Check the RBQ subclass and price GST and QST in parallel

Add the RBQ licence to the subcontractor's record with the class and subclass it carries and the date it expires, and file the certificate itself beside it rather than a note saying it was seen.

Why: A register that says only that a firm is licensed has answered the easy half of the question. The subclass is what states the work the licence actually permits, and without it on the record nobody can tell later whether the right question was ever asked.

Before the award, read the subclass on the licence against the work the package actually contains. Where the scope crosses into work the subclass does not cover, either split the package or ask the firm for the licence that covers it, and record which you did.

Why: This is the check that a process built for another market does not make: it confirms a licence exists and stops there. In Quebec the licence usually exists and is the wrong one more often than it is missing, and the party who finds out is the owner of the project, at the worst possible moment.

Write the item descriptions in French, keep the quantities metric and the prices in Canadian dollars at a Montreal level, and structure the bill by the divisions your client and their consultants already read.

Why: The client, the architect and the engineer read the bill in French and check it against documents written in French. A bill that arrives translated back out of another language reads as a bid prepared somewhere else, and the first thing that gets questioned after that is the price.

Add GST at 5 percent and QST at 9.975 percent as two separate lines, both taken on the same pre-tax subtotal, and show the base each one was computed on rather than only the combined figure.

Why: The two taxes are parallel, not stacked, and 14.975 percent is the sum of two rates on one base rather than one rate applied to the other's result. Compounding them adds half a percent of the contract to your price, which loses a competitive bid, or leaves it out of a cost plan, which loses money on the job. Showing the base is what lets the client verify it in a glance instead of a phone call.

Before the bid leaves, read back the two things this case turns on: the pre-tax total with the two tax lines and the base each was taken on, and which firms hold a licence whose subclass covers the scope they were priced for.

Why: A Quebec client checks both of those first, and both are far cheaper to correct while the bid is still yours. A tax computed the way Revenu Quebec computes it, and a licence that covers the work it was priced for, are what turn a week of evaluation correspondence into no correspondence at all.