The Biza.ca guides are written to be used, not just read. Each one ends with something on paper: a marked-up checklist, a key list of your accounts, or a twelve-month calendar. Together they take an owner from "I think we're set up" to "I can show you."
They are business and marketing guides. Where a step touches registration, tax, employment, insurance or privacy law, we link the official government page as of October 2026 and suggest who to ask. We do not give legal or tax advice.
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The A to Z small business checklist
Twenty-six letters, three to six tick boxes each. Print it, mark it honestly, and the empty boxes become your to-do list in the order that protects the business first.
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A is for accounts you own
Letter A comes first because every other letter sits on top of it. Here is how to find every account your business uses, check who really owns it, and write it all down on one page.
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The annual A to Z calendar
You do the whole alphabet once. After that, a few letters a month keeps it current. Here is a month-by-month calendar for Canadian small businesses, with room for your own dates.
The A to Z small business checklist
Start here: all 26 letters, each with three to six tick boxes. The A to Z checklist runs from A (accounts you own) to Z (a zero-based review of what you spend). It groups the letters into four bands: foundations, getting found and staying covered, name and trust, and consent and review.
You will learn:
- what counts as a tick (evidence within five minutes, not a hunch)
- which letters are risk letters and which are money letters
- where the official federal pages sit for business numbers, GST/HST, trademarks, privacy and anti-spam rules
- how to rank your empty boxes so the first fix is the right one
Most owners finish the first pass in under an hour and find between four and eight empty letters.
A is for accounts you own
The deep dive on the letter that protects all the others. The accounts you own guide is a step-by-step ownership audit for your domain, DNS, email, website, Google profile, ad accounts, social pages and software.
You will learn:
- five places to look so you find every account, not just the ones you remember
- the four facts to record for each: owner, admins, recovery email, billing
- the order to fix problems in (identity first, then communication)
- how to write a one-page key list that a trusted person can use without seeing any password
If the audit turns up accounts you cannot get back, that is what our accounts and ownership recovery service is for.
The annual A to Z calendar
How to keep the alphabet green after the first pass. The annual calendar spreads the letters across twelve months, two or three at a time, with the heavy reviews in October and December.
You will learn:
- which letters need a yearly look and which can be left alone
- when to prepare for insurance renewals and summer hiring
- how to run a zero-based spending review in an afternoon
- how to slide the calendar if your fiscal year does not end in December
How the guides fit the services
The guides are free and complete; the services are for when you want a second pair of hands. Owners who work through the guides alone often get two-thirds of the way. The remaining third is usually one of three things: an account held by someone who will not cooperate, marketing letters that need skilled work, or simply not having time.
- For a scored view of every letter, see the A to Z business review.
- For the five marketing letters, see growth letters.
- For steady monthly progress, see the letter-a-month advisory.
A note on provincial differences
The alphabet is the same everywhere in Canada, but some letters point to different offices depending on where you trade. Business registration, workers' compensation, consumer protection and language rules are provincial or territorial. Our areas hub links the bodies for each of the ten provinces and three territories. Quebec in particular has French-language rules that affect letters N, S and W.
The guides also make good preparation for a first call with us: an owner who has done one pass of the checklist can cover in thirty minutes what would otherwise take two meetings.
Questions about the guides or how we work? Read the FAQ or contact us.
Frequently asked questions
Which guide should I read first?
The A to Z checklist. It shows the whole alphabet and tells you where your gaps are. Read the accounts guide next if letter A came out amber or red.
Can I print the guides?
Yes. The checklist in particular is meant to be printed and marked with a pen. Tick boxes are plain characters, so they print cleanly.
Are the guides updated?
Yes. Each guide shows a last-updated date, and official links were checked on that date. Government pages change, so confirm details at the source before you rely on them.