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CSV of construction accounts with BC-correct Xero defaults, holdbacks included. Import file below.
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Building in British Columbia means pricing two taxes with opposite behaviours into every job: the 5% GST that washes through, and the 7% PST that lodges permanently in materials, tools, and equipment rentals. Contractors who quote from bare supplier prices meet the difference at year end, as vanished margin. This Xero chart of accounts is built so BC job costing tells the truth from the first invoice.
Materials carry their PST like a scar
The materials account defaults to BC - GST/PST on Purchases at 12%, and the note explains the law of the land: a contractor incorporating goods into real property is generally the consumer of those goods, pays the PST, and cannot recover it. Only the 5% GST returns. The practical consequence belongs in the estimating spreadsheet as much as the ledger: a $10,000 materials package costs $10,700 after the credit comes back, and quotes should say so.
Equipment and tool rentals shares the 12% default, since leases of goods carry PST too. Subcontractor labour flips to the custom GST-only 5% rate, construction services being outside PST, with the registered-versus-small-supplier check noted. Safety gear and PPE: goods, 12%. Permits and inspection fees: out of scope, as everywhere.
Retention, unchanged by the second tax
Holdbacks receivable and holdbacks payable stand apart from ordinary AR and AP under BC’s builders-lien regime, coded out of scope while retained; the GST on the held-back slice generally crystallizes at release. PST adds nothing here, because your own billing is a service. The monthly ritual holds: reconcile both holdback accounts to contract terms, and book releases promptly so tax timing follows the lien calendar.
The rest of the BC texture
Crew meals stay GST-only (food is PST-exempt in BC) with the federal 50% credit limit. Yard and office rent is GST-only commercial rent. The office’s software and phones carry PST, a detail crews rarely see but the overhead accounts encode. Insurance arrives exempt. Payroll and source deductions stay out of scope, and the PST paid on everything above never becomes a credit, only cost.
Quotes and change orders should speak PST
The estimating habit that saves BC contractors real margin: carry materials in every quote at PST-inclusive cost, and write change orders the same way. A mid-job change that adds $5,000 of materials adds $5,350 of unrecoverable cost after the GST credit, and a change order priced off the supplier’s bare number donates the difference. The books can only report what happened; the quote is where the 7% is actually won or lost, and this chart’s materials account is the feedback loop that shows whether the estimating habit is holding.
Standing it up
- Create the five custom rates in Xero (Tax settings, Tax rates), then import via Accounting, Chart of accounts, Import.
- Verify the preview’s signature: 12% on materials and rentals, 5% on subs, zeros on holdbacks and permits.
- Use tracking categories for jobs rather than cloning accounts; one Job dimension across these accounts yields per-project labour, materials, and plant.
- Give the readable CSV to the office manager; its notes are the BC materials-cost briefing most new hires never get.
Estimates die by a thousand slips: the lumber bill coded 5%, the sub coded 12%, the rental PST forgotten in the markup. Hubdoc captures the paper the moment it exists. ExpenseFlow reads each bill, applies BC’s labour-5-materials-12 logic line by line, keeps holdbacks out of scope, and posts into Xero against these accounts, so job costs stay quotable. Dext locks the lumber yard and rental house to supplier rules.
The QuickBooks build of this chart is at BC construction chart of accounts for QuickBooks; the underlying rates are documented in the BC Xero tax rates reference.