ERP, Quickbooks and many generations of Quicken.

We offer service to, and communication with, your clients in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi (Persian) and Korean. Clients often get into difficulties due to a limited understanding of Canadian rules and legislation, and we bridge the gap with our own wide range of cultural backgrounds.

We ask you to set up a first meeting with our manager at the client’s place of business, where such records as exist are kept. Following a review, we will give a firm proposal to perform the necessary work at a fixed price (to you). We ask for a 25% deposit to commence work and will invoice the balance in stages down to completion.

It depends on the size of the project. But please see the reverse of this page for two recent case studies.

When that client comes in with their trainwreck and you would like our assistance, please contact us directly by text or email. We will respond within 24 hours.

Paul 1-604-780-4360
Setareh 1-236-514-2363
trainwreckbookkeeping@gmail.com

A successful single-unit boutique hotel was severely impacted by COVID. Massive cancellations, staff shortages, cash flow issues, and family dependencies created a perfect storm in which accounting and taxpaying was the last thing on the minds of the small family owners. For two years (2020 and 2021) no book-keeping was done, no federal or provincial tax returns were filed. Desperation measures to keep the business afloat resulted in severe mixing of personal and business finances.

A quick succession of tax filing demands, penalties and interest levies turned the attention of the owners back to these responsibilities early in 2022. However, there were thousands of transactions, shoe-boxes full of invoices and receipts, and over two hundred bank and credit card statements.

Trainwreck Book-Keeping developed a grassroots plan to first organize the paperwork, second allocate all transactions and third set up a complete accounting system to keep matters current for the foreseeable future. Within three months of our engagement all past and current taxes were filed, past dues were paid and the company was back in good standing with CRA and the Provincial Government.

Total hours spent were 120; the value charged was $7,000 (just slightly more than the instructing CPA firm charged for preparing financial statements and filing federal tax returns).

A disastrous lawsuit in 2017 brought a pair of previously successful businesses to a complete halt by the end of 2018. For three years no taxes were filed and no accounting was done; the client was delinquent in the eyes of CRA for payroll, corporation tax and GST. Like in the previous case penalties and interest piled up; desperation measures in the final months of the business had mixed up personal and company transactions for the directors.

Trainwreck Book-Keeping developed a comprehensive plan to segregate the transactions, calculate all taxes due and prepare outline financial statements for the two businesses, on the basis of which the instructing practice was able to file missing tax returns and commence a remediation negotiation with CRA. Our total invoice was $2,000.