Record a GST/HST or QST instalment before you file

An annual GST/HST filer pays instalments during the year, before the return exists. Each one is a payment toward the tax you owe for that year, so it reduces GST/HST Payable (net) rather than adding a cost, and the return takes it off on line 110.

Record it from the bank line

1. Find the withdrawal in Ledger › Banking › Transactions, open its details with the arrow at the right of the row, and look under "Not what it looks like?".
2. Choose Tax payment, then Instalment for a return not yet filed.
3. Pick the fiscal year the instalment is for. TALISK_HQ offers the year the payment falls in and the year before it, because a payment made just after your year end is often for the year that just ended (the last instalment of a calendar year is due on 31 January). When both are open, TALISK_HQ picks neither, so check the year on the instalment notice. A year whose return is already filed is not offered: that payment is the balance of a filed return, so record it as an ordinary Tax payment instead.
4. On a Quebec book, one Revenu Quebec payment usually covers both taxes. Enter the GST/HST and QST parts; they must add up to the whole withdrawal, and TALISK_HQ fills in neither for you. On every other book the whole line is GST/HST.
5. Confirm with OK. TALISK_HQ posts one entry for each tax, debiting GST/HST Payable (net) (and QST Payable (net) for the QST part) and taking the money out of the bank account the line belongs to. The line stops reading as uncategorized.

Where it shows on the return

The GST/HST tab adds every instalment recorded for a year to line 110, so line 113, the balance, is the net tax less what you have already paid. QST works the same way: the QST block shows the QST instalments and the QST balance after them.

Instalments you paid from an account TALISK_HQ does not import have no bank line. Enter those in Edit Adjustments on the GST/HST tab, in Line 110 — Instalments not recorded in TALISK_HQ (and QST instalments not recorded in TALISK_HQ on a Quebec book). Line 110 is the two added together, so never type an instalment there that you also recorded from a bank line. When the return already has instalments typed there, TALISK_HQ says so before recording one from a bank line: tick It's a different payment, so record it only if it is. The GST/HST tab shows the typed figure and the ones recorded from bank lines side by side under line 110.

If you file the year somewhere else and record that return in TALISK_HQ (see record-a-return-filed-elsewhere), record your instalments from their bank lines first. A filed return takes no more instalments.

When you mark the year filed, line 110 and the QST instalments are frozen with the return. Record payment / refund then fills in the balance after them: the rest you owe, or a refund when the instalments came to more than the year's tax.

Questions TALISK_HQ asks first

• A payment dated before the year starts. TALISK_HQ asks you to confirm it is a prepayment for that year: tick It's a prepayment for this period, so record it anyway.
• An entry already in your books. If a journal entry posted by hand already pays this tax during the year (for example an instalment you booked with a manual entry before this option existed), TALISK_HQ lists it. If it is this instalment, record nothing and leave the line as it is. If it is something else, tick None of these is this instalment, so record it anyway.
• Before your conversion date. TALISK_HQ refuses: that money is already in your opening balances.

Undo an instalment

While the return is still open, Undo instalment on the bank line removes the instalment entry and the line is uncategorized again. Once the return is filed, its line 110 includes the instalment as filed, so the undo is refused. A bank line holding an instalment can still be deleted, but it is kept as a reversed line so the entry the return counted stays in the books.