Product
Mail Books Ecommerce Assistant
Pricing Partners Demo Security Q&A Log in Request access

Help › Bookkeeping

Hand your books to your accountant

Open this in Talisk HQ

At year-end, package everything your accountant needs in one file:

  1. Go to Ledger › Reports, pick Accountant on the group row, then open the Year-End Pack tab beneath it.
  2. Set the Fiscal year-end date (it defaults to last December 31).
  3. Click Download handover pack (.zip).

The ZIP holds the trial balance, general-ledger detail, and all three primary statements (profit & loss, balance sheet, cash flow), plus GST/HST worksheets, reconciliations and a working_papers folder, all as CSVs, along with every bill and invoice PDF for the year and a cover sheet. It's built to be read by a person, so it works no matter what software your accountant uses.

The profit & loss carries your book's declared basis. The cash flow statement is always the indirect method, so it has no basis label: its whole job is to reconcile accrual profit to the cash that actually moved.

The GST/HST worksheets in the pack are the same figures the GST/HST tab under Reports shows for each of those periods, line for line. A period you have already marked filed prints exactly as you filed it and says so beside the dates; an open period prints what the return would be today, including anything that arrived late and belongs to an earlier period you have already filed.

Email it to your accountant

If your accountant is in your directory (Contacts, then Directory) and you have confirmed them, the page offers an Email button with their name beside the download. It opens a new email to them from this business's mailbox, with a subject naming the business and the year and a short note saying the pack is attached. Your bookkeeper, if you have one, is offered as a copy you can tick; they are never copied unless you do. TALISK_HQ does not attach the file: download the pack, attach the .zip yourself, read the email and send it. If your accountant is not in the directory yet, the button reads Add your accountant instead.

When they send adjustments back

When they send back adjusting entries, the Upload adjusting entries panel on the same tab brings them in. This is a handover, not a filing: your accountant still prepares and files the return.

The working papers

Statements say what the balances are. The working_papers folder says what is behind them, which is what an accountant asks for next.

Open working_papers/index.csv first. It is your trial balance with one extra column: the file in the pack that lists what makes up each account. Every listing that supports a trial-balance line adds up to it, to the cent. The receivables, payables, customer-credit, vendor-credit and sales-tax listings print the check at the bottom: the trial-balance figure, the listing total, and the difference between them. The bank and inventory listings close with the trial-balance total for their accounts, one line each.

capital_additions.csv and customer_deposits.csv are the exceptions. Capital additions lists what was bought during the year, so its total is a movement over the period rather than the closing balance of an account. Customer deposits lists what your customers are holding with you TODAY, because that sub-ledger keeps no history and cannot be rebuilt as at a past date; it ties to the general ledger's all-time balance instead, which is the same check TALISK_HQ runs on every deploy, and it quotes the year-end position of the account separately beside it. For both files the index names them as an extra beside the account's real support rather than as the support itself, and each file says so at the top.

customer_credits.csv and vendor_credits.csv do tie, but each carries a short extra block at the bottom listing the balance held per customer or supplier. Those are today's figures, because the sub-ledger keeps no history, so they will not match the listing above them once anything has moved since the year end. The block says which date it is as at.

What is in there:

  • bank_accounts.csv every bank, card and prepaid balance on its own line, with the date it was last reconciled and what was still outstanding then
  • ar_open_items.csv and ap_open_items.csv what was still owed at the year end, one row per invoice or bill (netted, so anything settled in full is gone), listed under the customer or supplier and with an aging column
  • sales_tax_control.csv each tax account from opening to closing, showing what moved it
  • inventory.csv the accounts you have flagged as stock, and the counts you posted
  • customer_credits.csv and vendor_credits.csv credits still owed either way
  • customer_deposits.csv money customers have paid you in advance that you have not earned yet, one row per deposit still held, with the customer, the date it arrived and the amount still behind it. Where part of a deposit has already gone on an invoice or been refunded, the row shows what is left and says so
  • capital_additions.csv what was added to your asset accounts in the year
  • balance_sheet_accounts.csv everything else on the balance sheet: prepayments, accruals, deposits, loans, and any account your accountant imported at their own numbering

Three things the listings say about themselves, because they are easy to misread:

  • The receivables and payables listings are the general ledger position at your year end. The aging reports in the app are a live view, so an invoice paid in January has already left them while the ledger still showed it owing on 31 December. Both are right; they answer different questions.
  • The bank listing's reconciliation figures are frozen at each reconciliation's own date, which is usually earlier than your year end. The balance beside them is the ledger at the year end.
  • capital_additions.csv is a listing, not a schedule. TALISK_HQ does not decide which of your asset accounts hold depreciable property and computes no capital cost allowance. That stays with your accountant, which is why the file names every account and every document behind each addition.

What to tell your accountant about sales tax

The handover cover sheet says this too, but it is the one thing worth repeating, because it differs from QuickBooks and getting it wrong costs money.

Meals input tax credits are already restricted to 50%. TALISK_HQ applies the ITA s.67.1 / ETA s.236 limit when each bill or charge is recorded, so the ITC figure on the GST worksheet and on account 1110 is already net of it. In QuickBooks the usual practice is the opposite: claim the full credit through the year and add back 50% at year end. An accountant working from that habit will restrict your meals credits twice.

Two things they should also know:

  • The expense side is not restricted. Account 5800 carries the full cost of each meal. The 50% income-tax deduction limit has not been applied and is still theirs to make.
  • PST is inside the expense, not a separate line, because it is not recoverable.

When you last counted stock

If your books track cost of goods, the cover sheet also carries the date you last physically counted stock, which is a question your accountant asks anyway. Record it in Ledger › Setup before you build the pack. TALISK_HQ books cost as stock sells and never counts your shelves, so any difference between the ledger and a real count is a year-end adjustment for them to make.

Good to know: The pack is a ZIP of accountant-readable CSVs and your source PDFs for one fiscal year: it is not a Xero or QuickBooks import file, and it doesn't file anything. Set the exact fiscal year-end date; the window is the year ending on that date.