Accounting IT · CRA-aware · PIPEDA-aligned
Tax-Season-Grade IT for GTA Accounting Firms
CRA-aware, PIPEDA-compliant managed IT and encrypted client data handling for accounting and financial services firms — uptime when April matters most.
- CRA-aware
- PIPEDA-aligned
- Tax-season SLA
- GTA accounting firms
or call (416) 624-4841 — partners routed to a priority queue during filing windows
The math behind a quiet April
Tax-season risk isn't hypothetical
Filing deadlines don't move. The published numbers behind what an outage or a breach costs a firm that cannot afford one in April:
A week in late April
The IT failures that quietly become late filings
Most April incidents don't start at midnight on the 30th. They build over the week — and a 20-minute outage in the wrong window is a CRA letter four months later.
Filing-window risk
A single missed e-filing window costs more than a year of managed IT — and the CRA review three months later doesn't forget where it came from.
Each row below is a real, observed April pattern — and the lost time is only the visible part. The client-trust hit and the reassessment risk both dwarf the IT line.
- 99.9%Uptime target, filing season included
- 1hrResponse commitment in business hours, every plan
- Apr 27, MonCaseWare file lock during partner review
Two seniors editing a Year-End working paper simultaneously. Lock contention forces a re-open. 18 minutes of senior time evaporates.
18 min of senior time, unbillable - Apr 28, TueTaxCycle host unreachable from home office
CPA working remotely loses access to the hosted TaxCycle environment. VPN flaky; senior calls IT line. No on-call.
Two T1 returns delayed - Apr 29, WedEncrypted backup verification not run
Quarterly restore drill is overdue. CRA evidence packet needs a verified-restore date — last one is six months old.
Cyber-insurance answer at risk - Apr 30, ThuCRA e-filing rejected on last batch
Bulk submit fails on three corporate returns. Engineer not on duty. Partner reschedules with the client; one filing slips past midnight.
Late-filing exposure + client trust - May 4, MonCRA letter requesting original-format records
Random e-record review on one of last year's T2 batches. Records exist but not in the format CRA expects. Two days of reconstruction.
Reassessment + partner hours
CRA & PIPEDA alignment
The four obligations we evidence by default
Compliance is the standard build — not a quarterly project. Each managed accounting firm gets the same control posture mapped to s.230 ITA, PIPEDA, and underwriter expectations.
Digital Record-Keeping
Records produced in original electronic format with access logs, retention, and tamper evidence — meets CRA digital record-keeping rules under s.230 of the Income Tax Act.
CRA Folio S15-F2Client Privacy
Encryption at rest and in transit, PII never in ticket bodies, masked screen captures, least-privilege engineer access. Breach response documented and rehearsed.
OPC guidance + DPA on fileInsurance Readiness
MFA, EDR, immutable backups — the three controls every insurer asks about — supplied with the evidence packet your broker needs. No chasing screenshots in March.
Broker-ready evidenceAudit-Ready Posture
Tax-season escalation queue, verified backups before Feb 1, retention schedule mapped to your engagement letter, and quarterly evidence reviews — audit posture is a state, not a project.
Quarterly evidence reviewPractice systems we run in production
Engineers who already know your accounting stack
CaseWare year-end bundles, Profile/TaxCycle hosted environments, QuickBooks Online tenant migrations, Sage 50 on-prem, Wagepoint and ADP payroll — without a 90-day learning curve on your tools.
Don't see yours? We coordinate with most accounting-tech vendors and hosting providers directly.Ask about your stack
CRA evidence vault
Eight controls orbiting every client ledger
The standard build wraps every client record in eight overlapping controls — so an audit letter, a contractor offboarding, or a vendor incident doesn't move your IP or your filings.
What sits on top of your client records
Client-data flow
From intake to archive — every hop evidenced
Five hops. Five controls. A client file moves from secure intake through encrypted storage, partner review, CRA filing, and into an immutable archive — with the control that protected it labelled at every step.
Client intakeSecure portalConditional access
Encrypted DMSSharePoint · VaultBitLocker · DLP
Review queueCaseWare · TaxCycleMFA · access log
CRA filinge-filing batchAudit trail
Immutable archiveAWS Canadas.230 retention
Onboarding ledger
15 / 30 / 45 days to a compliance balance of 100
The rollout posted as a ledger — every entry adds to your compliance balance. By Day 45 the books are clean, the broker has bound the renewal, and the CRA evidence packet sits ready in the archive.
DayActionPosted byΔBalance
Day 0Open
Posture audit · cyber-insurance gap analysis
CtrlShift
+0
12
Day 3+3d
MFA enforced firm-wide · BitLocker on every device
IT lead
+20
32
Day 7+7d
M365 Business Premium rollout · Intune enrolled
CtrlShift
+18
50
Day 15+15d
Huntress EDR live · password manager firm-wide
IT lead
+15
65
Day 22+22d
PIPEDA retention policies posted · DPA signed
Partner
+12
77
Day 30+30d
Backup restore drill verified · documented
CtrlShift
+10
87
Day 38+38d
Cyber-insurance evidence packet · broker bound
Broker
+8
95
Day 45Close
CRA evidence packet · runbook locked · posture frozen
CtrlShift
+5
100
Closing balance100 / 100Posture bound
Changing providers
Switching is the part nobody explains
The objection is almost never whether this is worth doing. It is what happens to a practice in filing season while it is being done. So, plainly:
- No destructive changes in the first 30 days.Discovery and stabilisation only. Nothing is migrated while we are still learning what you run.
- No cutovers during February through May.The calendar decides the schedule, not us. Work moves rather than the deadline.
- No gap between providers.We run in parallel with the outgoing one through the handover, and we will talk to them directly so you are not the go-between.
- Week 1
Nothing changes yet
We inventory what you run, map who has access to what, and get read-only visibility. No migrations, no cutovers, no password resets. The current provider stays exactly where they are.
- Weeks 2–4
The safety net goes in first
EDR, MFA and a verified backup land before anything is moved. If the handover went badly from here, you would still be in a better position than you started — that is the point of the order.
- Week 4
The keys change hands
Tenant ownership, domain registrar, licence agreements and documentation move into accounts you own. We run parallel with the outgoing provider through this, not after it.
- Day 90
You can leave
The onboarding term ends and the agreement is month to month. Everything is documented in your tenant, so a future provider — or you — can pick it up without us.
The standard build
Ten controls, every tier
The same build runs whatever the sector. What changes is who asks you to prove it — for you that is the CRA and your underwriter. Pick any control to see what it does.
Identity
Device
Data
Network
MFA on every account
Enforced by conditional access policy, not left to each person to switch on.
StopsA leaked password alone opening a mailbox.
In every published tierCheck this on your practice
Transparent pricing
What does this actually cost?
The published per-user rate is the same for every industry. What an accounting practice adds is scope — CRA filing windows, tax-season escalation, year-end retention.
Billed per user, per month
The published rate is the same whichever industry you are in — there is no separate schedule for accounting practices. What varies is scope, not price per seat, and we confirm the tier with you on a 20-minute call before anything is signed.
See the full plan comparisonFit
Who this is not for
Three situations where we are the wrong call. Worth two minutes now rather than twenty on a call that ends the same way.
One accountant, one laptop, seasonal help
The build assumes shared client files, a domain and staff who come and go. Under about four seats it is more structure than the practice has.
Do the security basics yourselfYou want it billed by the hour
Managed IT is a fixed monthly per-seat fee, and it is the only way we run somebody's systems — being paid more the more things break is the wrong incentive. Hourly work exists on the help desk for a single repair; that is a fix, not a provider.
See the break-fix menuYou need someone to own the CRA answer
We evidence the controls — retention windows, who accessed which client file, backups that cannot be altered. The professional judgment stays with your practice and your regulator. Anyone selling you "CRA compliance" as a product is selling the wrong thing.
You are mid-season
Not a disqualifier for talking. We scope now and cut over in June — we do not migrate a practice between February and May, which is the whole point of the switching plan above.
Illustrative scenario
What an engagement actually looks like
A composite example rather than a client record — the profile is illustrative, and the steps are the ones we would genuinely run.
12-staff Vaughan accounting firm
Personal & corporate tax • Year-round bookkeeping
- Microsoft 365 BP
- Intune
- BitLocker
- Huntress EDR
- 1Password Business
The situation
Client files on unencrypted personal laptops, no patch management, shared passwords, and a CRA review flagging the digital record-keeping. The cyber insurance broker walks away.
What we deploy
Microsoft 365 Business Premium rollout with BitLocker on every device, Intune device management, firm-wide password manager, automated patching, and PIPEDA-aligned retention.
What changes
Client files are encrypted and patched on a schedule, shared passwords are gone, and the digital record-keeping the CRA asks about is documented rather than assembled under pressure.
- 15d
Day 1–15
M365 BP rollout, BitLocker live, Intune enrolling devices.
- 30d
Day 16–30
Password manager firm-wide, retention policies live, backup verified.
- 45d
Day 31–45
CRA evidence packet ready, insurance renewed, posture documented.
Self-Assessment
1-Minute Compliance Check
Tailored security and compliance scorecard. Four questions, no email required to see your score.
Keep reading
Where to go next
The things this page named
Not quite your sector?
Do some of it yourself
Ready to make your next April the calmest one?
Book a free 30-minute review. A senior engineer will audit your CRA posture, run a cyber-insurance gap check, and tell you exactly where the friction is — before the next filing window opens.
CRA + PIPEDA-fluent engineersQuickBooks · CaseWare · Profile · TaxCycleon-site response across the GTA
FAQ
Accounting IT — Common questions
From CRA digital record-keeping and PIPEDA, to QuickBooks/CaseWare/TaxCycle, to cyber-insurance evidence — the questions we get asked most.
8 results
CoverageDo you understand accounting-specific software?
Yes — QuickBooks Online, CaseWare, Profile, TaxCycle, Sage 50, and Xero are all environments we support and integrate into M365.
CoverageWhat is the tax-season escalation queue?
From February through May, accounting clients are on an extended-hours queue with priority routing for any issue blocking a filing.
CoverageWill my CRA records hold up under audit?
Yes — we configure retention, access logs, and storage so records can be produced in original format with audit trail, meeting s.230 ITA expectations.
CoverageCan you support Citrix / hosted accounting environments?
Yes. Many firms run hosted Profile or TaxCycle; we manage the M365 + endpoint side and coordinate with the hosting vendor.
SecurityHow do you handle PII / SIN exposure during ticketing?
PII is never copied into ticket bodies. Screen captures are masked. Engineer access is least-privilege and logged.
PricingWhat does this cost for an accounting practice?
Pricing is per user, per month, and it is the same published rate for every industry — see the plan comparison on /pricing. Which tier fits depends on the control set you need rather than on your sector, and we confirm it with you on a 20-minute scoping call before anything is signed. Hardware, third-party licences, and one-off projects (cabling, migrations, office moves) are quoted separately.
CoverageDo you sign DPAs and confidentiality agreements?
Yes — DPAs and engagement-specific confidentiality undertakings are part of standard onboarding.
OnboardingCan you take over from our current IT provider mid-year?
Yes — we transition outside of tax season when possible, and run parallel coverage during the handover.