Running a martial arts gym in Canada, in Canadian dollars

Much of the gym and martial arts software you’ll look at is priced in US dollars, or doesn’t say what currency it’s in. For a Canadian gym, a US-dollar price means the monthly bill moves with the exchange rate, and the “$99” on the pricing page isn’t the $99 that leaves your account. Depending on your bank and card, a US-dollar charge can also pick up a foreign-transaction fee on top.

So the first question for any vendor is simple: what currency do you bill me in? Some publish Canadian pricing. Others list US dollars only, and a few don’t name a currency at all.

CornerDesk bills every gym in Canadian dollars — $99 CAD a month for unlimited members, staff, and classes, with the first 30 days free. See CornerDesk for Canadian gyms for the short version.

There are two currencies in play, and it’s worth keeping them apart: what the software costs you, and what your members pay you. Your members should be charged in Canadian dollars, so the amount on their card statement matches the price on your wall.

That depends on whose payment account the money runs through. Ask every vendor:

• Do payments go into my own merchant account, or the vendor’s?
• Can I charge members in CAD?
• Does the vendor add anything on top of the processor’s own fees?
• If I leave, do my members’ saved cards stay with me?

In CornerDesk, choosing Canada when you set up your gym means member charges run in Canadian dollars through your own Stripe account and settle to you. CornerDesk takes no cut of member payments; Stripe’s own processing fees apply to card payments, and they’re listed on Stripe’s pricing page for your country. Class times and reminders follow your time zone, Newfoundland to the Pacific, including Saskatchewan’s no-daylight-time clock.

Canada’s federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) is 5%. In the provinces that harmonize their sales tax with it, the combined Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) runs from 13% to 15%. Some other provinces charge their own provincial sales tax on top of GST, under their own rules. Whether you have to register, which rate applies to your members, and whether every program you run is taxed the same way are exactly the questions to bring to your accountant.

Questions to take to your accountant

• Do I need to register for GST/HST yet, and when?
• Which rate applies to my members, based on where they are and what I sell?
• Are my kids’ classes treated the same as adult memberships?
• Should my posted prices include tax, or should tax be added on top?
• How should I record tax on cash and e-transfer payments?
• What records do I need to claim back the tax I pay on rent, mats, and equipment?

Once you have answers, the software’s job is to apply them the same way every time and keep the tax separate from your income, so year-end isn’t a reconstruction project.

CornerDesk doesn’t calculate tax itself. It switches on Stripe Tax, which runs in your own Stripe account using the tax registrations you add there:

1. In your Stripe dashboard, set up Stripe Tax with your business address and registrations.
2. Choose a default: prices include tax, or tax is added on top.
3. In CornerDesk, the owner turns sales tax on. CornerDesk checks with Stripe that Stripe Tax is active first, and tells you what’s missing if it isn’t.

From then on, tax is calculated on member card charges and recorded separately on every card payment. Emailed card receipts show the subtotal and the tax. The money report shows income net of tax, with the tax collected totalled on its own, and the year’s CSV has a sales-tax column for your accountant.

Where it stops

• Cash, e-transfer, and cheque payments are recorded at the amount you enter. CornerDesk doesn’t split tax out of them, so the tax total in your money report covers card payments only.
• Expenses are recorded at their total. CornerDesk doesn’t track the GST/HST you paid on them; keep the receipts (you can attach a photo to each expense) and let your bookkeeper handle the claim.
• Stripe Tax is Stripe’s product, with its own pricing on Stripe’s site.

Plenty of Canadian members would rather send an Interac e-Transfer than put a card on file, and some still pay cash at the desk. Gym software that only understands cards leaves those members outside the system: no bill, no record, or marked overdue forever.

In CornerDesk, a member can be set to pay at the desk instead of by card. Their bill comes due on their usual date and shows on your Today screen when it’s due or overdue; mark it paid in one tap. Any other payment can be recorded with its method (cash, e-transfer, or cheque), amount, date, and a note, back-dated if it came in last week. Payments you record by hand never touch a card processor, so they cost nothing to take. More on cash and e-transfer payments.

The goal is one place where everything that came in and went out is already sorted by month, method, and category. In CornerDesk that’s the money report:

• Income by month, split into card and desk payments, and by method
• Expenses by category: rent, equipment and mats, insurance, staff and coaches, and the rest
• Sales tax collected on card payments, kept apart from income
• Refunds taken off the month they happened
• A CSV of the whole year, line by line, plus a payments CSV with amount, tax, and total columns

• The software is billed in CAD, at a price that doesn’t climb with your roster.
• Members are charged in CAD, into a payment account in your name.
• Sales tax is calculated from your own registrations and recorded apart from income.
• Cash and e-transfer payers have bills, due dates, and a record, not a notebook.
• Your Canadian time zone is supported, so reminders land at the right hour.
• Year-end exports to CSV without retyping.
• If you need French for your members, ask now. Not every product has it.

CornerDesk is $99 CAD a month, flat, billed in Canadian dollars. Members are billed in CAD through your own Stripe account, Stripe Tax handles sales tax on card charges, and desk payments are recorded alongside card payments with no processing fee.

What it doesn’t do yet: the app and member pages are English only, cash and e-transfer payments don’t send receipts, and it runs one location per gym. If any of those is a deal-breaker, better to know now.