A return you file, not a report you copy
Most accounting software gives you a tax report and leaves the filing to you: copy the boxes, pay the money, remember to close the period. SeroBooks treats the return as one act. Pick the period, see the four lines, file it — the clearing journal posts, the figures are recorded as filed, the closing date moves. Nil returns, unfiling, and remittance are each a button, and a report can be run for exactly the quarter a return covers.
What you get
The four lines, and what happens when you press File
Tax collected on sales, input tax credits on purchases, adjustments, net owing or refundable. Behind them are every taxable line in the period, reachable by drill-down. File posts a journal that moves the collected and recoverable balances into a single amount owed to the agency, stamps the period as filed with the figures as they stood, and advances the closing date so nothing can be back-posted into a return already sent.
Why a per-authority return matters in Canada
A business in Winnipeg files a GST/HST return with the CRA and a separate RST return with Manitoba; one in Montréal files GST with the CRA and QST with Revenu Québec, and the QST return has its own input-tax-refund logic. Software that produces 'a sales tax report' produces the wrong one for four provinces. SeroBooks builds each return from the registration you hold, and cross-checks the authorities against each other so a rate booked to the wrong one shows up before it is filed.
Two defects found and fixed while building this are worth knowing about, because every product has them somewhere: PST was being claimed as an input tax credit in BC, SK, MB and QC — a business buying at 12% claimed all twelve points — and, later, input tax credits were being added to the tax bill instead of subtracted. Both were caught by self-tests that now run before every deploy.
Frequently asked questions
What if I filed the wrong figures?
Unfile the period. The clearing journal reverses, the period reopens, and the audit trail keeps both the filing and its reversal.
Does a marketplace sale count?
Only the part you actually remit. Where Amazon collected and paid the tax as a marketplace facilitator, the return shows it as theirs to file, split by who remits, state by state and province by province.
Can my accountant do this instead of me?
Yes — filing is a permission, and an accountant with a seat and the right role files from the same screen.