Primary documents accountant: receiving and checking source documents

Rules the specialist must know

• an e-invoice (ESF) is, as a rule, issued electronically in the electronic invoicing system (Article 47 of the Tax Code);
• when the price or quantity changes, the seller issues an additional or corrected e-invoice (Article 47);
• primary documents are kept for at least five years after the reporting year (Article 29 of the Law “On Accounting”).

What the specialist does

Receives documents from departments and counterparties, checks that they are complete and properly drawn up, enters the data into the books and looks after storage.

A separate task is returning for rework documents that do not properly support the transaction.

• receiving documents from departments
• checking details and completeness
• entering data into the accounting system
• requesting missing documents from counterparties
• organising storage

Requirements for drawing up documents

A document must make it possible to understand unambiguously what transaction took place, between whom, when and for what amount. Requirements for mandatory details are set by accounting legislation.

The argument “we all know what this is about” does not work in an audit — the document does.

Typical mistakes

Missing signatures and dates, amounts that differ from the contract, vague descriptions of services, documents received long after the transaction.

The last one is especially dangerous when supporting expenses and deductions.

Why primary documents determine everything else

Every amount in the financial statements goes back to a specific document. If the document is missing or carelessly drawn up, what becomes disputable is not the entry in the software, but the transaction itself.

That is why work with primary documents is not a technical function but the foundation of reliable bookkeeping. Errors here are the most expensive to fix, because documents are hard to obtain after the fact.

What is checked when a document is received

The specialist looks at whether the mandatory information is present, whether it matches the contract terms, whether the amounts are correct and whether authorised persons have signed.

The date is checked separately: documents signed later than actual performance create mismatches between periods and raise questions in audits.

• details of the parties and the subject of the transaction
• compliance with the contract terms
• correct amounts and calculations
• signatures of authorised persons
• date of actual performance

How to organise document collection

The main difficulty is not checking documents but getting them from departments and counterparties. This is solved by a procedure: a single point of receipt and a clear deadline for handover.

A list of expected documents for each period helps — then what is missing is visible in advance rather than at the moment the financial statements are being prepared.

What to do about missing documents

The first step is to request a duplicate from the counterparty while the transaction is recent. The later the request, the lower the chance of getting it.

If the document cannot be restored, the situation needs to be assessed separately: quietly leaving an expense unsupported means shifting the risk to a future tax audit.

Electronic and paper documents

Part of the document flow is electronic and part remains on paper. Problems start where there is no single storage rule and one transaction has to be looked for in two places.

It makes sense to fix which documents are kept where and who is responsible for the archive. This saves hours on every request.

Differences between an individual entrepreneur and a company

An individual entrepreneur (IE) has fewer documents but almost no internal control: nobody will notice a lost act. A company has larger volumes, but can spread the checking among several employees.

In both cases the rule is the same: a document must appear at the time of the transaction, not be collected just before the reporting date.

How Leader Audit helps

We take over processing of primary documents on an outsourced basis, set up the document flow procedure and check document quality during audits.

An audit organisation with 13 years of practice and more than 220 audits.