Sunday night. $94,000 in the business account.
How much of it is actually yours?
You know some of that money isn't yours. There's HST in there. Corporate tax on whatever profit you end up declaring. Personal tax on what you've already paid yourself (that nobody withheld). Countet Solo puts a name on every dollar as it moves, so the number at the bottom is the one you can actually spend.
Looks good. But how much is spoken for?
It's not a Friday problem. It's a Sunday night one.
You open your banking app. $94,000 and change. It should feel good.
But you know some of it isn't yours. You just don't know how much. So you do the mental math you always do (subtract a chunk for tax, call the rest spendable), and your chunk is always wrong.
Last year it was wrong by $9,400. You took $25,000 out for the kitchen renovation, and a month later your accountant called: you should have set aside $9,400 of that for personal tax. Nobody withheld it. Nobody was going to.
Meanwhile the "pay yourself" transfers you've been making all year? On paper, none of them were salary. None of them were dividends. They were just… transfers. Your accountant will spend May sorting out what they were, backdating a dividend to cover it, and telling you what that costs.
You're not bad with money. You run a business that made $320,000 last year. You just can't see the one thing that matters: what's spoken for, and what's yours.
Three numbers. Then the rest is yours.
Every time money moves (an invoice gets paid, you pay yourself, HST gets collected), Countet quietly sets aside what's spoken for. Open it any Sunday night and you see exactly three numbers:
HST to remit
$11,240Collected on your invoices, set aside as you collect it. Your quarterly instalment dates are tracked, so "was I supposed to be remitting quarterly?" stops being a question.
Corporate tax to set aside
$17,890Estimated on your actual profit, updated as the year moves. Not a scary April number. A running one.
Personal tax on what you’ve taken
$9,400Salary or dividends: whatever you’ve actually paid yourself, whatever nobody withheld. Already counted.
Numbers shown are an example one-person consultancy. Yours come from your real invoices, transfers, and filings.
Pay yourself on purpose, not by e-transfer and hope.
"Transfer money to myself when I need it" is how a shareholder loan quietly grows to $42,000, and how May turns into an archaeology project. Countet Solo gives you one button instead: Pay Myself. Choose salary, dividend, or draw. Countet records it properly, updates your personal tax number in the Vault, and keeps the salary-vs-dividend picture current: the same split your accountant designed when you incorporated.
No spiraling loan balance. No backdated dividend to clean it up. No conversation in May that starts with "so, about those transfers."
Salary, dividend, or draw
Classified the moment you pay yourself, not eleven months later.
Your split, visible
How much salary, how much dividend, what it means for your taxes. As you go.
T4As in, invoices matched
The slips your clients send in February already tie to what you invoiced.
The May phone call, with nothing in it.
Your accountant opens your year: every payment to yourself already classified, HST remitted on schedule, tax set aside, T4As matched to invoices. The whole package (T4, T5, T2 data) ready to review, not reconstruct.
The call lasts five minutes. There's no number in it you didn't already know. That's the product.
Invoicing apps stop at the invoice.
You don't have a bookkeeping problem. You have a "what happens below the invoice" problem, and that's exactly the part the usual tools skip.
FreshBooks
Lovely invoices. But a transfer to yourself is just an uncategorized cash movement: not salary, not a dividend, nothing your accountant can use. No tax estimates. No HST instalment tracking. You hit May with polished invoices and no idea what you owe.
QuickBooks
Built for accountants, priced for teams. You'd be paying for payroll seats and reports you'll never open, and you still have to know what a "shareholder loan account" is to keep yourself out of one.
A spreadsheet and vibes
You already know how this one ends. It ends in May, with a phone call.
Countet Solo is the part below the invoice: what's spoken for, what's yours, and a year-end with no surprises. (Invoicing's included too.)
Your accountant will want to look. Let them.
Countet was built to be opened at year-end and trusted: payroll math verified against the CRA's own calculator, every number traceable to the invoice or payment it came from, and accountant access built in. They see a clean year, not a shoebox. Many of our first users were sent here by their accountants.
Accountant? See countet.com/for-accountants.
Everything you need.
One price.
You're incorporated, you pay yourself, and you don't need to hire anyone yet. So we don't sell you a "starter" tier that's missing what you actually need to run a one-person corp correctly.
- Tess your AI assistant, ask about your numbers in plain English
- Invoicing, expenses, and vendor bills
- Bank reconciliation and full reports
- Pay Myself: salary, dividends, and draws, properly classified
- The Tax Vault: HST, corporate, and personal tax set aside automatically
- T4As received, sales tax filings handled
- Year-end T4/T5/T2 data package, ready for your accountant
Hire your first employee someday? Solo graduates to a team plan without re-onboarding. Your history comes with you.
Next Sunday night, know.
Open the app. Three numbers. The rest is yours. Start free, or leave your email and we'll send the occasional build update and Canadian tax tip for one-person corps.