January 2025
Released: January 20, 2025
When creating the T4A slips, you will now notice a checkbox labeled "Exclude Deductions from Gross Commission Income". If checked, the income reported on the agent's T4A will exclude brokerage deductions such as deal fees and splits. This does not affect third-party deductions (such as commission advance loans, garnishments, GST withholdings) or agent expenses.
For additional clarity, consider an agent who made $150,000 in gross commissions. The agent has a 10% split to the brokerage and thus paid $15,000 in brokerage fees. With the "Exclude Deductions from Gross Commission Income" box checked, the T4A will show an income of $135,000. With it unchecked (default behaviour), the T4A will show $150,000.
Additionally, for broker/owners with a 100% "owner deduction" (all of their income is retained by the brokerage), enabling this option means that they will not receive a T4A, as their income net of deductions is zero.
We've made a number of small enhancements to the XML file that can be generated from RealDesk and submitted to CRA:
- When you click the Generate XML button, you will notice that most of the information required by CRA in the file header is now auto-populated into the pop-up window. Because of some limitations in the way the brokerage address is currently stored in RealDesk, you may still need to manually add the city, province, and postal code.
- The broker's name, phone number, and email address will be automatically populated into the "Contact" section, but we recommend that you change this if you are having someone else (an outside bookkeeper or accountant) submit on your behalf.
- IMPORTANT: If you do use a third party to submit your file (using CRA's "Represent a Client" application), CRA now requires the "rep ID" to be added to the file itself. RealDesk now supports this as we have added a "Rep ID" field next to the contact name. You will need to coordinate with your bookkeeper or accountant to obtain their rep ID and type it into this field. It should be seven alphanumeric characters; e.g. "MH23KD2". This is an optional field in RealDesk as it is not necessary if you are submitting on your own; however if you do use a third party and this field isn't populated, CRA will reject your file.
Released: January 15, 2025
Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, an incorrect payment would display in one section of the Agent Earnings Report.
Released: January 9, 2025
Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, the user would be able to queue an EFT payment to an agent even if the bank account information was missing or invalid, resulting in Zum errors.
Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, credits were not being factored in correctly to net payment calculations in the report.
Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, a PREC agent's GST number would not show up on the XML export.
