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My ten tips for financial health

1. Evaluate your spending habits for a month, list all of your regular commitments or contracts that are annual or monthly, your debt service payments, interest rates on debts and essentials like groceries and gas or medical. How much is left over and who is entitled to spend the remainder? Is it split 50/50 or 80/20 between you and your spouse or partner? Is that fair?    This is where my book comes in handy
2. Know what you have, how many accounts, what assets you own, what debts you owe, what you insure and what's valuable, and where it's stored, check your will, power of attorney and representation agreements are current, review beneficiaries on insurance, RSP or RIF contracts ....             This is where my book comes in handy
3. Evaluate financial contracts to determine if they are necessary and cancel any that are not (cell phone, internet, phone, cable, debt, mortgage, credit, bank & investment accounts, organic grocery delivery, lawn, building, sprinkler, spa or pool maintenance, gym memberships, insurance plans)
4. Develop a plan to manage your paperwork, sort out your paperwork into account numbers, one account or asset per file. You'll find that most of your paper is from an account or asset, whether it's a bank, credit card, investment, vehicle, house, pension plan, utility provider or cell phone.
5. Create a budget and a plan to live within that budget. Sort your cash out into five major categories with sub-categories. The five major categories are annual, monthly, essential, debt service and remainder. 

1. Refinance debt at a lower rate of interest, investigate lines of credit with credit cards attached instead of credit cards
2. Make a long term plan (cash flow till you die requires date of death prediction)
3. Prepare some 'what-if' I scenarios, like what if we sold the house and rented, experienced a decline in health , what if we cashed in the GIC's and paid off the credit cards?
4. Evaluate what you are invested in, and if it's not growing, get out,consider debt repayment versus savings in tax deferred accounts and definitely consider TFSA's
5. Shift your attitude about consumption of everything from water, your footprint on the earth, your food and other consumables from sources within 100 miles, living even more green and within your means

Bookkeeping isn't quick and it isn't simple.  '

Nor can you expect to learn how to use software even though it's advertised as being quick or simple. 

If you aren't a farmer, fisherman or commission sales person, you're required to do accrual accounting. 

Not only that but you're expected to keep a full set of records, not just the receipts, and not just the payment records, but both the receipts and the payment records. In fact, if you don't pay a bill, you are required to add back the expense if it isn't paid within 2 years.  That's because S. 78 of the Income Tax Act requires an add back if you don't pay for something.  How would you protect yourself, proving you paid for something?  Double entry, accrual bookkeeping is top of the list.  By recording the purchase on the date the purchase, and the payment on the date of the payment, you're providing an audit trail to prove you paid for your purchases.
Accrual accounting is also necessary to keep track of what you sell and how people paid you to determine that you were paid.

If you're a business owner, you expect to access your bank balance, adjusted for what's not yet cleared the bank as well as what's owed to you (Accounts Receivable by Customer) and what you owe (Accounts Payable by vendor).  Then, it's important to pay employees based on their time worked of course...

All of that requires full accrual accounting every day and not just an adjustment by the accountant at year end.

I've put together a series of videos talking about how to do all of that using QuickBooks. 

If you are an accountant who currently hates using QuickBooks software but your clients are leaning towards using QuickBooks software because Intuit has targeted them and sold them on the value of using the software, it's time to take a fresh look.

...Or the operations manager has seen the kind of reporting that can be accomplished by using the Items in QuickBooks software, and is pushing for you, the business owner and the bookkeeper to make the switch, this series of videos could be for you. 

Why would I bring that up as a reason?  I've had a number of calls this past year from operations managers begging me to figure out how they could persuade their owner/managers and bookkeepers to make the switch.  They all tell me they are tired of creating spreadsheets separate from the company record keeping process in order to figure out how to make business decisions that their books and records should be able to provide.

Qtrade appears to have provided T5 slips for interest for the second fiscal period of an interest bearing investment when both first and second period were paid at the end of year 2.

If I didn't reconcile that interest income received agrees to the T-slips,wouldn't have caught this one.

They are switching to accrual method, but leaving their investors hanging for unreported income in  the proceess.  You would think they would have sent a notice with the T-slip, but maybe they did and my client chose to shred it.

If investments are held for more than a fiscal year, you are supposed to report the income each year.  Of course that means the clients have to tell you what they own.

Hah!  If you used my system of tracking everyone's investments in Quicken, you'd know what they hold and be able to accrue for longer term investment income annually.