Payroll Year-End

Once your pay runs are recorded, Argo Books produces the forms you have to give employees and file with the government: T4 slips, the T4 summary, Quebec RL-1 slips, and a Record of Employment worksheet.

Note: Argo Books does not file on your behalf. It generates the slips and the upload file; you submit them through CRA or Revenu Québec yourself.

Remittance Due

The payroll dashboard shows what has to reach CRA next and by when. This is deliberately last month's withholdings against this month's due date, not the current month's running total. A regular remitter pays by the 15th of the month following the month the deductions were withheld, so the figure you need is the one that has already closed.

T4 Slips and Summary

At year end, Argo Books produces both the slips your employees need and the file CRA needs:

  1. Go to "Pay Runs" and open the year-end tool
  2. Select the tax year
  3. Enter your filing details, including your CRA payroll account number
  4. Clear anything listed under "Fix these before filing"
  5. Click "Download slips" for the PDFs to distribute, and "Export for filing" for the XML to upload

The XML is wrapped in the T619 transmittal that CRA's electronic filing expects, so it can be uploaded as-is.

Deadline: T4s are due to CRA and to your employees by the last day of February.

Note: The payroll account number is the one ending in RP, not RC. It is on your CRA statement of account. Quebec employers also need their Revenu Québec identification number, which is a different number found on your Revenu Québec statement.

Amendments and Cancellations

If something was wrong on a slip you have already filed, regenerate it as an amendment rather than a new original. Argo Books supports all three types:

  • Original: The first filing for that employee and year
  • Amended: A correction to a slip already filed
  • Cancelled: A slip that should not have been filed at all

Slips are selected per employee, so you can amend one person without regenerating the whole year. Tick only the employees whose slips changed.

Important: Send an amended return on its own. CRA rejects a return that mixes amended and original slips.

Quebec RL-1

Employers in Quebec file with Revenu Québec as well as CRA. Argo Books produces RL-1 slips and the RL-1 summary as PDFs alongside the federal T4 package, covering QPP, QPIP and Quebec tax. They do not include the health services fund.

Record of Employment

An ROE is due within five days of an interruption of earnings, not at year end, so it is offered from the employee's row rather than from the year-end tool. Argo Books produces a worksheet containing the figures ROE Web asks for, which you then key in.

Note: The worksheet leaves block 16, the reason for issuing, blank. Argo Books has no way to know why someone stopped being paid, and that field affects an employee's benefit eligibility, so it is left for you to complete.

Before You File

The year-end tool lists anything that would stop a filing under "Fix these before filing", so work through that first. It also shows your total employment income and tax for the year, which is worth comparing against what you actually remitted to CRA over the twelve months.

Two details that are easy to miss:

  • Dental coverage codes are required on every T4, so an employee missing one will hold up the filing
  • Social insurance numbers are not strictly required for a T4, and one will file without them, but the contributions are then not credited to that employee. An RL-1 or a Record of Employment does require one
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