Your books changed after you filed

When you mark a period as filed, TALISK_HQ keeps a copy of the worksheet exactly as it stood. That copy never changes. So the Tax Summary for a filed period shows what you sent to the CRA, even if your books move afterwards. The one exception is a period TALISK_HQ has no copy of, which is covered further down.

Books do move afterwards. A supplier invoice arrives late and is dated inside the quarter. A bank feed backfills a charge you had missed. Either way the expense belongs to that period, so it gets recorded there.

When that happens you get a card on your books-health panel saying your books have changed since you filed, which figure moved, and by how much.

What to do about it

You do not amend the return. The one you filed was correct with the information you had.

Usually you do not need to do anything: your next return picks up the difference on its own. When you open the next period's worksheet, anything recorded into an earlier filed period appears as a late claims amount inside the tax-collected and input-tax-credit lines, with its own label so you can see how much of the return is catch-up. Filing that return remits it. This is the same way QuickBooks handles it, and it matches the CRA's own remedy: you have up to four years to claim a missed input tax credit, and claiming it on a later return is normal practice, not a correction.

For anything larger, or a change that moves the net tax by a lot, ask your accountant whether it needs an adjustment instead. That is a judgment call about materiality, and it is theirs to make.

Three cases the sweep leaves alone, on purpose. Your first filing in TALISK_HQ never reaches back before it (an opening balance may already be on a return you filed elsewhere). A Quick Method book's flat-rate return does not fold in prior-period amounts: that one is your accountant's call. And a period you recorded with Filed elsewhere gets no card either, because its figures came out of another system: your books differing from it is the normal state, not a change, and the difference is shown on its Filing History row instead. See "Record a GST/HST return you filed somewhere else".

Seeing what changed

Open Ledger › Accounting › Journal and set the period to the one that was filed. Entries posted after you filed are the ones that moved the figure. The card tells you how many there are.

When TALISK_HQ has no copy of a return you filed

Sometimes a filed period has no frozen copy to compare against. It was filed before TALISK_HQ started keeping one, it was recorded some other way, or TALISK_HQ could not save the copy at the moment you marked it filed. The filing still goes through in that last case, because the return is already with the CRA, and the Tax Summary tells you so as soon as you file.

For a period like that, the Tax Summary rebuilds the figures from your books and says so, rather than presenting a fresh calculation as the return you sent. The PDF you export for that period says the same thing above its figures. TALISK_HQ never fills the gap by copying today's figures in: that would record numbers you did not file, and it would hide the very changes this check exists to catch.

For each of your recent filings that it cannot check, your books-health panel also gets a card saying TALISK_HQ can't check that period against the return you filed. Where TALISK_HQ can take the figures of that return, the card says so, and recording what you filed (below) clears it.

• If your books are not locked through the end of that period, the card asks you to lock them once everything up to that date is recorded. Until then entries can still be recorded in the filed period, and TALISK_HQ can't tell whether they change the figures you filed.
• If they are locked, nothing needs doing. Nothing can land in that period unless someone removes the lock or records it as an exception with a reason. Dismiss the card once you have read it.

To check the figures yourself, compare the Tax Summary for that period with the return you filed. If they differ, that is not an error in itself: a return prepared in another system can split the same tax across periods differently. Your accountant can tell you whether the difference matters. If the card comes back after you dismiss it, the books inside that period changed: an entry was posted into it, moved into it, changed or removed.

Recording what you filed

If you have the return in front of you, you can give TALISK_HQ the copy it is missing. Open the Tax Summary for that period, choose Record the figures you filed, type the lines off the return and say where you filed it:

• Somewhere else, such as QuickBooks, Xero, a spreadsheet or your accountant's software. TALISK_HQ keeps the figures as a return filed elsewhere, shows where they differ from your books on the period's Filing History row, and stops checking that period against your books, because a return prepared in another system can split the same tax across periods differently.
• From TALISK_HQ, with Mark as Filed. TALISK_HQ first checks the figures against what it recorded when you marked the period filed, and refuses them if they do not match, naming the line. It then keeps them as the figures you filed and tells you if your books change afterwards. This is only open for a book's first filing, on the accrual basis and not on the Quick Method. Any later return may also carry amounts from earlier periods that no line of it shows, so TALISK_HQ cannot check typed figures for it, and it says so. Don't record such a return as filed somewhere else: the card staying is the honest answer for it.

Either way nothing in your books changes and nothing is posted, the figures cannot be edited afterwards, and the card saying TALISK_HQ can't check that period goes away. TALISK_HQ only asks for the filing date and confirmation number when the period does not already have them. Only the book owner, or a bookkeeper with full access, can record the figures.

Recording something in a closed period

A closed period refuses new entries. When you try to record one anyway, TALISK_HQ asks why, and then records it as an exception: the entry is marked Closed period in the journal, and it carries your reason and who allowed it.

That is the whole difference from unlocking the period. Unlocking leaves no trace of which entry was the exception; this way the entry says so itself.

Two things it will not do:

• It never lets you change or delete an entry that is already inside a closed period. Adding a late document is a new fact about the period; rewriting one is changing the return you filed. Post a correcting entry in the open period instead.
• It never touches the figures you filed. Those stay frozen either way.

Only the book owner, or a bookkeeper with full access, can record an exception.

Stopping it happening

Locking a period is what keeps entries out of it in the first place. Set the lock date on Ledger › Accounting › Period Lock, or leave the "lock the books through this period" box ticked when you mark a return as filed, which is the default.