Accounting adapted to your sector, including inventory, cash transactions, transport expenses or construction projects and their supporting documents.
A Bulgarian business client had started addressing its sector accounting needs without a clear process. ARG checked the evidence behind the records, organised the work into monthly and year-end tasks, and connected it to the wider accounting picture so the overall sequence was being overseen.
That practical problem is common when retail, wholesale, online sales, or construction activity share one business. The right approach is to distinguish sales channels, stock movements, cash reporting, online receipts, project-related records, and year-end obligations before routine accounting becomes difficult to reconcile.
ARG can help when you need to
Identify each store, online channel and payment method, including the legal form of courier collections, before choosing fiscal-receipt reporting.
Provide warehouse movements, inventory counts or project acceptance records that explain how purchases become cost of sales or completed work.
Map customer status, goods routes and property locations; an international customer does not automatically make a supply VAT-free.
Confirm accounting standards, audit grounds and annual filing duties, alongside the monthly information needed to close your sector’s accounts.
Sector-specific accounting treatment is needed whenever your Bulgarian business has operating features that change how revenue, stock, cash movements, or work in progress must be tracked. In practice, that usually means retail sales, wholesale trading, online sales, and construction activity each have their own bookkeeping pressure points, even though they all sit within the same company ledger.
For a retail or wholesale business, the key issue is not the trade label alone, but the way goods and cash move through the business. The National Revenue Agency requires traders selling goods or services in Bulgaria to register and report sales by issuing a fiscal receipt from a fiscal device, or a system receipt from an integrated automated sales-management system, and the device must be installed and put into operation from the date the outlet starts activity. That matters because a store, warehouse counter, or showroom may need a different control setup from a business that only invoices customers without on-site cash sales. The NRA guidance also requires changes in cash on hand outside a sale or return event, such as opening float, cash in, or cash out, to be recorded through the device or system as service in or service out amounts.
An online order must connect the customer payment, any platform commission, delivery, stock reduction and return. A marketplace payout is often the balance after fees and refunds; recording that balance as sales understates both revenue and costs. In construction, the equivalent unit is the contract or project. Keep the agreed price, variations, materials issued, subcontractor work, acceptance records and retention amounts together. A customer advance creates a different accounting position from work already performed, even when both produce money in the bank. These distinctions tell us which stock, project and customer accounts your Bulgarian ledger needs from the first month.
The practical consequence is simple. If your business has more than one of these features, you usually need a focused sector review rather than generic bookkeeping. That review should decide whether you need only monthly accounting support, a tighter cash and stock control process, or coordination between accounting, VAT documentation, and operational reporting.
For a mixed business, map transfers between activities as carefully as external sales. Materials bought centrally may move to several construction sites, and a warehouse may supply both online customers and a shop. Agree who records those movements and how quantities are confirmed. Otherwise one activity can appear profitable only because another carries its costs. Give each location or project a consistent identifier that appears on purchase, issue and return documents.
Your Bulgarian books are controlled by three separate but connected rules. The Accounting Act [ЗСч] governs the accounting basis, financial statements, publication, and audit-related obligations. The Value Added Tax Act [ЗДДС] governs VAT evidence and sales documentation. The NRA fiscal-device rules govern how cash sales and cash movements are recorded in day-to-day trading.
The reporting framework determines when stock becomes an expense and when work becomes revenue. Article 34 of the Accounting Act starts from National Accounting Standards and identifies enterprises that must use EU-adopted international standards, including specified financial-sector entities and listed enterprises. Other eligible businesses can choose international standards, subject to the statutory rules on changing basis. A foreign parent’s reporting package does not by itself change the Bulgarian subsidiary’s statutory framework. We therefore identify both requirements and document adjustments between them. Bring the last approved accounting policies, group instructions and any previous decision to change standards, so the opening balances and current projects use a consistent basis.
Year-end obligations depend on the enterprise’s legal category and financial indicators. Articles 37–38 of the Accounting Act govern statutory audit and publication; joint-stock status alone no longer creates the former blanket audit requirement. Check applicable size, group and special-sector grounds before arranging the close. Ordinary annual financial statements are published by 30 September of the following year. An enterprise meeting all statutory inactivity conditions files its first inactivity declaration by 30 June; it does not repeat that declaration for uninterrupted subsequent inactive years. A company with no sales may still be active because it bought stock or incurred transactions directed at earning income. Review those facts before choosing the filing route.
Your payment method determines whether a fiscal receipt is required. The NRA’s current fiscal-device guidance distinguishes ordinary cash and card collection from specified payment exceptions, including credit transfers and qualifying postal money orders. A courier’s cash-on-delivery label does not establish which legal mechanism it uses. For postal money orders, the seller still gives the customer the required sales information in a paper or electronic document. For an online fiscal or alternative reporting arrangement, verify the conditions of OrdinanceH-18 before changing checkout or stopping receipt issuance. A PDF invoice and a bank payout report cannot establish that the retail receipt obligation has been fulfilled.
For a client, the practical effect is that ARG should not start with a generic bookkeeping template. It should first determine which legal layer governs each business flow, then align the records so that the sales evidence, VAT documentation, cash-register reporting, and annual financial reporting all point to the same underlying transactions. That is the difference between a compliant accounting system and a set of disconnected records that may look complete until an inspection or year-end close exposes the gaps.
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.
Yes, for a retail or wholesale outlet you usually need a fiscal device, or an integrated automated sales-management system if your setup is built around that model, and it has to be installed and put into operation from the date the outlet starts activity. The NRA’s operational guidance is the practical rule here, because it explains how the authority expects on-site sales to be reported in real time through a fiscal receipt or a system receipt. NRA fiscal devices guidance
What matters is not the label of the business but the sales flow. If you take cash or card payments at the counter, a fiscal receipt is the normal route. If your business operates through a system that integrates sales and reporting, the system receipt can replace the standalone cash register model. ARG’s job within this scope is to test the actual outlet structure, then confirm which device is needed before trading starts, because a device that is installed late does not cure a failure to have compliant reporting from opening day.
The same NRA guidance adds a second control point that many clients overlook. Any cash movement outside a sale or return event, such as opening float, cash in, or cash out, must be recorded through the fiscal device or the integrated system as service in or service out amounts. That is why retail cash control is not only a finance issue. It is also an operational compliance issue.
A practical decision tree helps here.
The safe approach is to align the device choice with the outlet’s real cash and stock flow, not with the business description on its own.
For a client, the commercial point is simple. The wrong device setup creates both accounting friction and inspection risk, while the right setup gives ARG a clean source record for sales, cash, VAT and stock reconciliation. If your outlet mixes retail sales, wholesale dispatches, or multiple counters, the decision should be made after a short operational review rather than by assuming one standard model fits every site.
Electronic documentation must match the way the buyer actually pays. Under OrdinanceH-18 and the NRA’s fiscal-device guidance, specified bank and payment routes are exceptions to ordinary fiscal-receipt issuance, while cash and card collections need their applicable reporting arrangement. Sending a PDF invoice is not itself an exemption. Obtain the payment provider’s contract, a sample transaction report and the exact checkout options. For courier collection, establish whether the operator carries out a qualifying postal money order and which customer document the seller must provide. This lets the store, courier and accounting system assign one traceable order number to the sale and its settlement.
That is useful, but it is not a blanket permission to treat every web sale the same way. The decisive issue is whether the transaction fits the online-shop procedure and whether the supporting data have been submitted consistently. The same amendment creates a public electronic list of online shops for which the required data have been filed. So the tax administration can compare the declared shop data with the receipt trail and the channel through which the sale was made.
For an online retailer, this means ARG should check three things before the system is accepted as workable.
The practical risk is not only missing a receipt. It is inconsistency between the shop, the VAT record and the registered online-shop data. That is why the question is transaction specific, not sector specific. A business can sell through an online channel and still need to be checked sale by sale, especially if it also has a store, warehouse dispatches, or mixed invoicing and retail collection.
If your business sells the same stock both online and on site, the bookkeeping treatment needs to keep one inventory picture while supporting two different sales evidence paths. That is where ARG’s sector review adds value. It does not merely record revenue. It makes sure the online receipt, the VAT evidence and the stock movement all describe the same transaction. Without that alignment, the books may look complete while the legal trail remains fragmented.
The useful next step is to separate your channels before go-live. If the web shop already exists, ARG should review the current checkout, receipt and reporting setup against the Article 118 procedure and the public-shop data requirement. If the shop is still being built, the compliance structure should be designed before the first sale, because retrofitting electronic receipt logic is usually harder than building it into the process at the start.
Three annual tasks need separate entries in your calendar. Under Articles 92–93 of the Corporate Income Tax Act, an ordinary company files its annual corporate tax return and pays the balance by 30 June of the following year; filing opens on 1 March. Its statistical annual activity report is a separate report. Under Article 38 of the Accounting Act, ordinary annual financial statements are published by 30 September. The first qualifying inactivity declaration is due by 30 June, with no repeat declaration for continuous inactivity. Assign an owner to each submission and retain the authority’s acceptance evidence; completion of one does not automatically complete the others.
Inactivity has a specific meaning in § 1, item 30 of the Accounting Act’s Additional Provisions. All four conditions must hold: no commercial transactions of the specified kind, no event requiring revenue recognition, no investment, production or sale activity, and no purchases directed at earning income or profit. A retail company acquiring opening stock or a contractor preparing a revenue-generating project should therefore not treat zero invoices as sufficient. Review bank movements, purchases and contracts, then decide whether ordinary accounts and tax reporting or the inactivity route applies.
For practical planning, ARG would usually work through the sequence this way.
The reason this matters commercially is that year-end compliance breaks into more than one control file. A company can be fully ready for publication and still be late on a tax or statistical step, or the reverse. In a retail, wholesale, or construction business, that often happens because the bookkeeper closes inventory, cash and VAT first, then assumes the corporate filings will follow automatically. They do not.
Audit planning starts with Article 37 of the Accounting Act. Check the current financial thresholds, medium or large enterprise status, public-interest status, group reporting and any separate statutory ground. The former provision making all joint-stock companies and partnerships limited by shares subject to audit was repealed. Neither the initials AD nor a construction or retail activity code now answers the audit question alone. If an audit is required, arrange stock-count attendance, project evidence and confirmation of material balances before the year closes. A late audit appointment may make evidence harder to obtain even when the bookkeeping entries are complete.
For a client, the safest approach is to decide the filing path from the entity facts, not from a generic calendar. If the business was dormant, the non-activity publication may be the first document to focus on. If it traded during the year, the publication work and the tax work should be mapped separately and started in parallel. The next consideration is whether the books can be closed cleanly enough to support the publication route without last-minute reconstruction of sales, stock or cash records.
Compare the related procedures in this category, including their requirements and the stage at which you need them.
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