Financial Advisory & Planning

What a CPA financial advisor does — and what we do not do

A CPA financial advisor works from your filed numbers. We build the budget, the forecast, the model and the management reporting that tell you whether a decision is affordable, and we price each option for its tax consequence before you commit to it. We are not a portfolio manager, an investment dealer or an insurance broker. We do not sell securities, mutual funds or insurance products, and we do not manage investment portfolios — in Québec those are regulated activities under the Autorité des marchés financiers. If you are looking for someone to invest a portfolio on your behalf, you want a registered portfolio manager. If you are looking for someone to tell you what a purchase, a sale, a salary-versus-dividend split or a financing round actually costs you after tax, that is our work.

• Budgets, cash-flow forecasts and scenario models built on your actual filings
• Financing and growth analysis — the numbers a lender or investor will ask for
• Remuneration planning: salary, dividends, and the real tax cost of each mix
• Purchase, sale and restructuring analysis before the transaction closes
• Management reporting and KPIs you can actually run the business on

Where financial advisory meets tax

Almost every advisory question a business owner asks is a tax question underneath. How much can I draw this year? Should I buy the equipment before or after year end? Is it time to incorporate, or to add a holding company? What does selling the business cost me? Because the same firm prepares your corporate and personal returns, the advice and the filing never contradict each other. Our tax planning work covers the forward-looking decisions, corporate tax accounting handles the T2 and CO-17 filings that follow, and personal tax services tie the owner's return to the corporation's. You are not paying one firm to recommend something a second firm then has to unwind.

How an engagement works

Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute scoping call. We ask what decision you are trying to make, what records exist today, and what the deadline is. From there we quote either a fixed-scope project — a single model, a financing package, a remuneration review — or an ongoing retainer if you want a finance function rather than a one-off answer. We do not quote a fee before that call, because the honest range for this work depends on entity structure, transaction volume and how current your bookkeeping is. What we do commit to is a written scope and a fixed price before any work begins.

Financial advisory across Canada

Our office is in downtown Montréal and most Québec clients meet us there. Advisory work, however, is delivered remotely as standard — secure document exchange, video meetings and e-signature — so we serve incorporated owners in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and the rest of Canada on the same terms. Provincial differences matter and we account for them: sales-tax regimes, provincial corporate rates and provincially regulated professional corporations all change the answer. Advice built for a Québec company is not automatically right for an Ontario one.