Accounting Services

Professional accounting services.

Bookkeeping is the monthly work of recording what the business actually did — every sale, purchase, payment and receipt — so that the GST returns, the TDS returns and the income tax return are all prepared from the same set of numbers. It is unglamorous and it is the foundation everything else stands on: almost every departmental query that lands on a small business is, underneath, a question about books that were written up in a hurry at the end of the year.

Who this is for

Clean books
P&L statements
Balance sheet
Audit-ready

Documents you'll need

Bank statements
Sales and purchase invoices
Expense bills and vouchers
Previous year's financial statements

The process

What we actually do

1
We set up a chart of accounts that fits the business
A generic chart makes every later question harder to answer. The heads follow how the business actually earns and spends, so that a query about one category can be answered by pulling one ledger rather than by reading the whole year.
2
We record transactions monthly, not annually
Monthly recording is what makes the GST return true when it is filed rather than corrected later. Reconstructing twelve months in March is where the errors come from — and where the difference between the GST turnover and the income tax turnover is created.
3
We reconcile the bank every month
Every entry in the books is matched to the bank statement. Unexplained credits are the single most common source of an addition to income in an assessment, and they are far easier to explain in the month they occurred than two years later.
4
We keep the GST and TDS positions aligned as we go
Input credit claimed is checked against GSTR-2B, and TDS deducted is checked against what has been deposited and returned. Doing this monthly means the annual reconciliation is a summary rather than an archaeology project.
5
We produce statements you can actually use
A monthly profit and loss, a balance sheet and a debtors and creditors ageing. The ageing is the one most owners find they wanted all along — it is where the working capital has quietly gone.
6
We hand the auditor a clean file
Where an audit is required, the books, the reconciliations and the supporting documents go across in a form the CA can work from directly. An audit that starts with the auditor rebuilding the books costs more and takes longer, and the deadline does not move.

Who this is for

Businesses whose GST turnover and income tax turnover have stopped agreeing with each other
Proprietors who currently reconstruct the year from bank statements each March
Companies and LLPs, which must maintain books by law regardless of size
Businesses that have crossed the tax audit threshold and now need books an auditor can work from
Anyone applying for bank credit, where the last three years of accounts decide the decision
Businesses where the person doing the books has left and nobody knows what was and was not entered

How long it takes

Ongoing monthly, with statements delivered within ten working days of the month end. Bringing a backlog up to date is a separate exercise and depends on how many months are open and how complete the records are — a year of bank statements with no invoices behind them takes longer than a year of both.

If you do nothing

The books get written once a year under time pressure, and they carry the errors that produce the notice. When a query does arrive, the position has to be defended from records assembled after the fact — and an assessing officer is entitled to reject books that do not reconcile and assess on an estimate instead. Defending an estimate is the most expensive position in tax practice, and it starts with bookkeeping nobody wanted to pay for.

The law, in figures

Dates, thresholds and sections

Every figure below carries the provision it comes from, so it can be checked.
What	Figure	Source
Obligation to maintain books, income tax	Income above ₹2,50,000 or turnover above ₹25,00,000 in any of the three preceding years	Section 44AA read with Rule 6F, Income-tax Act 1961
Retention period, income tax	6 years from the end of the relevant assessment year	Rule 6F(5), Income-tax Rules 1962
Retention period, GST	72 months from the due date of the annual return	Section 36, CGST Act 2017
Books of account, companies	8 financial years, maintained at the registered office	Section 128, Companies Act 2013
Penalty for failure to maintain books	₹25,000	Section 271A, Income-tax Act 1961

What usually goes wrong

Writing up the whole year in March, which is where the GST-to-income-tax turnover gap is created
Running personal expenses through the business account without recording them as drawings
Leaving cash sales out of the books while the corresponding purchases are recorded, which shows as an impossible margin
Claiming input credit in the books that was never available in GSTR-2B
Keeping no debtors ageing, and discovering the working capital problem only when the bank asks
Destroying records after three years, when both the income tax and GST retention periods are considerably longer

What non-compliance costs

₹25,000 for failure to maintain books under section 271A
Best-judgment assessment under section 144 where books are not produced, with income estimated by the officer
Disallowance of expenses that cannot be substantiated, which raises taxable profit directly
Under the Companies Act, a fine on the company and its officers for failure to maintain books under section 128(6)

These are statutory amounts, not our fees. What we charge depends on your situation and is quoted before any work starts.

Not to be confused with

These come up in the same conversation and are routinely treated as the same thing. They are not.

Tax audit

A tax audit is a statutory examination of the books by a chartered accountant, required above the turnover threshold. Bookkeeping is the work of creating the books the auditor examines — you need the second before anyone can do the first.

GST return filing

Return filing reports a period's figures to the department. Bookkeeping produces the figures. A return prepared without books is an estimate, and it is the estimate that later disagrees with the income tax return.

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