Month-end, and your bookkeeper's email has one line in it: which of these purchases carried input tax credits? You open the folder. There are thermal slips with the tax printed in three different places, email PDFs where it sits in a footer, and a phone photo of a till roll taken at an angle. None of them has a tax field you can count on, so you start adding it up by hand.
The trouble isn't the tax. It's that the tax never got a column.
How do you track HST and GST on receipts?
Give every receipt one row, and give the row a tax column and a tax_type of HST, GST, or none. If the receipt shows no tax line, leave the tax blank and let your accountant decide what is claimable.
What does a receipt row with a tax column look like?
One receipt, one row. Here are six invented receipts, with the tax pulled out of the total into its own column:
| date | vendor | total | tax | tax_type | category | source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-03 | Corner Hardware | $113.00 | $13.00 | HST | Supplies | thermal slip |
| 2026-09-08 | Prairie Print Co | $52.50 | $2.50 | GST | Printing | email PDF |
| 2026-09-11 | Lakeside Cafe (receipt prints "HST incl." inside the total) | $28.25 | $3.25 | HST | Meals | phone photo |
| 2026-09-16 | Maple Courier | $31.50 | $1.50 | GST | Shipping | email PDF |
| 2026-09-19 | Union Parking (no tax line printed) | $18.00 | blank | none | Travel | thermal slip |
| 2026-09-22 | Northline Software | $22.60 | $2.60 | HST | Software | email PDF |
| Totals | 6 receipts | $265.85 | $22.85 |
The sources are mixed on purpose: two thermal slips, three email PDFs, one phone photo. In the ledger they all look alike. Lakeside Cafe is the awkward kind, where the receipt prints "HST incl." instead of a separate line. The amount is still printed, so it goes in the tax column as printed.
Union Parking is the row to notice. The slip shows a total and no tax, so the tax is blank and tax_type says none. The ledger doesn't guess. A blank is a flag for your bookkeeper, not a credit.
A card charge belongs in a different place. It proves money left, but it isn't a receipt row until the receipt turns up, which is why a card statement is not a receipt.
What does the bookkeeper actually want?
The same rows, rolled up by tax_type, with the counts and the sums side by side:
| tax_type | receipt_count | sum_total | sum_tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| HST | 3 | $163.85 | $18.85 |
| GST | 2 | $84.00 | $4.00 |
| none | 1 | $18.00 | $0.00 |
| All rows | 6 | $265.85 | $22.85 |
The HST group has 3 receipts, $163.85 in totals, and $18.85 in tax. The GST group has 2 receipts, $84.00, and $4.00. The none group has 1 receipt, $18.00, and no tax recorded. That $0.00 in sum_tax means the cell was blank, not that the purchase carried no tax.
The bottom row ties back to the first table: 6 receipts, $265.85 in totals, $22.85 in tax. If the roll-up and the rows ever disagree, a row is wrong. That is also why the blank rows should be listed, because the question your bookkeeper asks next is about them.
How do the rows get made?
Slipsheet makes the rows. Photograph the slip, upload the PDF, or forward the email to receipts@slipsheet.app. OCR reads the page, and you review each row before anything leaves.
Review matters most on the tax column. In a Q2 2026 test of plain Tesseract OCR on 20 receipts, field accuracy was vendor 95%, date 100%, total 100%, and tax 60%, with all four fields right on 11 of 20 receipts (55%). Tax was the weakest field, so a raw OCR dump is a poor base for HST and GST tracking. Check the tax amount and the tax_type on every row, and check the blanks against the paper.
Then export a CSV and send it to your bookkeeper. That is the whole path: review the rows in Slipsheet, export, send. Slipsheet doesn't connect to the CRA, doesn't file a return, and doesn't decide what you can claim. If your export doesn't carry a tax_type column, add one in the CSV before you send it.
If you'd rather start with a blank grid, there is an HST and GST receipt tracking template. What the accountant wants at year-end is covered in how to prepare receipts for your accountant. The example numbers on this page are invented, and nothing here is tax advice.
A few straight answers
How do I record HST and GST on the same receipt row?
Give the row one tax amount and one tax_type: HST, GST, or none. If a receipt really shows both a GST line and a provincial line, record the tax amount exactly as printed and say so in a note, then ask your bookkeeper how they want it split. One receipt stays one row either way.
What do I do when a receipt shows no tax line?
Leave the tax cell blank and set tax_type to none. Don't work the tax out backwards from the total, and don't treat a blank as a claim. Whether any input tax credit applies to that purchase is your accountant's or bookkeeper's call, and the blank row is how they see the question.
What about receipts that are part personal and part business?
Keep the full amount on the row, with the full tax as printed, and add a note that it's mixed. Don't split it yourself in the ledger. Your accountant can apply whatever business share they judge correct to the real number, and the row still matches the paper.
What should I send my bookkeeper?
Send the exported CSV, one reviewed row per receipt with date, vendor, total, tax, tax_type, category, and source, plus a roll-up by tax_type if you have one. Add a line listing the rows with blank tax, and keep the receipt files available in case they ask to see one.