BC Real Estate Chart of Accounts for QuickBooks Online (Free)

British Columbia asks a realtor’s bookkeeping one question over and over: is this line a service or a thing? The commission, the desk fee, and the photographer are services at a creditable 5%; the sign in the lawn and the brochure in the box are things, carrying 7% the practice never gets back. This QuickBooks Online chart of accounts answers per account, so the question stops being asked per receipt.

Income: services, taxed, always

Commission income codes GST BC. Exempt resale homes still generate taxable commissions, referral fees between registered practices are taxable services on their own visible line, and registration (which commission volume forces early) is what entitles the practice to every credit below. The companion habit: move the GST slice of each commission deposit to savings immediately, and the quarterly filing never competes with a slow month.

Costs along the goods-services line

• Listing and portal fees (GST BC): board dues, MLS, franchise portals; services, creditable.
• Photography, staging and floor plans (GST BC default): the shoot and the staging labour are services; physical staging goods and print runs take the flagged GST/PST BC alternative.
• Signage and lockboxes (GST/PST BC): goods; the 7% belongs in cost-per-listing arithmetic.
• Brokerage desk fees (GST BC): the practice’s biggest recurring service cost, fully creditable, on its own line.
• Meals and entertainment (GST BC): BC exempts restaurant food from PST; the federal rule still halves the credit.

The vehicle, disciplined twice

Motor vehicle expenses takes actual costs with BC’s texture noted: fuel at GST BC, repair services at GST/PST BC, insurance at E, the passenger-vehicle ITC ceiling and personal-use split flagged. Vehicle allowance claims takes per-kilometre amounts at Out of scope. Two accounts, one contemporaneous kilometre log, zero blending: that combination is what survives both the GST review and the income tax one.

Running the practice’s file

1. Enable sales tax; the BC code set provisions natively.
2. Import the chart (Settings, Import data, Chart of accounts) and work from the readable CSV as the coding sheet.
3. Post brokerage statements in components, never as net deposits; the credits live in the components.
4. Attach listing addresses to marketing bills; cost-per-listing is the practice’s most actionable number.
5. Sweep the signage and print accounts quarterly for 5% miscodes, and the service accounts for stray 12s, BC’s two signature errors in this trade.
6. Move the GST slice of each commission deposit to savings on arrival; lumpy income files smoothly only when pre-separated.

Growth follows the same grammar: contracted coordinators bill services at 5% or bare as small suppliers, payroll runs out of scope, team agents invoice taxable splits like any registered practice.

Incorporating the practice changes the letterhead more than the ledger. A personal real estate corporation inherits this same chart wholesale: commissions still taxable services at 5%, the goods-versus-services split unchanged, with the additions being corporate-flavoured, a shareholder loan account, dividends alongside drawings, and payroll if the agent takes salary. Set the corporation’s file up from this template on day one and the transition costs an afternoon instead of a quarter.

Realtor receipts are born in motion and die in glove boxes. Dext rules the recurring vendors. ExpenseFlow reads receipts and bills as they are captured, applies the goods-versus-services split, the allowance treatment, and the half-credit meals rule this chart encodes, and posts coded entries into QuickBooks before the next showing. Hubdoc archives the originals against the entries.

On Xero instead? That build of the practice chart, including the custom rates BC requires on that platform, is at BC real estate chart of accounts for Xero. Code meanings live in the BC QuickBooks sales tax reference.