What should I use instead of QuickBooks Self-Employed in Canada?

It depends on which part of QBSE you actually used. If you used QBSE primarily to classify each transaction as business or personal and to capture receipts, BillyBox covers that job for solo operators paying foreign SaaS (Stripe, AWS, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Adobe). If you relied on QBSE mileage tracking for rideshare or contractor driving, MileIQ or TripLog handle that better. If you want a free Canadian-built tool, Wave is the price-zero option but does not split business from personal. NorthOS is the closest direct QBSE replacement with explicit T2125 expense mapping at CAD $12/mo. QuickBooks Online EasyStart at ~CAD $28/mo is Intuit's suggested path but the wrong shape for solo operators.

How do I export my data from QuickBooks Self-Employed before it goes away?

Inside QBSE web: go to Transactions, filter by tax year, and download as CSV. Mileage logs export as CSV from the Mileage tab. Reports export as CSV or PDF. Receipts and attachments must be downloaded one by one — there is no bulk receipt export. Intuit has not published an auto-delete schedule, so the data persists as long as the subscription is active. There is no automated migration tool from QBSE to any other product, including Intuit's own QuickBooks Online EasyStart.

Does BillyBox handle the T2125 business-vs-personal split?

Yes — the binary business / personal / ignored classification on every invoice is the core of BillyBox. T2125 requires you to separate business-use expenses from personal spend (and to set a business-use percentage on mixed-use line items like home office, phone, or vehicle). BillyBox runs this classification on every inbound invoice; your accountant maps the year's classified ZIP into the 17 T2125 line items at filing time (the same job they already do today). A T2125 worksheet export that pre-buckets the year into the 17 line items is planned for later in 2026, ahead of the Jan–Apr 2027 filing window.

Does BillyBox do mileage tracking like QuickBooks Self-Employed did?

No. BillyBox does not track mileage. If your business depends on rideshare driving, contracting routes, or real-estate driving, mileage is a meaningful gap you should plan around. The standard pairing recommendation is BillyBox for inbound-invoice classification (Gmail, Outlook, IMAP auto-fetch) plus MileIQ (CAD $5.99/mo) or TripLog (free tier available) for mileage. The two tools cover non-overlapping ground.

How much does BillyBox cost in CAD?

BillyBox is priced in EUR with monthly billing. Approximate CAD equivalents at current exchange: Free plan (2 full months, 2 email connections, unlimited invoices, no card required), Starter €9.99/mo (≈ CAD $14.99), Pro €19.99/mo (≈ CAD $29.99). The Starter tier lands almost exactly at the price QBSE Canada was charging (CAD $15/mo) and below QuickBooks Online EasyStart (CAD $28/mo). Final charge in your bank statement will reflect the current EUR-CAD rate at the moment Stripe bills.

Does BillyBox push invoices directly to Xero or QuickBooks Online?

Not today. BillyBox exports an organized ZIP plus CSV that you or your accountant imports into Xero, QuickBooks Online, or any other accounting tool. Direct API push to Xero and QuickBooks Online is on the BillyBox roadmap but not shipped. If your accountant runs your books in Xero or QBO and explicitly requires direct push, this is a current gap to flag with them.

Is BillyBox available in French for Quebec?

Yes — the BillyBox interface is fully translated in French (alongside English, Romanian, Italian, German). The current French locale is closer to France-French than to Quebec-French in vocabulary; a Quebec-specific terminology pass is on the near-term roadmap. The classification, capture, and export flows all work the same in French.

QuickBooks Self-Employed Canada alternative: what to use after QBSE in 2026

Q: Is QuickBooks Self-Employed really discontinued in Canada?

In early 2024 Intuit pulled the QuickBooks Self-Employed mobile app from the Canadian App Store and Google Play, closed new Canadian signups on the web, and removed the product from its Canadian pricing page. Intuit has not published a hard end-of-service date for existing accounts — the wind-down is quiet and indefinite, not an announced shutdown. The US-only replacement, QuickBooks Solopreneur, was not launched in Canada. Intuit steers existing Canadian users toward QuickBooks Online EasyStart at roughly three times the QBSE price, with no automated data migration tool.

Updated May 2026

QuickBooks Self-Employed is being wound down in Canada. The mobile app was pulled from the App Store and Google Play in early 2024, new Canadian signups have been closed since then, and the product has been removed from Intuit's Canadian pricing page. Intuit has not published a hard end-of-service date for existing accounts — the wind-down is quiet and indefinite, not an announced shutdown — but the direction of travel is unmistakable. The US-only replacement, QuickBooks Solopreneur, was not launched in Canada. The official Intuit-suggested path for existing Canadian QBSE users is QuickBooks Online EasyStart at roughly three times the price, with no automated data migration. This page covers what you can use instead, honestly.

What QBSE actually did for you

Three jobs, in priority order for the typical Canadian sole proprietor:

Business vs personal split on every transaction — the swipe-style "this was for the business / this was personal" review. The single feature most QBSE refugees say they will miss.
Receipt capture — photograph a receipt, see it attached to a transaction. Mobile-first.
Mileage tracking — auto-tracked driving, claimed at year-end against business-use percentage. The killer feature for rideshare, contracting, real-estate.
T2125-shape output at tax time, with TurboTax push.

No single alternative covers all four. The honest answer is: pick one tool that covers the biggest job for you, and pair it with one or two others for the rest.

The Canadian QBSE-alternative landscape

Tool	Price (CAD)	Business / personal split	Email auto-fetch	Mileage	T2125 mapping
BillyBox	Free / $14.99 / $29.99	Yes — built-in	Yes — Gmail, Outlook, Zoho, IMAP	No	CSV export today; T2125 worksheet on roadmap
NorthOS	$12 / mo	Not the focus	Receipt photo, not inbox scrape	No	Yes — T2125 native
Wave	Free / $25 (Pro)	No	Email-forward (Pro tier)	No	Manual chart of accounts
FreshBooks	$19–$72 / mo	No	Email-to-FreshBooks	Higher tier	Via categories
QBO EasyStart	$28 / mo	No — built for SMBs with employees	Manual upload	Add-on	No — T2 / corporate filing shape

Prices are public list prices at the time of writing and exclude promotional discounts; convert before relying on them. BillyBox is billed in EUR; CAD figures here are approximate at recent exchange.

Where BillyBox fits a former QBSE user

The business / personal split QBSE did — but on inbound invoices, not card transactions

QBSE classified every card transaction. BillyBox classifies every inbound invoice — the Stripe, AWS, Google Workspace, Adobe, OpenAI, Anthropic, Notion, and Figma bills that hit your inbox monthly. For a Canadian solo operator paying USD-denominated foreign SaaS, that inbox is where the audit trail lives. CRA's documentation rules for foreign-SaaS GST/HST ITC claims are stricter than for income-tax deductions — receipt-level proof with vendor identification is mandatory at the CAD $30+ threshold. The card statement alone is not enough. BillyBox auto-fetches the underlying invoices and sorts each one business, personal, or ignore, so the year-end ZIP your accountant receives is already classified.

Email auto-fetch — the part QBSE never did

QBSE Canada relied on mobile receipt capture: photograph the paper receipt or email forward each invoice manually. BillyBox connects to Gmail, Microsoft Outlook / Hotmail / Live (OAuth2), Zoho Mail, or any IMAP-compatible mailbox and pulls invoices for the months you select. The dual-gate AI pipeline filters out marketing, shipping confirmations, and non-invoice mail, then extracts a 14-field schema per invoice — vendor, amount, currency, date, invoice number, due date, billing period, tax rate, and the SaaS-specific signals like recurring-self-claim, trial flag, and cancellation events.

Bill grouping — invoice and receipt as one item

A Stripe-mediated SaaS payment usually generates two emails: the invoice and the payment-confirmation receipt. AWS sends a monthly bill plus a statement plus line-item charges. BillyBox auto-detects the related documents and merges them under a shared bill group, so you classify the bill once instead of seeing half-bills in your review queue. No other Canadian alternative does this.

Five-language UI including French

The interface ships in English, Romanian, Italian, French, and German with full localisation — labels, FAQ, accountant export. The French locale is currently closer to France-French than Quebec-French in vocabulary; a Quebec-specific terminology pass is on the near-term roadmap. The classification, capture, and export flows work identically in French today.

Where BillyBox is honestly weaker than QBSE — and what to pair with

No mileage tracking

BillyBox does not track mileage. If your business depends on auto-tracked driving — rideshare, contracting routes, real-estate showings — this is a genuine gap. The standard pairing is BillyBox for inbound-invoice classification plus MileIQ (CAD $5.99/mo) or TripLog (free tier available) for mileage. The two tools cover non-overlapping ground.

No direct push to QuickBooks Online or Xero yet

BillyBox exports a ZIP plus CSV today; your accountant imports that into QuickBooks Online, Xero, or whichever ledger they run. Direct API push to Xero and QuickBooks Online is on the roadmap, not shipped. If your accountant explicitly requires direct push, FreshBooks or NorthOS may be a cleaner fit today — flag the gap before you switch.

No T2125 worksheet export yet

BillyBox produces a classified ZIP plus a CSV that you or your accountant maps into the T2125 line items at filing time — the same job your accountant already does today. NorthOS markets explicit T2125-native expense mapping out of the box. A T2125 worksheet that pre-buckets your year's business-classified invoices into the 17 T2125 line items is planned for BillyBox later in 2026, ahead of the Jan–Apr 2027 filing window. If T2125 pre-mapping is the single deciding factor for you and you do not need email auto-fetch or business / personal classification, NorthOS is a reasonable choice today; if you want the classification + email auto-fetch wedge now and the T2125 worksheet at filing time, BillyBox covers the input side today with the worksheet arriving by year-end.

No native iOS or Android app

BillyBox ships as a Progressive Web App — open billybox.app in your phone's browser and Add to Home Screen for an app-like icon. The mobile review UI is a swipe-stack: right for business, left for personal, down to ignore. There is no App Store or Google Play presence yet. If your daily workflow is photograph the paper receipt the moment it lands in your hand, QBSE's native mobile app covered that better than a PWA does.

How to move from QBSE to BillyBox

The migration is roughly 20–30 minutes of work, once.

Export your QBSE history. In the QBSE web app, go to Transactions, filter by tax year, and download as CSV. Repeat for any prior years you need to keep. Mileage logs export as CSV from the Mileage tab. Reports as CSV or PDF.
Download your receipts. QBSE does not offer bulk receipt export — each receipt downloads individually. Plan an hour for a full year of receipts if you have hundreds.
Connect your inbox to BillyBox. Gmail OAuth, Outlook / Hotmail / Live OAuth, Zoho, or any IMAP provider. Read-only access, no writes to your mailbox.
Fetch the months you want. The free plan covers two full months. Pick your most recent month plus one historical month to validate the workflow.
Classify the backlog. Swipe (mobile) or click (desktop) each invoice business, personal, or ignore. Bill groups cascade — classifying the invoice classifies the matching receipt.
Export the ZIP for your accountant. Each month is one ZIP with PDFs grouped by classification plus a CSV index your accountant imports.

Pricing — what QBSE refugees actually pay

The QBSE Canada subscription that Intuit phased out was approximately CAD $15/mo. The official Intuit-suggested path, QuickBooks Online EasyStart, is roughly CAD $28/mo full price (~CAD $14 promotional for the first three months). BillyBox's Starter tier at €9.99/mo lands almost exactly at the QBSE price point users were comfortable with; Pro at €19.99/mo sits below EasyStart's full list price. There is a real free plan with no card required: two full months of fetching and classification on two email connections, so you can validate the workflow against your actual inbox before committing.

Who should choose what

Choose BillyBox if you:

Pay foreign SaaS subscriptions (Stripe, AWS, Google, Adobe, OpenAI, Anthropic) every month and need the receipts auto-fetched from your inbox
Need the QBSE-style business / personal classification on every invoice
Want invoice + payment-confirmation pairs auto-merged into one bill
Want the UI in French (with a Quebec terminology pass coming)
Are comfortable with ZIP + CSV export to your accountant rather than direct push
Do not need mileage tracking, or are willing to pair with MileIQ or TripLog for it

Choose NorthOS if you:

Want T2125-native expense mapping out of the box, before BillyBox ships its worksheet
Do not need email auto-fetch — you photograph receipts as they happen

Choose Wave if you:

Want a free, Canadian-built, full-AR-side invoicing tool to send invoices to your clients
Do not need the business / personal split that QBSE was known for

Try BillyBox free

Two full months on your real inbox, two email connections, unlimited invoices. No card required. If the business / personal split was the part of QBSE you used, this is the closest replacement that also closes the gap QBSE never did — pulling those foreign-SaaS invoices out of your inbox automatically.

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