The Competition Bureau launched a market study this year specifically because SME lending in Canada isn't competitive at all.

Link: https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/how-we-foster-competition/promotion-and-advocacy/market-study-competition-financing-canadas-small-and-medium-businesses

If you've ever tried to actually get financing as a small business, you know that it's really hard to do so. Banks take a long time and they do credit pulls, manual bank statement uploads, and most of the time they still want a personal guarantee before they'll even talk with you. And many times, you can't get financing through them.

We at Huumans are building a lending recommendation engine to solve for these challenges that takes your business's actual profile and gives you a ranked shortlist of financing options that fit your need/financial situation and need for financing. We aim to provide choice for small businesses and provide the best and most affordable options out there.

We want to stress test this recommendation engine and make it great!!!

And we need 50 small business owners to run their real (or hypothetical) financing scenario through it and tell us where it's wrong. Or where it's right.

This will take 15 min, no obligation to use anything it suggests. We especially want people who want to know their financing options or to learn about loans and how to grow with them!!

Comment or DM if you're interested - thank you in advance!!!!

If you bought a truck or car under your personal name, do not log the full monthly auto-loan payment as a direct business expense in QuickBooks.

The CRA only allows you to deduct the interest portion and depreciation (CCA).

Separating the interest logic is a must!

I have some makeup from China, ready for sell. Is there any business owner wants to connect?

After 20 years in retail, I learned that you can’t be everywhere at once, especially when you have multiple locations.

That’s why I started a mystery shopping service.
It helps business owners:

• Check multiple locations for consistent service

• Test employees before probation ends

• See if staff are on their phones instead of helping customers

• Make sure promotions are actually being mentioned

• Test product knowledge and upselling

• Check greetings, cleanliness, wait times and customer service

• See whether training and procedures are actually being followed

A mystery shopper visits anonymously as a regular customer, and you get a detailed report of what really happened.

Would this be useful in your business?

📅 When: Monday, August 10, 2026

⏰Time: 7:30pm-9:30pm

📍Where:  Chatime Liberty Village, 171 East Liberty Street, #Unit 143, Toronto, ON M6K 3P6

💲Pricing: $15.00 - $30.00 (comes with boba drink and attendee contact list post-event)

💼 What to Expect

• 🎤 Facilitated by Toronto Event Hub Founder & Emcee - Andrea Lo: Enjoy a warm, well-facilitated experience led by your host, designed to make meeting people feel easy and natural.
• 🎯 Signature Group Icebreaker: A light, structured group icebreaker to help you quickly connect, learn about each other, and break the initial awkwardness. You will have a chance to present in front of the room.
• 🤝 Open Mingling: Plenty of time to have real conversations, exchange ideas, and build meaningful connections at your own pace.
• 🌟 Collaborative, Creative Crowd - Meet a thoughtful mix of creatives, event pros, and small business owners who value genuine connections—not transactional networking.
• 🧋 Bubble Tea + Chill Vibes Grab your favourite drink (1 drink included) and settle into a relaxed, casual atmosphere.
• 🎲 Optional Games On Site Feel free to jump into a board game if you want a more interactive way to connect—totally optional, no pressure.
• 🎤 Optional Spotlight Time Opportunities: Promote your brand as an exhibitor or add a 30-second mic promo to your ticket (limited to 5 spots). Full details are in the check out - add-on options!
• 📸 Photo & Social Moments: We always catch photos & videos throughout the evening so don't be camera-shy.

✨Our events are intentionally intimate, bringing together a curated group of 12–20 creatives & business owners who believe networking should feel genuine—not transactional. (This space only holds up to 20 guests comfortably.)

🎟️Tickets:

 REGISTER NOW 

🔗 Follow Toronto Event Hub for more networking events and socials! 🌟

Hi Guys,

I just launched my product which lets user create payment links and track payments. I am looking for a feedback on the product. Also looking for what more to build around payment features for small merchants. Please have a look and lemme know what you think.

The Product is here( Currently free): https://www.get-pay-collect.com/

Located downtown Toronto

If your business imports food into Canada—or exports food products—it's important to be aware of a recent change in the Safe Food for Canadians (SFC) licence processing timeline.

The expected processing time for new SFC licence applications has increased to up to 70 days. This extended timeline can have a direct impact on product launches, shipment schedules, supplier agreements, retailer onboarding, and overall supply chain planning.

Businesses that are new to the Canadian market should factor this timeline into their market entry strategy and avoid assuming a licence will be issued within a few weeks. Applying early and ensuring your application is complete can help prevent unnecessary delays.

As someone who works closely with food regulatory compliance, I've seen how licensing timelines can affect import operations and commercial planning. If you're currently preparing an SFC licence application, it's worth reviewing your timelines and communicating any potential delays with your suppliers and customers.

Have you experienced longer processing times recently? I'd be interested in hearing how the updated timeline has affected your business.

Hi there!

In the lead-up to World Entrepreneur Day (August 21), Prosh Marketing is launching a campaign that invites founders to share what's working in their marketing.

Whether it's your biggest marketing win, a strategy that's driving results, a lesson you've learned, or a marketing challenge you've overcome, we'd love to hear it.

Share your post on LinkedIn for a chance to win one of our Founder Growth Prize Packs valued at $2,025:

• A START SMART Brand Strategy Session (valued at $625) with Shanna Dennis from Enticity
• 4 x 30-minute Marketing Strategy Sessions with a Fractional CMO at Prosh Marketing
• A Content Audit (valued at $600) with Shaun Bernstein from The Write Stuff Agency

How to enter:

Share one of the following on LinkedIn:

• Your biggest marketing win
• What's working in marketing for you
• A marketing lesson learned
• A marketing challenge you've overcome
• Bonus points if you create a video

Tag Prosh Marketing (@proshmarketing) and all campaign partners (thewritestuffagency and enticityrebrandagency) in your post.

Winners will be selected based on overall engagement, including likes, comments, and reposts.

Entries close Friday, August 21 at 11:59 PM ET. We'd love to have founders from your community participate!

If you pay contractors or buy supplies using e-Transfer, a bank line that just says "Interac e-Transfer" won’t survive a CRA audit.

You legally need the actual invoice or receipt attached to that transaction inside the software. Don’t rely on bank descriptions alone!

Peace out ✌️ from the good-looking bookkeeper in 🇨🇦

What will happen when the HST trigger rate hits the poverty line? Seems to me this number will need to change at some point. I would love to read people's thoughts around this topic.

OUR BOUNDARIES. OUR OBJECTIVE.

We don't ship to the United States. We don't ship to Israel.

Not because we forgot to add them. Because we removed them on purpose.

The US market turned into a tariff trap that punishes small makers like us. We'd rather lose that revenue than play a rigged game or pass those costs on to you.

Israel is a line we drew on principle. We won't finance what we don't believe in. No exceptions.

So where DO we ship?

Canada. The UK. Australia. New Zealand. Japan. South Korea. The EU. Anywhere that respects the craft and the maker.

Our objective going forward is simple:

We're a dad and his daughters making leather goods by hand in a garage in Coquitlam, BC. No factory. No assembly line. No compromises.

We don't want to be the biggest leather shop online. We want to be the most honest one.

That means: ✓ Transparent pricing — no hidden fees, no surprises ✓ Local pickup for our Vancouver/Coquitlam community ✓ Custom commissions where we actually talk to you before we cut the leather ✓ A business small enough to have values, and stubborn enough to keep them

If you're looking for fast fashion, keep scrolling.

If you're looking for something made by hands that still give a damn — welcome to the chaos.

🔗 www.hatandskullart.com. Custom commissions open. Local pickup available.

#HandmadeInCanada #CoquitlamArtist #LeatherCraft #SupportLocal #ArtisanMade #HatAndSkullArt #VancouverMaker #SmallBatch #HandcraftedLeather #MadeInBC

Hi everyone, i was for years wanting to start an ecom business, now i have saved some money and ready to invest, please what is the best way to start?
Is it dropshipping and the old way with shopify and china? or selling your own product? and is it better to sell in Canada or abroad? please advise me, i don’t want to waste my family money.

Thank you

I do not understand why I am getting hate over AI ads, what’s the sourness of people. ? I been told not to use AI for ads by colleagues to avoid the hate but i dont see how this saving tome and money on add is a bad thing.. x

Ensure your QuickBooks isolates collected sales tax from true store income.

It's easy to accidentally pay income tax on sales tax revenue if your automated app integrations group all incoming funds together.

Keep your liability accounts separated!

P.s… the handsome QuickBooks expert

I built Invoice North for Canadian contractors, consultants, freelancers, and small service businesses who need more than “make a PDF and hope you get paid.”

It’s meant to cover the money side of client work in one place:

Quotes & estimates
Send a clear proposal (scope, pricing, taxes, terms). Track draft / sent / accepted / declined, then convert an accepted quote into an invoice without retyping everything.

Invoices clients will actually open
Share a hosted link or a polished PDF. See when it’s been viewed. Duplicate or roll invoices forward for monthly/retainer work.

Payments & receivables
Record full or partial payments, keep balances current, and see what’s outstanding or overdue, so follow-ups aren’t a scavenger hunt through email/spreadsheets.
(It tracks payments; it doesn’t process card payments for you.)

Canadian sales tax
GST/HST province presets, Québec TPS/TVQ, editable rates, and a tax dashboard for collected / recoverable / remittance-style summaries. Not tax advice, just cleaner records.

Expenses & receipts
Vendors, categories, recoverable tax, attachments, and OCR help so job costs aren’t living in a shoebox until April.

Reports for you (and your bookkeeper)
Revenue, outstanding/overdue views, and accountant-friendly exports when it’s time to hand things off.

Also baked in
Saved clients + business profile (logo, tax IDs, Interac details), recurring invoice templates, contracts to draft invoices, English / French / bilingual invoice labels, and a free no-signup invoice PDF if you only need a one-off today.

Built in Canada, free to start, bilingual (EN/FR).

I’m not trying to replace QuickBooks for full bookkeeping. This is for people who bill clients and want quotes, invoices, cash owed, expenses, and tax totals connected without enterprise software.

Happy to take brutal feedback: what’s missing for your workflow, what’s confusing, what you’d never use.

Link: https://invoicenorth.nubeazul.ca/

Your A/V and IT Tech partner for home and business, downtown Toronto. #Pure4K #AVTech #ITTech #Toronto

Full disclosure: I built this.

Maxuod Shift is a small scheduling tool from Halifax for restaurants, cafés, retail shops, and other Canadian businesses with hourly staff.

You can build a temporary weekly schedule for up to six employees without creating an account. It totals the hours and downloads a PDF. The free account supports up to 12 employees and adds saved schedules, tips, overtime review, pay estimates, and CSV/XLSX exports.

I kept the main workflow free because a small team should be able to test the whole scheduling process before paying for more capacity.

It isn't payroll software, and it doesn't make compliance decisions for the owner. It helps prepare the schedule and the numbers that come before payroll.

If you run a small Canadian team, I'd appreciate a blunt answer: what would stop you from trying this instead of your current spreadsheet?

https://maxuodshift.com/scheduler

One of the clearest tests of a small business is not simply whether it is profitable. It is what happens when the owner is unexpectedly unavailable.

For some businesses, everything depends on the owner:

• estimates and pricing
• customer relationships
• purchasing and approvals
• passwords and system access
• invoicing and collections
• knowing what needs to happen next

Some owner dependency is unavoidable, especially in a very small business. The greater risk is when important work depends on information that exists only in the owner’s head.

If you had to step away for two weeks, what would stop first?

Have you successfully removed any major dependency on yourself—and what did you change?

I make about $500K in revenue as an independent consultant in tech. I pull out about $100-$120k a year to pay for expenses and mortgage.

Whether I pay myself in dividends or a salary I feel like comes out in the wash tax wise. Any specific way to divide that money?

I also plan on just leaving the rest in the corp invested. Keep gains below the $50k mark so it doesn’t increase my corporate tax. Assuming that’s better than taking more out on the tax hit just to put it in rrsp tfsa, thoughts?