Bookkeeping Services

Bookkeeping is the disciplined, ongoing recording of every financial transaction your business makes — sales, purchases, expenses, payments and receipts — into properly categorised books. It's the layer underneath everything else: your GST returns, TDS, payroll and income-tax filings are only as accurate as the books they're built on.

Done monthly, with bank reconciliation, bookkeeping means your numbers are always current, your filings reconcile, and you can actually see how the business is doing — instead of discovering surprises at year-end.

For a company, the standard is set by statute, and it is more specific than most people expect. Section 128(1) of the Companies Act, 2013 requires every company to prepare and keep, at its registered office, books of account, other relevant books and papers, and the financial statement for every financial year, giving a true and fair view of the state of affairs — including of any branch office — and explaining the transactions effected. The same sub-section fixes the method: "such books shall be kept on accrual basis and according to the double entry system of accounting." Cash-basis records and single-entry spreadsheets do not meet it.

Where the books may be kept, and what you must do to move them. The first proviso to section 128(1) allows all or any of the books to be kept at another place in India if the Board so decides — but the company must file a notice with the Registrar within seven days, giving the full address. The second proviso permits keeping them in electronic mode in the prescribed manner. Section 128(2) deals with branches: compliance is deemed where proper books are kept at the branch and summarised returns are sent periodically to the registered office.

Retention is eight years, and the vouchers come with them. Section 128(5) requires the books of account of not less than eight financial years immediately preceding the current one — together with the vouchers relevant to any entry — to be kept in good order. Where an investigation has been ordered under Chapter XIV, the Central Government may direct a longer period. Backing up the ledger and discarding the supporting documents is not compliance; the sub-section names both.

And section 128(3) is why the books have to be current, not reconstructible. They are open to inspection at the registered office by any director during business hours — a subsidiary's books only by a person authorised by a Board resolution. A director's right to inspect is not a right to wait for a year-end close.

Section 129 then governs what comes out of them: the financial statements must give a true and fair view, comply with the accounting standards notified under section 133, and be in the form provided in Schedule III — with carve-outs for insurance, banking and electricity companies and any other class governed by a special Act.

We record and categorise your transactions, reconcile your bank accounts, and close your books every month, reviewed by a professional — so the rest of your compliance runs on clean data. Payroll should feed the same ledger rather than a parallel one: the wages figure that drives PF, gratuity and bonus is the same figure your provision has to be built on — see what counts as wages.