Connections
How the Tax Desk gets its data and where it hands work off. Phase 1 is deliberately manual — the rulebook and the exception engine carry the value, not the plumbing.
4 live in v16 planned2 manual by design
Illustrative fixture data — Canada GST/HST, QST, and provincial sales tax for ecommerce clients.
Data flow
Xena stays the system of record
Sources
- Channel workbooks
- Client questionnaire
- Platform tax settings
- Channel APIs — later
- QuickBooks — later
- CRA / provincial portals
Tax Desk engine
- Intake validator
- Client tax profile
- Rulebook (versioned)
- Rule engine
- Change watch agent
Outputs
- Exception queue
- CPA decision
- Work module jobs
- Filing calendar
- Client memo (draft)
- Tax Desk agent — later
CRA and provincial portals have no usable API. Registration and filing stay manual, with the confirmation stored as evidence.
Connection register
| System | Group | Purpose | Method | Phase | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | Accounting | Revenue and tax-account reconciliation; tie channel totals to the GL | OAuth API | Phase 2 | Planned |
| Shopify Admin API | Sales channel | Orders by ship-to province, tax lines, tax region configuration | Admin API | Phase 2 | Planned |
| Amazon SP-API | Sales channel | Sales tax reports, settlements, FBA inventory by fulfilment centre | SP-API | Phase 2 | Planned |
| Etsy / eBay / Walmart | Sales channel | Marketplace-collected tax by jurisdiction | API or CSV | Phase 3 | Planned |
| Stripe | Payments | Direct and B2B invoice tax lines | API | Phase 3 | Planned |
| Manual intake (Excel/CSV) | Intake | Standard workbook per channel with upload validation | Upload + validator | Phase 1 | Live in v1 |
| Xena Work module | Internal | Accepted exceptions become jobs, deadlines, and checklists | Internal | Phase 1 | Live in v1 |
| Xena Client Profile | Internal | Single client record — no duplicate client master | Internal | Phase 1 | Live in v1 |
| Rulebook change watch | AI | Weekly monitoring of CRA and provincial sources; proposes diffs for approval | Scheduled agent | Phase 1 | Live in v1 |
| Tax Desk agent (RAG) | AI | Answers only from the rulebook and the client profile, with citations | Retrieval + LLM | Phase 2 | Planned |
| CRA My Business Account | Government | Filing and balance confirmation — no API; staff confirm manually | Manual | Not planned | Manual |
| Provincial tax portals | Government | BC eTaxBC, SK, MB TAXcess, Revenu Québec — manual registration and filing | Manual | Not planned | Manual |