Accounting Software for Montreal Accounting Firms

What do accounting firms in Montreal work on?

Montreal is Quebec's largest business market, and every corporate client here carries two tax administrations: the CRA for the T2 and Revenu Québec for the CO-17.

Quebec businesses report GST and QST together to Revenu Québec, which administers the federal tax in Quebec under agreement — the only province where that is true.

Montreal corporations file both a federal T2 and a Quebec CO-17, and Montreal individuals file both a T1 and a TP-1.

Under Bill 96, businesses with 25 or more employees in Quebec must register with the OQLF and undergo francization, which affects client-facing documents as well as internal systems.

The client mix a Montreal practice builds around:

• Technology and AI
• Aerospace
• Creative industries
• Life sciences
• Logistics

A working week in a Montreal practice

A six-person Montreal practice models every corporate client as three obligations: the T2, the CO-17 and the combined GST/QST return. The failure mode is never a forgotten date — it is two calendars that quietly disagree. One board holding both administrations' dates is the entire point.

That shape is what SpidNums is built to hold. Each Montreal client carries typed services on its own cadence — GST + QST on the reporting frequency the CRA assigned that client, the T2 on that client's own fiscal year-end, payroll on its remitter schedule — and every deadline those services generate is ranked by proximity on one board. Red is overdue, orange is due soon, green is on track.

What it does not do is the work. Returns are still prepared and transmitted in your tax software, and the books still live in the client's ledger. SpidNums manages the engagement around them: who owns the file, which stage it is at, what is due next, and which client has been sitting on a document request for three weeks.

Which Quebec rules apply to Montreal firms?

All of them, and only them. Canadian municipalities do not levy their own sales or income taxes, so a Montreal practice works to Quebec's rules and the CRA's — there is no Montreal-specific filing layer. The Quebec hub covers those rules in full; the short version for a firm here:

• GST + QST at 14.975% — 5% federal plus 9.975% provincial. Revenu Québec administers both the GST/HST and the QST in Quebec under an agreement with the federal government — the only province where the provincial revenue agency collects the federal tax.
• Quebec corporations file the federal T2 with the CRA and the CO-17 corporate return with Revenu Québec.
• A second corporate return — the CO-17 — on top of the federal T2.
• A provincial small-business rate of 3.2% on the first $500,000 of active business income, with a general rate of 11.5%.
• Ordre des comptables professionnels agréés du Québec regulates public accounting and use of the CPA designation.

Can a Montreal firm serve clients outside the city?

Yes, and most already do. Nothing in a Canadian compliance engagement requires the client and the firm to sit in the same city. What it requires is a dependable way to collect documents, get a signature and keep the client informed without booking a meeting for each of those things.

SpidNums covers that with a client portal and a no-login signing link. An engagement letter goes out on the firm's own letterhead, the client signs by typing, drawing or uploading a signature, and the signed PDF lands on the client record. The client never creates an account, and never sees the software's name anywhere in the exchange.

For a Montreal practice the useful consequence is that service radius stops being a radius. The binding constraint becomes capacity, which is at least a problem a firm can measure and plan against.