Accounting Services in India

Every month begins the day your bank statements and sales registers arrive. Entries are posted across the month, ledgers reconciled against bank and vendor balances, then TDS and GST workings prepared during the filing week. Queries on missing bills go back in one batch. The close produces a trial balance, a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet, each dated. Patron publishes a plain checklist of deliverables so nothing waits on a reminder.

By the second month the drivers are plain: transaction volume, each GST registration you hold, payroll headcount and every bank account feeding the ledger. A second entity or a second state doubles the reconciliation work. Bookkeeping services here cover posting, reconciliation and statutory workings, with returns lodged at the GST portal. Statutory audit and departmental representation are quoted separately.

This service suits businesses that run real transaction volume across several bank accounts and tax registrations, yet have nobody owning the monthly bookkeeping and year-end close. Most are companies, LLPs and proprietorships that have grown past ad hoc help but are not ready to hire salaried accountants.

• Newly incorporated private limited companies now due to file monthly GST and TDS, with no accountant on the rolls yet.
• Proprietors and small business owners whose bookkeeper has left mid-year, leaving posting and reconciliations stalled.
• LLPs that have taken a second state registration, doubling the returns and reconciliation each period now demands.
• Firms whose headcount has grown until PF, ESI and professional tax deductions each need computing every month.
• Owner-run businesses still keeping records in spreadsheets, now facing a lender's review those files cannot answer.
• Companies approaching their first statutory audit that need a trial balance an auditor will accept without rework.
• Established firms that want to know what a CA charges for monthly accounting before handing the ledger across.

Everything below is source material rather than summaries, because the books get written from what your bank, your customers and your vendors actually issued.

• Bank statements for every business bank account for the full period, in PDF and Excel or CSV
• Sales invoices and tax invoices issued (including e-invoice IRN/QR files where e-invoicing applies)
• Purchase invoices and vendor bills received
• Expense bills, receipts and signed petty-cash vouchers
• Credit notes and debit notes issued and received
• GST data for each tax period: the auto-drafted GSTR-2B, and Form 26AS/AIS for tax credited at source
• TDS/TCS challans, filed returns (24Q/26Q/27Q/27EQ) and Form 16/16A issued
• Payroll register / salary sheet with PF, ESI, Professional Tax and TDS workings, plus the related challans
• Opening trial balance, or the previous year's signed financial statements with schedules

The entry plan at INR 2,499 covers one entity with a single GST registration and routine monthly books. Your fee rises as transaction volume, extra GST registrations or added entities widen the work, as our monthly accounting cost guide explains. Request a customised estimate on +91 94594 56700.

Fees exclude GST and government charges. Final quote confirmed after a scoping review.

All fees and charges listed are indicative only and do not constitute a binding offer. Final amounts may vary depending on the volume of work and the complexity involved.

Professional accounting and compliance charges are scoped to your number of entities, funding stage and monthly transaction volume, and are separate from statutory and government charges. Contact us for a detailed, fixed quote.

Get a free Accounting consultation - Call +91 945 945 6700 or WhatsApp us. No-obligation assessment.

Section 128 of the Companies Act 2013 does more than any other provision to shape a set of Indian books: it requires every company to keep its accounts on the accrual basis and the double-entry system, at the registered office, and to preserve them for eight years. Around that spine sits a wider framework - the income-tax rules that decide when books become compulsory, the GST rules that decide what a registered person records, and the accounting standards that decide how each number is measured.

Good accounting services keep all of these true at once rather than one at a time. The same ledger has to satisfy a lender reading the balance sheet, an assessing officer reading the profit and loss, and a GST officer reading the outward-supply register, so the design of the Assets, Liabilities, Equity and Capital heads is a compliance decision, not a bookkeeping preference. The provisions below are the ones an outsourced function is answering to every month.

• Section 128, Companies Act 2013Books of account are kept on accrual and double entry at the registered office, may be held electronically, and are retained for eight financial years.
• Section 129 read with Schedule III, Companies Act 2013The balance sheet and profit and loss are drawn in the Schedule III format and must present a true and fair view of the company's affairs.
• Rule 3(1), Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014The accounting software must keep an audit trail of every edit, switched on all year, so a back-dated change can never pass unrecorded. The MCA's proviso to Rule 3(1) and ICAI's 2023 Implementation Guide on audit-trail reporting set what an auditor tests.
• Section 44AB, Income-tax Act 1961A tax audit is triggered above Rs 1 crore turnover, or Rs 10 crore where cash receipts and payments each stay within 5%, and above Rs 50 lakh for professionals.
• Companies (Accounting Standards) Rules 2021 and Companies (Indian Accounting Standards) Rules 2015Most private companies measure their numbers under the ICAI Accounting Standards, with Ind AS becoming binding once a company lists or its net worth is Rs 250 crore or more.
• Section 35(1), CGST Act 2017A registered person maintains accounts of inward and outward supplies, stock, input tax credit and output tax at the principal place of business, tying the books to the returns filed on the GST portal.

Practical note: the audit trail is where companies most often slip: the feature ships with the software but was never switched on, and under Rule 3(1) it is usually the first thing an auditor tests.

Official sources: Ministry of Corporate Affairs · Income Tax Department · GST Portal · Startup India (DPIIT)

TDS / TCS deposit (Challan ITNS-281) is due 7th of every month (30 April for March). GSTR-1 (outward supplies) is due 11th of every month for monthly filers. Provident Fund (ECR) and ESI contribution is due 15th of every month. Patron tracks each against your books so nothing is reconstructed after the fact. Call +91 94594 56700 to set up a filing-reminder schedule.

Spreadsheet ledgers cost time before they cost anything else. A partner answering a lender's question opens three files and still guesses. Sales figures argue with the bank balance, and every management decision waits on a number nobody trusts. The working cost is not the bookkeeping itself; it is everything that pauses behind it.

By the third cycle, bookkeeping services settle into a rhythm you stop noticing. Your involvement shrinks to answering what genuinely needs you. Numbers land in your inbox on a date you already know rather than a date you chase. Nothing is rebuilt before a board meeting, and the books are already agreed.

Your handover month sets the starting point: which period Patron picks up, and what state the current-year books are in. We then settle who keeps raising invoices, and which of your people signs off the close, before the broader bookkeeping work we handle begins.