That is the work. What it costs is published, before any call.
ConceptStudio concept: a fictional business we invented to work through a real Ontario problem. No client, nothing shipped, nothing measured.How we use AI
Studio concept · fictional businessWhat this means
Studio concept: a fictional business we invented to work through a real Ontario problem. No client, nothing shipped, nothing measured. How we use AI
What do I bring, and what’s it cost?
A small tax and bookkeeping practice upstairs on Main Street in Galt, whose website changes with the calendar instead of saying the same thing all year.
- Business
- Carrow Tax & Bookkeeping (fictional)
- Sector
- Accounting: personal tax and small business bookkeeping
- Town
- Cambridge, Ontario
- Disciplines
- Content design, UX and interface design, Design system, Front-end prototype
- Type
- Schibsted Grotesk and Spline Sans Mono
- Status
- Studio concept · nothing shipped
The calendar is the system
The site changes with the date, not with a campaign. Four days in the 2026 tax year, and what the home page puts first on each: the live components from the practice’s kit. Studio concept; the dates are CRA’s, the practice is invented.
Mon 1 Mar
RRSP deadline. The list fills the next date and fades the past.
Mon 15 Mar
Season on. Amber appears for the only time in the year.
Fri 30 Apr
File and pay. Every fee a from price, in a fixed-width column.
Wed 12 May
Season off. The amber goes and bookkeeping leads.
Schibsted Grotesk for every line of UI; Spline Sans Mono for dates, fees and references.
- Ultramarine #2B3FD6
- Season amber #FFB000
- Graphite #16191D
- Fog #EDEFF2
Try it: find my fee by client type, get my document checklist, and start a secure upload
The working prototype, native on this page: keyboard and touch, no iframe. Nothing is sent.
It never asks for
- Social Insurance Number (no field asks for it)
- Date of birth
- Banking or card details
- CRA My Account login
- File contents (prototype: names and sizes only, nothing leaves the browser)
CarrowTax & Bookkeeping, Cambridge
Carrow Tax & Bookkeeping prototypePrototype — nothing is sent. A studio concept, not a real practice.
46Tax season, 2026 returnsdays until the filing deadline, Fri 30 AprilFees, your checklist and a secure upload sit up here until the end of April.
All dates for the 2026 tax year
- RRSP contributions for 2026 (passed)
- Upload by this date and we file before 30 April
- File and pay any balance owing
- File (balance still due 30 April)
- Fee
- Your year
- Checklist
- Upload
- Done
What are we filing for you?
Every fee is a “from” price, plus HST. We quote before we start.
Studio concept. Carrow Tax & Bookkeeping is a fictional Cambridge practice; fees, dates and files are synthetic. Confirm CRA deadlines on canada.ca.
Want this working on your site?We start with a free written Redline of the site you have.
Request a RedlineThree decisions, as redlines
What we would strike from the usual accounting site, what we put in its place, and why. The practice and its figures are invented.
Decision 1: From February to April, the deadlines go on top.
Between February and the end of April almost every visitor arrives with the same three questions: when, how much, and what to bring. Season mode answers them above everything else, as a dated setting rather than a switch someone has to remember. On 1 May it steps aside and bookkeeping leads again, because that is the work that pays for the other nine months.
Tax season: 46 days until Fri 30 April. Here’s what to bring.
12 May: the same site, after the season. Rendered screen, concept. Decision 2: Slips go through an upload, never an inbox.
A T4 carries a Social Insurance Number, and the easiest way for a client to send one is to photograph it and email it, where it sits in two inboxes indefinitely. The site makes the upload the obvious path: a checklist that becomes the upload queue, phone photos accepted, and no form field that ever asks for a SIN. In our prototype the upload is simulated and nothing leaves the browser.
Upload your slips here. Please don’t email them.
The fee ledger, live from the kit: every fee a from price, plus HST. Decision 3: Every fee is a “from” price, by client type.
People put off calling an accountant because they cannot guess the bill. Three client types, each with a “from” price and one plain sentence on what moves it up, answer that without promising a figure the firm cannot keep. The practice still quotes before it starts; the price simply stops being the reason not to ask.
Personal return from $120. Self-employed from $340.
Slips go through the secure upload, never by email. Rendered screen, concept.
From the fee to the reference number
The whole journey fits on one piece of paper: the fee the client chose, what was received without an email, what is still to come, and the reference they keep. The practice, the client and the files are invented.
Limits- An invented business; no client commissioned it.
- The prototype has not been tested with users.
- Speed and accessibility figures are targets, not measurements.
Checks we would run
- Share of slips that arrive by upload rather than email, before and after season mode.
- Calls and emails asking “how much” or “what do I bring” in March.
- Time from a client’s first visit to a complete checklist.
- Keyboard and screen-reader runs of the full upload journey.
The limits
- Carrow is invented. Nobody has used this, and nothing on this page was measured.
- The upload is simulated. A real one needs encrypted storage, retention rules and a privacy review we have not done.
- The screens are our renders of the prototype.
- Fees and dates are illustrative. CRA deadlines change; a real site would read them from the Season record each year.
What we did not do
- A client portal with its own login. A seasonal client will not remember a password once a year. A one-time upload link is enough.
- A SIN field “to save time”. The slips already carry it. Typing it into a form only makes another copy.
- A chatbot for tax questions. Wrong answers about tax cost people money. A person replies.
- Stock photos of families with calculators. They say nothing about this office or its season.
Run an accounting or bookkeeping practice?
Send us your site; we will show what it should say in March that it should not say in May.