Pain Points:

• A previous firm that provided almost nothing: Inkline had been paying a firm approximately $300 per month for years. In exchange, they received a corporate tax return once a year and HST filings when the numbers were handed to them. No advice, no monthly reporting, no proactive planning, and no real relationship. Marc described it plainly: “they don't really do anything for us.”
• A USD/CAD currency mess left behind: Because Inkline serves US clients and carries USD expenses, the multi-currency accounting required careful handling. The previous firm had mishandled a significant volume of USD/CAD transactions, leaving a backlog of errors that needed to be identified and corrected before Zenbooks could establish a clean baseline. This wasn't a minor cleanup. It was months of work.
• An internal bookkeeper doing accounting beyond her expertise: Inkline had an office admin who had been assigned basic bookkeeping tasks, attaching receipts to transactions and handling some collections follow-up. The problem was that when accounting questions arose, Marc was the one figuring out the answers and telling her what to do. As he put it: that's just wrong at this point. I need professional help. The bookkeeper was competent at following processes, but no one was designing the right processes to begin with.
• No business line profitability visibility: Inkline operates multiple service lines, but the books were structured in a way that made it impossible to understand which parts of the business were generating margin and which weren't. Marc could tell if an individual project was good or bad, but had no roll-up view by service line or arm of the business. High-level revenue and high-level expenses were the only tools available for decision-making.
• No formal bank reconciliations for the prior year: When Zenbooks onboarded the file, there were no formal bank reconciliations on record for the previous twelve months. Duplicate transactions had been entered in QBO, the chart of accounts had not been structured to support meaningful reporting, and the QBO file required significant cleanup before it could be relied upon.

Impact: A company of this size and complexity was making major business decisions without reliable financial data, carrying a currency error backlog from the previous firm, and paying for accounting services that delivered almost no value. The combination of neglect, inaccuracy, and missing intelligence was a compounding risk that grew more significant with each passing year.

Goals:

• Clean up the USD/CAD currency errors and establish accurate, reliable financial records from the ground up
• Implement Dext for proper receipt management, replacing the manual QBO-based process
• Deliver monthly bookkeeping with a senior accountant reviewing the file each month and a live Zoom call to walk through the financials
• File quarterly HST returns accurately and on time, with Zenbooks taking full ownership of the process
• Replace previous firm with an all-inclusive corporate tax package that included not just a once-a-year filing
• Repurpose the internal admin's role from bookkeeping to document retrieval and internal support, freeing her for higher-value tasks
• Provide the kind of advisory relationship where Marc and Brent could ask real questions throughout the year without being charged for every interaction
• Lay the groundwork for future corporate restructuring conversations, including compensation alignment across three shareholders at different life stages

Onboarding:

• Engagement started June 1, 2025 at a fixed monthly fee of $1,106 CAD (plus tax), covering Dext, monthly bookkeeping with a senior accountant, and the all-inclusive corporate tax package. AP and payroll remained in-house by the client's choice, keeping the engagement lean and focused on what Inkline actually needed.
• Jessica Wong (Director of Operations) oversaw the onboarding and immediately identified that the QBO file required significant remediation. No formal bank reconciliations existed for the prior year, and duplicate transactions needed to be removed before the file could be used reliably.
• Beata Fartel (Manager of Accounting Services) was assigned as the lead onboarding accountant and began working through the backlog of USD/CAD errors left by the previous firm, including identifying and correcting misclassified tax codes for QST and BC PST transactions that had been incorrectly routed to the GST account.
• Dext was implemented and connected to QBO, establishing a proper receipt management workflow and replacing the previous process where the admin manually attached receipts in QBO with no systematic documentation standard.
• The internal admin's role was formally repositioned: rather than attempting bookkeeping tasks she wasn't trained for, she became the point of contact for document retrieval and internal access, supporting the Zenbooks team efficiently when receipts or records were needed.

Ongoing Support:

• Monthly bookkeeping and bank reconciliation delivered consistently, with a live Zoom review each month so Marc and the team can understand exactly what the numbers are showing
• Quarterly HST filings managed entirely by Zenbooks, with amounts communicated clearly and payment instructions provided each quarter, all handled without any involvement required from the client beyond approving payment
• When Marc identified that a new recurring software revenue stream had been going unrecorded in QBO, the team flagged it immediately, got it into the books, and ensured the liability was addressed properly
• Invoice write-offs and AR management handled as needed, including writing off uncollectable invoices for clients who had gone dark
• Tara Robertson (Senior Tax Accountant) and Albert Park (Senior Tax Manager) engaged on the corporate tax return, with the FY2025 T2 preparation underway and the prior year return monitored and followed up on with the previous firm throughout the transition
• Mark Benitez took over as the ongoing monthly accountant following the onboarding phase, with Patrick Ascue providing management oversight, ensuring continuity of service as the file graduated from cleanup to steady state

Client monthly accounting fees (CAD)

Without Zenbooks stepping in to clean up the backlog, establish proper processes, and take ownership of monthly reporting and compliance, those currency errors would have continued to compound and the shareholders would have continued making decisions without any reliable financial intelligence. Instead, Inkline now has clean books, accurate HST filings, a properly structured QBO file, and a team that proactively catches issues before they become problems.

“We’d been paying our previous accounting firm for years and getting almost nothing for it. They left us with a real mess that Zenbooks had to clean up when they came on board. Since switching, our financials are in better shape than they’ve ever been. We now have accurate books we can actually trust, which means we can do proper forecasting and make business decisions based on real numbers instead of guesswork. Zenbooks was responsive and easy to work with throughout the whole process, delivered on time, and never left us wondering where things stood. What stood out most was their depth of knowledge. They clearly knew their stuff, handled everything with confidence, and turned things around faster than we expected.”

– Marc Tessier, Co-Founder, Inkline Media

Running a digital agency or tech company with US clients and multi-currency complexity? Book a free consultation with the Zenbooks team and find out how they can bring accuracy, clarity, and real advisory to your finances.

Data and case study reviewed and approved by client.