Bookkeeping Services

Day-to-day bookkeeping services.

Bookkeeping is the monthly discipline of recording what the business actually did, so that the GST returns, the TDS returns and the income tax return are all prepared from one set of numbers that agree with each other and with the bank. It is the least visible thing a business pays for and the one everything else depends on: almost every departmental query that lands on a small business is, underneath, a question about books written up in a hurry at the end of the year.

Who this is for

Daily recording
Bank reconciliation
Petty cash
Outstanding tracking

The process

What we actually do

1
We set up a chart of accounts that fits the business
Heads that follow how the business actually earns and spends, so a query about one category is answered by pulling one ledger rather than reading a year.
2
We record monthly and reconcile the bank monthly
Every entry matched to the bank statement, every month. Unexplained credits are the commonest source of an addition to income in an assessment, and they are far easier to explain in the month they happened than two years later.
3
We keep the GST and TDS positions aligned as we go
Input credit claimed checked against GSTR-2B, TDS deducted checked against what was deposited and returned. Monthly, so the annual reconciliation is a summary rather than an excavation.
4
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 went.
5
We hand the auditor a clean file
Books, reconciliations and supporting documents in a form the CA can work from directly. An audit that begins with the auditor rebuilding the books costs more, takes longer, and the deadline does not move.

Who this is for

Businesses whose GST turnover and income tax turnover have stopped agreeing
Proprietors who currently rebuild the year from bank statements each March
Companies and LLPs, which must maintain books by law regardless of size
Businesses approaching the tax audit threshold, which need books an auditor can work from
Anyone applying for bank credit, where three years of accounts decide the answer
Businesses whose bookkeeper has left and where nobody knows what was entered

How long it takes

Ongoing monthly, with statements within ten working days of the month end. Bringing a backlog up to date depends on how many months are open and whether the invoices behind the bank entries still exist.

If you do nothing

The books get written once a year under time pressure, and they carry the errors that produce the notice. An assessing officer is entitled to reject books that do not reconcile and assess on an estimate instead — and defending an estimate is the most expensive position in tax practice. 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 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, income tax	6 years from the end of the relevant assessment year	Rule 6F(5), Income-tax Rules 1962
Retention, GST	72 months from the due date of the annual return	Section 36, CGST Act 2017
Books, 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 comes from
Running personal expenses through the business account without recording them as drawings
Leaving cash sales out while recording the purchases behind them, producing an impossible margin
Claiming input credit in the books that was never available in GSTR-2B
Destroying records after three years, when both retention periods are considerably longer

What non-compliance costs

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

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 above the turnover threshold. Bookkeeping produces the books being examined; you need the second before anyone can do the first.

GST return filing

Return filing reports a period's figures. Bookkeeping produces them. 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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