For a finance team with a December 31 year-end, the months from December to April hold the year-end close, T4 slips, the audit or review, and the questions that come back from whoever prepares the tax return. The same months are tax season for public accounting firms, which hire seasonal staff from the same pool your team would draw on. Employers who arrange coverage in November get first pick of that pool.
Most teams get through year-end with the people they already have, by working longer days in January and pushing smaller tasks into spring. That approach is reasonable when the alternative is training someone new in the middle of close. It gets expensive when someone is off sick in February, or when a reconciliation turns up a problem two weeks before slips are due, because the extra help you would call for is already working somewhere else.
Accountant Staffing places temporary and permanent accounting staff, from accounting clerks and bookkeepers to payroll specialists and general accountants. The dates below come from the CRA's calendar, and each role is matched to the stretch of year-end where it helps most.
Four dates between now and June
The calendar below assumes a December 31 year-end and a corporation that files a T2 return. If your fiscal year ends on another date, the close and T2 dates move with it, but the T4 and personal tax dates stay where they are, because payroll slips always cover the calendar year.
| Date | Deadline | What it means for your team |
|---|---|---|
| December 31, 2026 | Fiscal year-end | Month-end and year-end close run together, with accruals, inventory counts and a reconciliation for every balance sheet account. |
| March 1, 2027 | T4 and T4A slips due | Payroll totals for the full calendar year have to be reconciled before slips go to the CRA and to employees. The usual deadline is the last day of February, which falls on a Sunday in 2027. |
| April 30, 2027 | Personal tax filing and payment deadline | Public accounting firms are at their busiest, and so is their demand for contract staff. Questions from your external accountant about the year-end file usually arrive in this window. |
| June 30, 2027 | T2 corporate return due | The return is due six months after a December 31 year-end, so anything left open from the close has to be settled by then. |
Dates are for the 2026 tax year. Confirm the deadlines that apply to your business on the CRA's website before you plan around them.
Why January is late to start looking
Public accounting firms add seasonal staff from January to April to get personal and corporate returns out the door, and they recruit from the same candidates a controller in Halifax or Dartmouth would want for year-end. An accountant who accepts a four-month tax-season assignment in early January is off the market until May.
Demand for contract help is rising outside tax season as well. In Robert Half's November 2025 survey of 1,500 Canadian hiring managers, half said they expected to bring on more contract staff to cover immediate skills gaps, and only 9% of finance and accounting managers said they had all the people they needed for priority projects. When that many employers are looking at the same time, the candidates still available in January are the ones nobody else booked.
Booking early also buys training time. A temporary accountant needs time to learn your software, your chart of accounts and how your approvals work. If those first days fall in early December, it overlaps with the slowest part of the close. If it falls in late January, your senior people spend T4 season teaching.
A temporary accountant who starts in early December already knows your chart of accounts by the time the T4 work begins.
What a short-staffed year-end costs
Robert Half surveyed 186 Canadian finance and accounting hiring managers about the accountant shortage in November 2023, and 90% said they had run into problems because of it. More than 40% said the shortage had slowed their financial processes, and 34% said it had raised concerns about the accuracy of their accounting. Among those affected, nearly half said their existing staff were overburdened, and a third said they had trouble finding enough people for tax season.
Accuracy is the cost that shows up last. A reconciliation rushed in February can become an adjusting entry in May, or an amended T4 sent after employees have already filed their returns. Overtime appears on the budget right away, while an error from a rushed February can take months to surface and longer to correct.
Which roles to book for each stretch
What to have ready when you call
A short brief gets you a faster match. Tell us the dates you need someone, the software they will use (QuickBooks Online, Sage 50, Xero, NetSuite or something else), whether the work is on site, hybrid or remote, and which tasks you want off your own team's desk. If you are unsure which role fits, describe the work and we will suggest one.
Book your year-end help before December
Tell us the dates you need someone and the software they will use, and we will start the search now.
Talk to our teamSources: Canada Revenue Agency, 2026 tax deadlines for Canadian businesses and self-employed individuals; Xero Canada, T4 slip guide for employers (2026); Robert Half Canada, Demand for Skilled Talent survey, November 2025 (released February 2026); Robert Half survey of Canadian finance and accounting hiring managers, November 2023, reported by BNN Bloomberg, April 2024.