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A client approached ARG with one accounting problem, but payroll, VAT and year-end reporting were all contributing to it. ARG brought the work into one reporting calendar and clarified responsibilities with the client's team. Management gained a clearer view of the Bulgarian company's accounts and could see upcoming deadlines and decisions before they became urgent.
Accounting should show what the business has earned, spent, owns and owes, and turn that record into the right returns and reports. Bookkeeping, VAT, payroll and year-end filings are connected, but they are not the same service. The scope depends on the transactions you make and the quality of the records you can supply. An unreliable opening balance or a marketplace payout recorded as sales can affect several later reports.
ARG can help you:
Start with the company’s transactions, complete source documents and reconciled balances, including owner funding and previous filings.
Identify registration grounds, customer type, supplier country and goods routes before deciding which domestic or EU reports apply.
Classify employees, managers and working owners by their actual role and work country, then organise payroll and insurance evidence.
Separate tax filing, financial statements, audit, approval and publication; assign deadlines, document owners and archive access.
Bookkeeping records business transactions; accounting classifies, reconciles and explains those records so they support financial statements and tax reporting. Under Articles 3–6 of Bulgaria’s Accountancy Act, the process follows transactions and their supporting documents. It starts with the company’s actual operations, including owner funding, bank charges and purchases before the first customer invoice. A bank payment shows that money moved; the contract, invoice, delivery record or other primary evidence explains what the company acquired or supplied. For a foreign owner, the useful result is a clear view of cash, debt, profit and approaching obligations, with records that a Bulgarian authority can check.
A useful service brings together contracts, invoices, bank and cash movements, stock records and payroll data. Management should be able to see what is outstanding, what needs explanation and which filings are approaching.
The Bulgarian Accountancy Act (Закон за счетоводството, ЗСч) governs how undertakings organise their accounting and prepare financial statements. Under Articles 16, 34, 37 and 38, outsourcing the work does not transfer the company’s underlying responsibility. Management remains responsible for organising accounting and for the financial statements. The accounting provider maintains the agreed records, identifies missing information, prepares the required work within its scope and maintains a filing calendar. Management must still provide complete and timely source documents, approve commercial decisions and ensure that the information given is accurate. Legal, tax, audit and employment advisers may need to address issues that fall outside ordinary bookkeeping.
Agree who supplies each source document, when it is due and how questions are resolved. For an owner-funded purchase, obtain a document identifying the company where appropriate, evidence of the business purpose and the owner’s payment, then record whether the company owes reimbursement. Do not automatically treat an owner’s deposit as sales income or a withdrawal as a deductible cost. Under Article 16, management remains responsible for organising the accounting and supplying reliable information even when processing is outsourced. A monthly exception list should distinguish missing evidence, unpaid balances and decisions that the owner needs to make.
Accounting Services Bulgaria covers recurring bookkeeping for a business with ongoing activity and orderly records: sales and purchases, bank and cash reconciliation, supporting-document checks and regular compliance and reporting. A new company also needs an agreed document flow before monthly work begins.
Sector Accounting Services Bulgaria adapts that process to the business model. Retail, wholesale, construction and transport businesses may need controls for stock, cash-register data, job costs, cost centres, fuel and delivery documents. These records explain where revenue and costs arise and allow the books to be checked against operations.
For an online seller, E-commerce & Marketplace Accounting usually supplements recurring accounting. Amazon, Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and similar channels may combine sales, fees, refunds, disputed-payment reversals, currency conversions and delayed payouts.
Hypothetical reconciliation example, ignoring VAT and currency differences: customer receipts of EUR 1, 000 less EUR 100 of refunds and EUR 50 of platform fees produce an EUR 850 bank payout. Recording only EUR 850 loses the separate sales, refund and expense information. Retain the platform settlement, transaction-level report and bank statement so each part can be matched and its actual tax treatment assessed.
ARG can review who contracts with the customer, where goods move or services are supplied, how payment is received and which documents support each transaction. This determines the document timetable, system access and reporting outputs needed for the company.
Where prior bank reconciliations, opening balances or VAT records are unreliable, verify the starting position before relying on a routine monthly process.
VAT is a tax on supplies, not a tax on the company's profit. Registration asks whether and when the business must enter a VAT regime; recurring compliance records and reports the transactions once the relevant obligations apply. Start with who supplies what to whom, whether the customer is a business or consumer, and where goods move or services are treated as supplied.
VAT Registration Bulgaria checks the legal ground and deadline before a transaction creates an avoidable exposure. For Bulgarian-established persons in 2026, Article 96(1) generally uses annual domestic turnover exceeding EUR 51, 130; the application is due within seven days and the registration date is the day after exceeding the threshold. Cross-border services, acquisitions, foreign establishments and special schemes have separate rules. An early advertising or software invoice from abroad may require assessment under Article 97a before that turnover is reached. Provide the supplier contract, invoice, payment date and planned sales flows. Ordinary and limited VAT registration do not automatically offer the same input-tax deduction rights.
Once the ordinary registration position is established, VAT Returns & Compliance manages the recurring records and submissions. Under arts. 124 and 125, the purchase and sales ledgers must support the return. The ordinary monthly return and ledgers are due by the 14th of the following month, including a period with no transactions. Special regimes have their own reporting arrangements. This is why the accountant needs invoices, credit notes and payment information early enough to reconcile them before filing. NRA VAT return service
Selling to another EU business can add VIES reporting. The relevant questions include whether the transaction is an intra-Community supply of goods, an applicable cross-border service, an intermediary transaction or a call-off stock operation. VIES reports qualifying transactions and should be reconciled with the VAT records. It is not a report of every foreign payment entering the bank account. The NRA gives the ordinary VIES deadline as the 14th of the following month. NRA VIES guidance
VIES & Intrastat Reporting combines two services that should still be assessed separately. Intrastat concerns qualifying movements of goods between Bulgaria and other EU Member States. It depends on the relevant trading flow and the reporting thresholds for that year. A service business does not acquire an Intrastat obligation simply by invoicing a customer abroad. A goods trader should monitor the physical movements and their values, including distance sales that fall within the system, even where some VAT is reported through OSS. NRA Intrastat guidance
For consumer sales across borders, OSS & IOSS VAT Returns may be the appropriate additional service. OSS means One Stop Shop: a reporting mechanism for eligible cross-border consumer supplies. IOSS means Import One Stop Shop and concerns eligible distance sales of imported goods. Neither should be selected merely because the business has an online shop. Stock location, dispatch country, customer destination and the platform's role determine which transactions belong in which reporting process. A marketplace may be treated as the supplier for VAT in specified circumstances, so its settlement report must be understood before the seller records the tax. NRA OSS and IOSS guidance
An online retailer may need several connected services. E-commerce & Marketplace Accounting reconciles sales and platform settlements; VAT compliance maintains the applicable domestic records; OSS or IOSS covers qualifying consumer sales; and Intrastat may separately apply to goods movements. Import & Customs Accounting connects supplier invoices, customs declarations and import VAT evidence with the stock records for goods entering from outside the EU.
To define the scope, provide a sample contract, invoice, credit note, platform settlement and goods-movement record from each channel. ARG can then identify the registration review, recurring submissions and records required before each deadline.
Tell us where you live, how your business works and what you want to change. We will help you identify the questions to resolve and the next steps to consider.
Opening balances are the cash, receivables, liabilities, stock and other amounts carried into a new period or accounting handover. They need evidence before new entries can be trusted. Article 14 of the Accountancy Act requires accounting documentation to be handed to a person designated by management when the relevant employment or contractual relationship ends, in the presence of a commission, under a procedure set by management. Prepare an inventory of files and originals, software exports, trial balance, ledgers, returns and submission receipts. Record missing items and who must resolve them. Access to an old software login is only one part of this handover.
For example, ask which invoices make up the customer balance, whether each bank account agrees to its statement, and which documents support tax liabilities already recorded. The handover should identify the last reconciled period, the returns actually filed and who will resolve each missing item.
An incomplete handover, unreconciled bank balances, net-only marketplace entries, missing VAT ledgers, unexplained customer or supplier balances and payroll discrepancies all warrant review. Errors in these records can affect turnover, input VAT deductions, liabilities and the annual accounts.
The work begins by preserving the available records and tracing material balances and transaction streams. A reconstruction file should include:
This is particularly important for VAT. In Barlis 06, the Court of Justice of the European Union, Fourth Chamber, held on 15 September 2016 that an input-VAT deduction cannot be refused solely because an invoice lacks certain detail when the authority already has the information needed to establish the substantive conditions. The taxpayer must nevertheless be able to provide the evidence requested. See C-516/14, Barlis 06, ECLI:EU:C:2016:690.
The judgment concerned Portuguese legal-services invoices. It does not displace Bulgarian invoice, ledger, registration or filing rules, or validate a fictitious transaction. For a Bulgarian handover, its relevance is the need to examine supporting evidence alongside any invoice correction: contracts, records of the actual supply and payment documents.
ARG can identify records ready to reconcile and post, items needing further evidence or correction, and unresolved issues requiring accounting or tax assessment. This establishes what remains outstanding before recurring bookkeeping and VAT Returns & Compliance can proceed from reliable balances.
Year end produces several outputs from the same books:
An audit, where required, is an independent examination; it is not another name for preparing the accounts. Assign an owner, approval step, submission route and deadline to each applicable output.
The Bulgarian Corporate Income Tax Act (Закон за корпоративното подоходно облагане, ЗКПО) governs the calculation and declaration of corporate income tax. Under Articles 19 and 20, tax is calculated on tax profit and the NRA states the rate as 10%. Under Article 92, the annual corporate-tax return is filed electronically from 1 March to 30 June of the following calendar year, and tax is payable by 30 June. The NRA states that the annual activity report accompanies that return. NRA corporate tax guidance.
Corporate Tax Return Preparation covers the tax computation and annual declaration. Annual Financial Statements present financial position and performance under the applicable accounting framework. The annual activity report is a further output, submitted with the Article 92 return.
The Accountancy Act separates preparation, audit, corporate approval and publication. The ordinary publication deadline under Article 38 is 30 September of the following year, while corporate tax is normally filed and paid by 30 June. Audit depends on the criteria in Article 37 and any special law; being a joint-stock company alone is no longer the former blanket trigger. For a legally inactive company, the first declaration for a continuous inactive period is generally due by 30 June and is not repeated annually while inactivity continues. The statutory definition has several cumulative conditions, so no sales or no bank receipts alone cannot establish that status.
For a company reporting to a foreign parent, Management, IFRS & Group Reporting may run alongside the Bulgarian statutory accounts. A monthly management pack, group reporting template or IFRS adjustment can be commercially essential, but it does not replace Bulgarian financial statements, the tax return or publication requirements.
Record retention needs its own handover plan. Article 12 of the Accountancy Act generally requires payroll registers to be kept for 50 years, accounting registers and financial statements including the specified tax-control, audit and financial-inspection documents for ten years, and other accounting information for three years, counted from 1 January of the following reporting period. Additional tax or proceedings-related rules can require longer retention. Classify the documents before deleting anything; do not assume every invoice falls into the shortest category. Keep readable exports and assign a custodian who remains available after an accountant or software provider changes.
Before year end, request the trial balance (the list of balances in the accounts), unpaid customer and supplier schedules, bank reconciliations and the list of unresolved entries. Use those to assign preparation and approval of the tax calculation, financial statements, annual activity report, publication materials, audit assessment and any parent-company reporting package.
Payroll must be configured around the person’s actual role and insurance basis, not simply around the title used in an employment contract or the country from which they were recruited. Payroll Services Bulgaria covers recurring salary calculations and employer reporting for employees. Director Payroll & Social Insurance addresses the distinct position of a director, owner-manager or self-insured person. Foreign Employee Payroll & A1 is needed where the work is cross-border and the applicable social-security system needs analysis before payroll is finalised.
For ordinary Bulgarian employer reporting, the NRA states that employers generally submit Forms 1 and 6 by the 25th of the following month. This is a separate calendar from VAT reporting. The exact route can differ for a self-insured person, so a director should not automatically be placed on employee payroll merely because the company needs a regular monthly process. NRA guidance on Forms 1 and 6.
EU Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems determines which Member State’s social-security legislation applies in relevant EU situations. Article 11 establishes the general coordination principle. Article 12(1) can permit a genuinely temporarily posted employee to remain insured under the sending state’s legislation where its conditions are met, including an anticipated posting of no more than 24 months and no replacement of another posted person. Regulation 883/2004.
A1 is a certificate about the social-security legislation that applies; it is not a visa, work permit or income-tax ruling. For a qualifying posting, it evidences continued coverage in the sending country. Your Europe: social-security coverage and A1
Prepare each worker’s actual work countries, residence, employer, work pattern, duration and existing insurance before payroll is finalised. A temporary posting under Article 12 of Regulation 883/2004 differs from regular work in several states under Article 13. For multi-state work, Article 16 of Regulation 987/2009 normally requires the residence-state institution to be informed so the applicable legislation can be determined. A foreign passport, Bulgarian management appointment or preferred contribution level does not decide the result. Keep the A1 and underlying work pattern together and report relevant changes rather than treating an old certificate as permanent coverage for any arrangement.
Schedule sales, purchase, bank, platform, customs and payroll data early enough to meet the relevant deadlines. Ordinary VAT returns and qualifying VIES reports are due by the 14th; Intrastat has its own applicable deadline. Payroll inputs and insurance decisions must support the general Form 1 and Form 6 deadline on the 25th.
List every person working for the Bulgarian business, including directors and remote or posted staff. Record whether each needs domestic payroll, director or self-insurance analysis, or a cross-border A1 review, and assign that work within the compliance calendar.
Find the service that matches your decision or procedure. Each page sets out the relevant requirements, supporting documents and practical steps.
