Term
Accounting document
A written record of a transaction carrying the prescribed data — reference, content, date and the signature of the responsible person. Without it, a transaction cannot be booked.
Updated
What it means
An accounting document is the evidence of a transaction. The Accounting Act prescribes its particulars: a written and numerical designation, the content of the transaction and the parties to it, the amount or quantity, the date of issue, the date of the event and a signature record.
Nothing is posted without one. That principle underpins the auditability of the books - and decides whether a cost and a VAT deduction survive an inspection.
Accounting documents and tax documents overlap, but not fully. A bank statement or an internal document for depreciation is an accounting document but not a tax one. An invoice from a supplier who is not VAT registered is a valid accounting document, yet no input VAT can be deducted from it.
How it works in practice
Documents include purchase and sales invoices, the bank statement, the cash document, a delivery note, the payroll summary and the internal document for depreciation and provisions.
They are retained for the statutory period, on paper or electronically. Digitisation is permitted provided legibility, integrity of content and availability are assured throughout the retention period.
We check the documents a client uploads before posting: whether they are made out to the right company and whether the VAT number, amount and date of supply are correct. If something is wrong we prepare an exact list of what to fix, and the client asks the supplier for a corrective invoice within the same period.
What to watch out for
A missing or incomplete document is treated in an inspection as though the transaction never happened - which means a non-deductible expense and a lost VAT deduction. It generally cannot be produced retrospectively, so documents are collected continuously, not quarterly.
Till receipts on thermal paper fade within a few years, leaving nothing to read in an inspection. They should be scanned at once and stored so that retention meets the legibility requirements, otherwise the cost and the deduction are lost even though the document physically exists.
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