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

QuickBooks Online suits a real estate practice: light on inventory, heavy on services, and full of recurring supplier relationships. What a stock chart misses is Ontario’s specific mix, where the agent’s commission is taxable at 13% even on exempt homes, the car splits into two tax treatments, and the brokerage statement is a monthly bundle of creditable fees. This chart closes those gaps in QuickBooks’ own code language.

Commission first

Commission income codes HST ON. It is the point most new agents get wrong in their first year: the home may change hands exempt, but the service of selling it is fully taxable, so 13% HST belongs on every commission invoice once the agent is registered, and registration comes quickly at commission volumes. Getting this right is also what entitles the practice to input tax credits on everything below.

Two vehicle accounts, on purpose

Motor vehicle expenses holds actual costs: fuel and repairs at HST ON, insurance exempt with Ontario’s 8% RST as part of the premium cost. Its note keeps the two federal caveats in view, the ITC cap on passenger vehicles and the personal-use apportionment. Vehicle allowance claims codes Out of scope, because a reasonable per-kilometre allowance is compensation for a personal car rather than a supply to the business. Keeping the streams separate is what makes both the GST/HST return and the year-end vehicle claim defensible.

The production accounts

• Listing and portal fees at HST ON: MLS access, board dues, franchise portals, all creditable.
• Photography, staging and floor plans at HST ON, tracked per listing for cost-per-listing visibility.
• Signage and lockboxes at HST ON.
• Brokerage desk fees at HST ON with full ITCs; contractual and material, so they get their own line rather than sharing professional fees.
• Meals and entertainment for client dinners keeps the 50% credit note; the receipt shows 13%, the return claims half for most businesses.

From import to routine

QuickBooks’ chart import carries structure only (number, name, type, detail type), so run it under Settings, Import data, Chart of accounts, and put the readable CSV to work as the coding sheet, where each account’s default code and exceptions are spelled out. Ontario’s codes (HST ON, Z, E, Out of scope) exist as soon as sales tax is enabled.

1. Post each brokerage statement in its parts: splits to income, desk fees to their account.
2. Keep a live kilometre log; the allowance entries depend on it.
3. Attach listing addresses to staging and photography bills for per-listing costing.
4. Check the vehicle and meals accounts before each filing; they are where realtor returns typically leak.
5. Archive closed-deal paperwork with its entries so commission questions die quickly.

Commission income is lumpy, and the tax on it arrives with the lumps, so borrow a habit from seasoned agents: move the HST portion of every commission deposit to a separate savings account the day it lands. The filing then never competes with the quiet months, and the books in this chart tell you the exact amount to park, because the tax sits on its own line from the moment the invoice was coded.

An agent’s receipts are earned car-door to car-door, which is why they go missing. Dext applies supplier rules to the regular vendors. ExpenseFlow reads receipts and bills as they are captured, applies the Ontario treatments in this chart (taxable desk fees, out-of-scope allowances, half-credit meals), and posts coded entries into QuickBooks, so the spring rush does not turn into a summer cleanup. Hubdoc keeps documents matched to entries.

Prefer Xero? The mirrored chart is Ontario real estate chart of accounts for Xero; code semantics live in the Ontario QuickBooks sales tax codes reference.