We use the best cloud accounting tools available, so your data is accurate, secure, and accessible from anywhere. Here is what powers your Fluent Books experience.
Most small business owners never see the software stack their bookkeeper uses. We think that is a mistake. The tools below sit between your bank, your CRA filings, and your monthly reports — so you should know what they are, why we chose them, and how they protect your data. Every tool in our stack is cloud-first, Canadian-compliant, and selected because it integrates cleanly with the others. No paper filing cabinets. No spreadsheets emailed back and forth. No legacy desktop software that locks you out when your bookkeeper takes a holiday.
The same tools power every service we offer — bookkeeping, payroll, tax, and CFO advisory. Each is selected for security, Canadian compliance, and seamless integration.
The backbone of your books. QBO handles your general ledger, bank feeds, invoicing, and financial reporting. We chose QuickBooks Online over Xero and Zoho Books for most Canadian clients because of its tight integration with Canadian bank feeds, CRA filing tools, and the broadest add-on ecosystem in the Canadian market. Sejal holds the Advanced ProAdvisor credential — the highest QBO certification level — which means we use the features most firms never touch: custom workflows, class tracking, multicurrency, and audit log review.
Snap a photo of your receipt, forward an email, or upload a PDF — Dext extracts vendor, total, tax, and category data and pushes it straight to QuickBooks. No more shoeboxes of receipts at year-end, no more lost expense documentation when CRA asks for backup. We chose Dext over its main alternative because the OCR engine handles handwritten, crumpled, and faded receipts more reliably for the small business owners and contractors we typically serve.
A Canadian-built payroll platform that handles paycheques, CRA source deductions, T4s, and ROEs. Wagepoint understands BC Employer Health Tax, WorkSafeBC reporting, and Quebec source deductions without the workarounds other platforms require. Wages, deductions, and remittances flow straight back to QuickBooks Online, so payroll and bookkeeping stay in lockstep without manual journal entries.
Automated accounts payable. Plooto handles EFT and cheque payments directly from your business bank account, with optional multi-step approval workflows when a partner or controller needs to sign off before money leaves. Every payment syncs back to QBO and reconciles itself — no manual cheque writing, no separate spreadsheet, no missed vendor invoices buried in your inbox.
Real-time visual dashboards showing revenue trends, cash position, profitability by service line, and KPIs. Fathom is our reporting tool for clients on the Operations and Fractional CFO plans — it generates the monthly board-ready PDF plus the live dashboard you check during the week. LivePlan is added when a client is building a budget or preparing financials for a financing application.
A private, encrypted portal for sharing tax documents, financial statements, T-slips, and any file containing personal information. Nothing sensitive moves through email — every document passes through the portal, where every upload and download is logged. You always know exactly who has accessed what, and a clean audit trail exists if you ever need it.
Every connection between your bank, our tools, and your portal uses TLS 1.2 or higher in transit. Files at rest sit on servers using AES-256, the encryption standard used to protect classified information by governments worldwide.
Two-factor authentication is required on every platform our team accesses — QuickBooks Online, Wagepoint, Plooto, Dext, and the client portal. No exceptions, no shortcuts, no shared logins. We use authenticator apps rather than SMS because SIM-swap attacks have made phone-based 2FA unreliable.
Our access to your bank accounts is restricted to read-only bank feeds through your accounting software. We can see and categorise transactions, but we never have signing authority, debit card access, or the ability to initiate transfers. Money movement stays entirely with you.
The platforms in our stack store Canadian customer data in Canadian data centres, under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA). Wagepoint is hosted entirely in Canada. Your personal information stays under Canadian jurisdiction and is not routed through US servers — important if you handle data subject to provincial privacy laws like BC's PIPA.
The other half of a good tech stack is knowing what to avoid. We do not use QuickBooks Desktop — Intuit has phased it out for new Canadian customers, the file-lock model makes remote collaboration impossible, and any local-only software introduces a single point of failure if the office computer dies. We do not use spreadsheets for bookkeeping; they have no audit trail, no automated transaction matching, and no direct CRA filing integration. We do not use free or hobbyist tools where your data could disappear if the service shuts down. And we do not use any workflow that requires you to email files back and forth — every document passes through the secure portal where it is encrypted and logged.
If you are already on Xero or Zoho Books and they fit your business, we can work with that — we have certified team members on both. We typically recommend QuickBooks Online for new Canadian engagements because of its broader ecosystem and CRA integration depth, but we will not push a migration if your existing setup is already working for you. Read more about our setup process if you are considering switching platforms.
You own your accounting data. The QuickBooks Online subscription stays in your name, the bank feeds connect to your accounts, and everything in Dext, Plooto, and the client portal exports cleanly to your next bookkeeper. We hand off all administrative credentials, a transition document, and answer questions for the first 30 days at no charge.
Yes. QuickBooks Online has separate Canadian and US editions that can be linked for consolidated reporting. We typically run the Canadian entity on QBO Canada and the US entity on QBO US, then consolidate in Fathom for monthly board reporting. Cross-border GST/HST and US state sales tax are handled separately in each entity to keep the audit trails clean. Book a free call if you want to walk through the cross-border setup specific to your business.
Book a free call and we will walk you through the dashboard and tools we use for your books.