Quebec Ecommerce Chart of Accounts for Xero (Free)

A Quebec-based store sells into every Canadian tax system, restocks across two borders (provincial and national), and pays fees to platforms scattered across three tax regimes. The saving grace: at home, both taxes recover, so the coding is about accuracy and documents rather than embedded cost. This Xero chart of accounts holds the map.

Orders: destination writes the rate

Online marketplace sales defaults to QC - GST/QST on Sales for home deliveries and lists the rest as routine: the seeded pairs for other provinces at their rates, the custom Zero Rated rate for exports. Both registration numbers belong in the storefront’s invoice template for the Quebec orders. The monthly reconciliation, platform tax report against the account’s rate mix, is the loop that catches misrouted postal codes while they are cheap.

Restocking: two borders, two flows

Cost of goods sold carries the domestic flow at the 14.975% pair, both halves recoverable, with the custom GST-only rate for rest-of-Canada suppliers without QST registration. Inbound freight and import charges carries the international flow at Out of Scope, because the recoverable pieces live elsewhere: import GST on the CBSA’s B3 entry, and QST on commercial imports generally self-assessed through the return, both anchored to customs paperwork rather than supplier invoices. Duty stays outside every system, and international freight is zero-rated.

Fees across three regimes

• Marketplace and selling fees: the pair when billed from Canada (both recoverable), the GST-only rate for federal-only billers, Out of Scope with a warning for simplified-regime platforms whose tax is lost without your numbers on file.
• Payment processing fees: exempt financial services, taxable service portions flagged.
• Fulfilment and warehousing: the pair for Quebec 3PLs, GST-only for out-of-province ones, outside for foreign billing.
• Packaging and shipping supplies: the pair, recoverable both ways.

Setup and steady state

1. Create the four custom rates under the Tax menu, Tax settings, Tax rates, then import through Accounting, Chart of accounts, Import, confirming the preview matches rates to accounts.
2. Wire the connector’s summaries to these accounts; route payouts through a clearing account so sales, refunds, fees, and FX land separately.
3. File broker statements with freight entries; they carry both the ITC evidence and the self-assessment inputs.
4. Keep a per-platform note of billing regime; it changes, and each change moves real money.
5. Reverse refunds by credit note with original codes, so an Ontario refund backs out 13% and a Quebec one backs out the pair.
6. Route payout currency noise to an FX account; revenue reconciles to the platform’s tax report, never to bank deposits.

Own-use withdrawals from inventory keep their taxes honest through an adjustment, and inventory counts keep shrinkage out of margin; both taxes’ recoveries depend on the stock story being true.

Quebec was early to make remote vendors collect its tax, which today works in a store’s favour: most large foreign platforms bill QST correctly to Quebec businesses that have shared their numbers, making the fee accounts cleaner here than in provinces still arguing about digital services. The residual discipline is the annual vendor audit, one pass through the fee and software accounts checking that each vendor’s charged taxes match its regime, with your registration numbers dispatched wherever they are missing.

Store volume amplifies every small rule. Hubdoc captures the documents at the door. ExpenseFlow reads each bill and statement, sorts pair-billing from GST-only from unclaimable, anchors border claims to customs paper, and posts coded entries into Xero against these accounts, feeding the single Revenu Quebec return. Dext keeps recurring suppliers ruled.

The QuickBooks mirror is at Quebec ecommerce chart of accounts for QuickBooks; rates are documented in the Quebec Xero tax rates reference.