Free download · no email required
CSV of realtor accounts with Xero GST defaults and the commission and vehicle notes that matter.
Download chart of accounts (CSV)Also available
A realtor’s ledger has one glamour number, the commission, and a long tail of unglamorous ones that decide whether the practice actually keeps money. In Alberta the tax layer is thin, 5% GST and nothing provincial, which makes it the easiest province in which to get the structure right. This Xero chart does exactly that.
The commission line
Commission income defaults to AB - GST on Sales. New agents trip on this every year: the house may pass between owners exempt, but the service of selling it never is, so registered agents charge 5% on every commission. Registration itself arrives fast at commission volumes, and being registered is precisely what opens the input tax credits on the rest of this chart. Referral fees between registered practices are taxable services too, worth keeping visible rather than netted into deal proceeds.
One car, two accounts
Motor vehicle expenses collects the actual costs of the showing car: fuel and maintenance at 5%, insurance exempt (and in Alberta, with no premium tax added), with the note carrying the passenger-vehicle ITC cap and the personal-use apportionment. Vehicle allowance claims codes Out of Scope, because a per-kilometre allowance is compensation for a personal vehicle, not a supply. The kilometre log behind that account is the least loved and most audited document in real estate; keep it current.
The production stack
- Listing and portal fees: board dues, MLS access, franchise portals, all 5% with credits.
- Photography, staging and floor plans: 5%, claimable, and best tracked per listing so cost-per-listing stays a known number.
- Signage and lockboxes: 5%, claimable.
- Brokerage desk fees: 5%, fully creditable, contractual, and material enough for their own line.
- Meals and entertainment: client dinners at the federal 50% ITC limit, flagged.
The team question arrives with success
The first hire complicates the chart pleasantly. A licensed assistant on payroll runs through wages and source deductions, out of scope and paperwork-heavy; a contracted unlicensed assistant or transaction coordinator bills like any supplier, 5% if registered, bare if a small supplier, into a professional-fees line. Buyer’s agents on your team splitting commissions are registered practices billing taxable services, which keeps their invoices creditable and your splits clean. Deciding employee-versus-contractor is a legal and payroll question first, but whichever way it goes, this chart already has the account waiting, and the tax treatment travels with the account.
Getting it live
- Create the three custom 0% rates once under the Tax menu, Tax settings, Tax rates.
- Import through Accounting, Chart of accounts, Import; check the preview matches rates to accounts.
- Post each brokerage statement in its parts: splits to income, desk fees to their account, at their treatments.
- Park the GST portion of every commission deposit in a savings account the day it lands; lumpy income makes smooth filings only if the tax is already set aside.
Marketing spend rewards one extra tag: put the listing address on every staging, photography, and signage bill, and Xero’s reports will tell you what a listing actually costs to bring to market, which is the number that disciplines the next listing presentation.
The receipts of this trade are earned in parking lots and coffee shops, which is why they vanish. Hubdoc captures them from a phone before they do. ExpenseFlow reads each receipt and bill, applies the treatments in this chart, taxable desk fees, out-of-scope allowances, half-credit client meals, and posts coded entries into Xero, so spring market pace never becomes summer cleanup. Dext keeps board and portal billing consistent with supplier rules.
The QuickBooks rendering of this chart is at Alberta real estate chart of accounts for QuickBooks; the rates behind it are documented in the Alberta Xero tax rates reference.