What e-Transfer Records Should You Give Your Bookkeeper?

Give your bookkeeper a reconciled e-Transfer register for the exact period, the matching bank statements or transaction export, the invoices and receipts that explain each payment, and a short list of unresolved items. A folder of e-Transfer screenshots or notification emails alone is not a complete bookkeeping handoff.

The register should make every payment traceable from the e-Transfer notification to the bank movement and then to its business purpose. Your bookkeeper can classify and post the records more efficiently when dates, names, amounts, statuses, references, and source-document links are consistent.

What Belongs in an e-Transfer Bookkeeping Package?

Prepare four connected layers:

Layer	What it answers	Examples
Transfer register	Which e-Transfers were sent or received?	CSV or spreadsheet with one row per transfer
Bank evidence	Did the money enter or leave the intended account?	Statement, bank CSV, or dedicated e-Transfer history
Source documents	Why did the payment happen?	Invoice, receipt, bill, contract, lease, or wage statement
Exception list	What still needs a decision or missing document?	Unknown payer, partial payment, duplicate, refund, or personal item

The CRA says business income records must include the date, amount, and source and be supported by original documents. It also tells businesses to keep bank statements and records of daily income and expenses. An e-Transfer notice can help identify a transaction, but it does not by itself show the complete bank settlement or business purpose.

Which Columns Should the Transfer Register Include?

Use one row per actual transfer and consistent columns:

• bank posting or confirmed completion date;
• notification date;
• sent or received direction;
• amount and currency;
• displayed sender or recipient;
• known customer, supplier, tenant, employee, or owner;
• final status, such as completed, pending, cancelled, declined, or expired;
• Interac or financial-institution reference;
• invoice, bill, property, unit, payroll, project, or claim identifier;
• bookkeeping category or a blank needs review value;
• bank-account and inbox labels;
• source-document filename or link; and
• a note explaining allocations, replacements, corrections, or missing information.

Keep the facts reported by the source separate from your interpretation. If the notification says A. Singh but the invoice customer is Singh Design Inc., retain both names and document the connection. Do not silently replace the displayed payer.

How Do You Prepare the Monthly Handoff?

1. Agree on the period and cut-off

Confirm whether the bookkeeper needs a calendar month, fiscal period, payroll period, or year-end package. Identify the accounts, inboxes, legal entities, properties, and payment directions in scope.

State whether the register uses the notification date, completion date, or bank posting date. Around month-end, those dates can differ. Do not move a payment between periods merely to make a total agree; flag the timing difference.

2. Preserve the original exports

Download the relevant bank activity and any separate e-Transfer history. Save the original files unchanged, then work from copies. Gather supported notification records from every inbox used during the period.

The CRA's electronic record-keeping guidance requires electronic records to remain readable and usable and discusses audit trails and backups. Keep the source exports available instead of overwriting them with a cleaned spreadsheet.

3. Collapse messages into transactions

A sent notice, reminder, deposit confirmation, cancellation, and expiry can describe stages of one e-Transfer. Group lifecycle messages by reference, amount, people, direction, and timing; do not turn every email into revenue or expense.

Keep the final status in the main row and retain the underlying messages or status log. Only completed bank movements belong in a reconciled cash total. Use the pending, cancelled, declined, and expired transfer workflow when the sequence is unclear.

4. Match the source document

Connect each business transfer to the invoice, receipt, bill, contract, lease entry, expense claim, payroll record, or corporate document that explains it.

Do not assume:

• every incoming transfer is sales income;
• every outgoing transfer is a deductible expense;
• a customer deposit is immediately earned revenue;
• a transfer between the owner's and company's accounts is an expense;
• a net wage transfer is the complete payroll record; or
• an e-Transfer fee is part of the supplier's invoice.

Leave an item uncategorized with a specific question when the evidence is incomplete. A visible exception is safer than a confident but unsupported classification.

5. Reconcile every completed row to the bank

Match the amount, direction, account, and timing. Investigate notifications with no bank line, bank lines with no notification, duplicated messages, different amounts, and replacement transfers.

Reconcile each bank account independently before combining a management report. If personal and business payments share an account, show the exclusions and the reason for each one instead of deleting them from the working reconciliation without a trail.

6. Send a concise exception list

Give the bookkeeper questions they can act on, for example:

• Sep 3, $640 received from M. Chen: invoice 1042 or 1048?
• Sep 7, $225 sent to Jordan Lee: receipt requested, not yet received.
• Sep 9, $1,000 transfer cancelled; $1,000 replacement completed Sep 10.
• Sep 12, $2,500 owner transfer: contribution, loan, or reimbursement?

Include who is responsible and a target resolution date. Do not bury the questions in a long email thread or force the bookkeeper to rediscover them from filenames.

7. Transfer the package securely

Use the secure portal or document-sharing method agreed with the bookkeeper. Share only the period and fields needed for the work. Do not include e-Transfer security answers, passwords, full login credentials, complete bank-account numbers when unnecessary, SINs, or unrelated personal emails in the register.

What Source Documents Are Needed for Income and Expenses?

For income, the CRA's business records guidance says records should identify the date, amount, and source and be supported by original documents such as sales invoices, receipts, deposit slips, fee statements, and contracts.

For expenses, keep the supplier receipt or voucher and the transaction details. The transfer proves that an amount may have moved; it does not describe what was purchased or establish that the cost is deductible.

For GST/HST, keep the invoices and other records that support returns and claims. The CRA's input tax credit documentation table lists required invoice information by transaction amount. An e-Transfer confirmation normally does not contain all of those supplier, tax, purchaser, description, and payment-term fields.

Do not ask the bookkeeper to reconstruct an invoice from the transfer memo. Obtain the source document or clearly mark what is missing.

Which Handoff Problems Need Extra Care?

• One transfer pays several invoices: keep one payment row and separate allocations whose total equals the completed transfer.
• Several transfers pay one invoice: keep every transfer row and update the remaining invoice balance after each confirmed payment.
• The payer name differs from the customer: retain both names and the evidence connecting them.
• A refund reverses part of a sale: link the original receipt and refund instead of deleting or netting away the history.
• The only evidence is a screenshot: confirm the bank movement, preserve the original notification when available, and obtain the invoice or receipt.
• The bookkeeper imports bank feeds: use the notification register as a matching layer unless the software workflow explicitly requires an import. Importing the same movement twice can duplicate cash.
• The package contains unresolved transfers: state what is missing and keep them out of final classifications until reviewed.

Who Is Responsible for Keeping the Records?

Using a bookkeeper, accountant, email provider, or transaction tool does not remove the business's responsibility to keep its records. Maintain your own controlled, accessible copy and agree on who retains originals, posts adjustments, resolves exceptions, and closes the period.

The CRA's GST/HST record guidance says records are usually kept for six years from the end of the year to which they relate, although longer retention can be required. Confirm the rule for the specific record and situation rather than using one deletion date for everything.

How Does TransferLog Help With the Bookkeeper Handoff?

TransferLog organizes details detected in supported incoming and outgoing Interac e-Transfer notification emails from connected Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud inboxes. You can search and filter transactions, add categories, and export CSV or PDF on the Pro plan for a defined bookkeeping period.

Use the export as the notification register, then reconcile it with bank records and attach the invoices, receipts, payroll documents, leases, or other source records. TransferLog does not access bank accounts, create source documents, determine tax treatment, or replace a bookkeeper or accountant.

For the file-building steps, use the e-Transfer CSV export workflow. For a formal CRA request, follow the separate e-Transfer audit preparation guide.

Official Sources

• CRA: Keeping records
• CRA: Business records
• CRA: Electronic Record Keeping
• CRA: GST/HST records to keep
• CRA: Input tax credit documentation
• Interac e-Transfer terms of use

Organize supported e-Transfer notifications for your bookkeeper. Start free; export on Pro, then add the bank and source-document evidence.