This Essential & Complete Year-End Payroll Checklist for BC Employers will help you finalize payroll for 2025 by meeting CRA deadlines, preparing T4/T4A slips, and avoiding costly payroll mistakes.
We’re heading into the final stretch of 2025, and if you’re a business owner in BC, there’s a good chance you’ve got more than a few things on your plate: holiday plans, wrapping up the books, maybe even trying to squeeze in some time off. But if you’re in charge of payroll, there’s one more important job that needs your attention before the year is out.
If you’re handling payroll, whether it’s all on you or you’ve got a provider helping out, there are a few things that just need to get done before year-end. We’re talking stuff like T4s, T4As, hitting those CRA deadlines, and making sure your records won’t cause you headaches in the new year.
It’s not exactly thrilling work, but we’ll walk through what you need to check off so it doesn’t sneak up on you in the last week of December. Payroll year-end isn’t exactly fun, but it’s essential.
Year-End Payroll Checklist for BC Employers (2025 Overview)
Finalizing payroll at the end of the year is more than just a routine administrative task—it’s a critical compliance responsibility that affects your employees, your financial reporting, and your CRA standing. For BC employers, year-end payroll preparation involves multiple moving parts: deadlines, taxable benefits, reconciliations, reporting requirements, and planning for the year ahead. This overview will help you understand the flow of year-end tasks so you always know what needs attention and when.
This Year-End Payroll Checklist for BC Employers highlights the tasks that matter most for avoiding CRA penalties and ensuring accurate year-end reporting.
Year-end payroll is essentially a comprehensive review of everything that has occurred throughout the year in your payroll system. It’s the time when you confirm that every dollar paid, every deduction taken, and every taxable benefit provided to employees has been accurately recorded. This ensures that the T4s and T4As you file with the CRA reflect true, up-to-date information.
Without this review, even small discrepancies—like an unreported gift card or a late vacation payout—can snowball into re-filing requirements or penalties down the road.
Since BC employers rely heavily on clean payroll records for both CRA reporting and WorkSafeBC filings, the end of the year is also the perfect moment to revisit internal processes. Double-checking employee classifications, reviewing your WorkSafeBC payroll estimates, and ensuring you’ve properly tracked vacation accruals are all tasks that help prevent costly adjustments in the upcoming year. Many BC businesses find issues during this phase that would have been difficult to spot during the busier months of the year.
It’s also important to consider your team’s expectations. Employees depend on accurate tax slips for their personal tax filings, and many of them start asking questions as early as February. Ensuring that your payroll system reflects the correct mailing addresses, SINs, and taxable benefits not only keeps you compliant but also builds trust with your staff. Missing or inaccurate T4s can damage that trust and create unnecessary back-and-forth in an already busy time of year.
A strong payroll checklist also helps you manage year-end payouts more effectively. Many BC employers choose to issue bonuses or pay out accumulated vacation before December 31. Doing so not only ensures these payments fall into the correct tax year but also helps clean up liabilities before rolling into 2026. However, these payments must be processed carefully: bonuses require proper source deductions, and vacation payouts need correct earnings and accrual adjustments.
Finally, your payroll year-end is a strategic moment to look ahead. The insights you gather—such as overtime trends, staffing changes, benefits usage, or seasonal wage fluctuations—can help guide your 2026 budgeting and HR planning. Whether you’re planning to hire, adjust salaries, or reorganize departments, a clean and accurate payroll foundation supports better decision-making.
This expanded overview sets the stage for the detailed checklist that follows, ensuring that BC employers understand why each task matters and how it contributes to a smooth, compliant transition into the new year.
Key Payroll Deadlines for BC Employers
Don’t miss these CRA payroll deadlines for 2025, they’re non-negotiable.
To start, make sure you know your internal payroll cut-off date. CRA’s year-end is December 31, 2025, that means any wages, bonuses, or taxable benefits you want included in this year’s T4s must be paid by December 31, not just earned.
Many BC businesses use December 27 or 28 as a soft cut-off to account for bank closures, holidays, or provider submission delays. Keep in mind that any income paid in January, even if it was earned in December, will roll over into 2026’s reporting.
As for CRA deadlines, February 28, 2026 is the final date to file your T4 and T4A slips, along with the corresponding summaries. If you’re filing more than five slips, you’re required to submit electronically. The CRA does enforce late penalties, even for small businesses, so don’t leave this to chance.
If you use WorkSafeBC, remember your payroll estimate adjustments and annual reporting also fall around this time. Double-check their deadlines, as these can shift slightly year to year. As you follow this Year-End Payroll Checklist for BC Employers, make sure all taxable benefits, bonuses, and vacation payouts are properly recorded before December 31, 2025.
Reconciling Payroll: Common Year-End Mistakes
It’s not just about filing, it’s about making sure the numbers actually add up.
One of the most frequent errors in BC payroll year-end prep is failing to reconcile taxable benefits. If you’ve provided vehicle allowances, group insurance, wellness stipends, or non-cash gifts like gift cards, these need to be included in gross earnings. Forgetting even one taxable benefit can result in inaccurate T4s, and in some cases, re-filing.
Vacation accruals are another area where small issues can turn into year-end surprises. If you haven’t kept up with tracking what each employee has earned and taken, you could be understating your liabilities. And if you decide to pay out unused vacation, that must be processed before December 31 to appear on this year’s T4.
Another trap? Terminated employees. If someone left your company earlier in the year and didn’t receive their final pay or ROE, this needs to be handled right away. In BC, you’re expected to issue the ROE within five calendar days of the final pay or last working day , whichever is later.
These might sound like small slips, but they create big headaches when the CRA comes knocking or when employees call in February asking why their tax slips are missing data.
Handling Bonuses and Vacation Payouts
Bonuses and vacation payouts are common at year-end, just make sure you’re processing them correctly.
Year-end is bonus season, but don’t forget: bonuses are taxable income, and they need to be run through your payroll system just like regular wages. That means proper deductions for CPP, EI, and income tax. Don’t leave them until January unless you want them reported on next year’s slips.
What about gifts? In BC, non-cash gifts like gift cards are considered taxable benefits and must be reported as income. It’s a common misconception that small gifts are exempt, but the CRA only allows exceptions under very narrow circumstances, usually capped at $500 per year and only for non-cash, non-gift card items.
On the vacation side, make sure your year-end payroll reflects what’s actually been earned and taken. If you decide to pay out unused vacation to simplify your liabilities, this must also be processed in 2025 to hit the right tax year.
If you’re using payroll software, you can usually generate a vacation liability report to double-check that your numbers are aligned. But don’t rely solely on automation, it’s worth doing a manual review before you finalize the last pay run of the year.
T4 and T4A Preparation in BC
T4 and T4A slips aren’t optional, they’re your official payroll summary to the CRA.
You’ll need to prepare a T4 for every employee who received income from your business in 2025, even if they only worked one pay period. If you’ve paid any contractors over $500 during the year for services, a T4A may also be required.
Here in BC, it’s important to use the correct provincial TD1 forms and tax brackets throughout the year. If an employee got married, had a child, or started a second job and didn’t update their TD1, you might find their year-end tax withheld doesn’t align, and that can result in a tax bill for them and a flagged file for you.
If you’re using payroll software like Wagepoint, Ceridian, or Payworks, generating T4s is relatively straightforward, but don’t assume it’s all correct out of the box. Review totals for gross pay, CPP, EI, income tax, and taxable benefits. Compare them with what you actually remitted to the CRA through your PD7A summaries.
When everything checks out, file your T4 and T4A slips electronically through the CRA portal. Don’t forget to distribute copies to your employees by February 28, 2026, sooner if possible, to allow time for corrections.
Keeping Clean Payroll Records Going into 2026
Good payroll records now save hours of admin later, especially if you’re ever audited.
Before the year closes, make sure your payroll records are backed up and easy to access. CRA requires that you keep all payroll-related documentation, pay stubs, ROEs, tax slips, source deduction reports, for at least six years. That includes both paper and digital records.
It’s also a smart time to do a full contact info check for every employee. Confirm SINs, home addresses, marital statuses, and email addresses. Mismatches are one of the most common reasons for tax slip issues or delivery failures.
If you switched payroll providers or accounting platforms this year, double-check that all historical data has been transferred accurately. It’s surprisingly easy to miss a few weeks of pay during a mid-year system change, and by the time you catch it, the T4s are already out the door.
And just as a final note: if you’ve had any changes to WorkSafeBC classifications, wage estimates, or employee types (e.g., casual vs. full-time), this is a good time to review those too. These details can affect your premiums and reporting for the coming year.
Before You Log Off for the Holidays…
Getting your BC payroll year-end in order isn’t just about checking boxes. It’s about protecting your business, staying compliant with CRA payroll deadlines for 2025, and giving your employees the accurate tax slips they’re counting on.
If you take the time now to finalize payments, reconcile your records, and prepare your T4 and T4A slips accurately, you’ll save yourself a stressful January, and avoid penalties that no one wants to deal with in Q1.
Need a second set of eyes on your payroll totals or T4 preparation? Reach out to a BC-based payroll advisor before the year wraps up. A quick review now can save you hours of backtracking in 2026.
Using this Year-End Payroll Checklist for BC Employers ensures accuracy, reduces CRA risks, and prepares your team for a smooth start to 2026.
At Valley Business Centre – Bookkeeping & Payroll, we’ve spent more than three decades supporting businesses across Whistler, Squamish, the Sea‑to‑Sky Corridor and Metro Vancouver. Along the way, we’ve learned the local payroll landscape inside and out, everything from CRA filings to WorkSafeBC and all the little details in between.
Whether you’re managing payroll for a five-person team or fifty, our bookkeeping and payroll experts can help ensure your records are accurate, your forms are filed on time, and your team starts 2026 on the right foot.
If you’re unsure where to begin, we’re here to walk you through it — so you can finish the year strong and focus on what matters most: growing your business.
