How it works

1. The corporation profile

You state the facts once: legal name, corporation number, governing jurisdiction, the incorporation date and the anniversary that follows from it, the fiscal year end, whether the corporation is exempt from the individuals-with-significant-control requirements, and its status.

Two things are stated by you and never derived, on purpose. Whether the corporation claimed the small business deduction moves the balance-due day from two months after the year end to three, and deciding that for you would be a tax characterisation. And a quarterly or monthly GST/HST filer's reporting period ends are set by the registrant under the Excise Tax Act, so they cannot be worked out from a year end alone.

Where you have not answered yet, Standkeep shows the earlier date, never the later one — so an unanswered question can make a reminder early, never late. A sub-annual GST/HST filer who has not stated its period ends gets no GST/HST dates at all and a prompt to supply them, rather than invented ones.

Extra-provincial registrations and CRA program accounts are recorded separately, because they carry their own obligations and because being registered in a province is not the same as being incorporated under it.

2. The calendar

A rules engine turns the profile into dated obligations. Each one carries the rule it came from, the period it covers, the due date, what has to be filed, which portal it goes to, and what happens if it is missed.

Every deadline is the end of a period, and the calendar shows both ends: the earliest day a filing is accepted and the latest. Where a statute or a registry states the opening day, Standkeep states it — a federal return opens on the anniversary, a Nova Scotia statement on the first of the anniversary month, a register review on the first day of the financial year. Where the source fixes only the deadline, the earliest date shown is the one the deadline is measured from, and it says so, rather than a day nobody has published. Reminders still run from the deadline alone.

The date shown is always the statutory date. Where a rule's own source says a deadline that lands on a weekend or a public holiday is met on the next business day — the CRA says this; Corporations Canada does not — Standkeep records that next open day beside the statutory one and cites the source for the roll separately. The statutory date still governs the status and the reminders, so no reminder is ever a day late.

The holiday calendar is computed from the Interpretation Act and the Holidays Act rather than copied from a published list, because a copied list runs out and stops rolling future deadlines silently.

What it tracks

3. The dates that wait for you

Some deadlines do not run from anything Standkeep can know. An annual meeting's clock starts at the last meeting; the fifteen days to report a change to a register of individuals with significant control start on the day the change was recorded. 24 rules work this way, and the engine never guesses — so until you record the event, those obligations show no date at all rather than a plausible one.

Recording one is a date and, if you want, a note, on the corporation's page or in the app. Standkeep only ever offers you the events your own jurisdiction's rules actually use. The same event on the same day is the same event, so submitting twice cannot mint a second obligation, and removing an event removes the obligation it anchored.

4. The reminders

Reminders are the product, so they are built not to fail quietly. A daily job works out which reminders fall due, sends them through a transactional email provider, and records the provider's message id against the obligation. Every send is keyed to the obligation and the offset, so a replay of the job sends nothing twice.

An annual obligation gets a ladder of seven notices before the date. A monthly GST/HST filer would drown in that, so sub-annual periods get a shorter one. A failed send is retried the next day, and after three failures the run raises an alert rather than going quiet.

Each corporation also gets its own calendar feed. Subscribe to it from Outlook, Apple Calendar or Google Calendar and the obligations appear beside everything else in your week. Push notifications from the mobile app run on their own schedule and their own records, so a notification that fails cannot disturb the email that carries the same reminder.

5. The evidence

When you file something, attach the confirmation to the obligation it proves. Files are versioned, stored in a private bucket in Canada, and only ever read through short-lived signed links. Nothing is public and no file name reveals what it is.

6. The documents you have to write yourself

Some obligations are not filed anywhere: the annual resolutions a sole director signs in place of a meeting, and the yearly review of the register of individuals with significant control. Standkeep generates both, in English or French, as a document you can edit and sign. Names you type into a template are never stored unless you choose to keep the result in the vault.

7. On your phone

There is an iOS and Android app, free on the App Store and Google Play. It shows the same dashboard and the same calendar, in English or French taken from your device, and it records the events some deadlines wait on. It signs in the same way this site does: your email address, your password, and your authenticator code if you have set one up.

Push notifications work: turn them on in the app and a notice arrives on the same ladder as the emails. They never replace the email — the email is the reminder, and it is sent whether or not a notification gets through.

On your phone

8. Getting your data out

Export everything the organisation holds — corporations, obligations, documents, and the support threads and suggestions you wrote — as one file, at any time. Deleting the account is a button, not a support request.