Monthly Accounting for a Georgian Company: What Your Accountant Actually Needs
The document flow that keeps a Georgian company clean: what to send each month and by when, how the electronic invoice and waybill systems work, which returns fall due, and how to change accountants without losing a period.
Most compliance failures in Georgian companies are not decisions. They are a founder who assumed the accountant had what they needed, and an accountant who assumed the founder would send it. The fix is dull and effective: know what goes out each month, by when, and who is responsible when it does not.
The legal frame the cycle sits inside
The obligations below are not house policy; they flow from the Tax Code of Georgia and are administered through the Revenue Service. The Code sets what must be declared and when, the reporting is done electronically, and the penalties for late or missing filings are statutory rather than discretionary. Knowing the cycle is, in practice, knowing your legal obligations.
A taxpayer is required to submit the tax returns prescribed for each tax to the tax authority within the period established for that tax, irrespective of whether any tax is payable for the reporting period.
The monthly cycle
5th
A workable internal cut-off
Send the month by a fixed date, even an empty one
Monthly
VAT and payroll returns
Where the company is registered for them
Real time
E-invoices and waybills
Raised as transactions occur, not at month end
| Obligation | Applies to | Timing | Usual owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate income tax return | Any month with a taxable event (distribution, non-business expense) | Month following | Accountant |
| VAT return | VAT-registered companies | Monthly | Accountant |
| Payroll withholding and pension | Companies with employees | Monthly | Accountant |
| Electronic invoices and waybills | Transactions requiring them | As they occur | Company |
| Annual financial statements | By size category | Annually | Accountant |
Georgia applies the Estonian-style corporate income tax model: tax generally arises on distribution of profit and on certain non-business expenditure, not on profit as it is earned. That is why the corporate income tax return above is event-driven - it falls due in the month following a taxable event, and a month with none may have nothing to declare under that head while still owing VAT or payroll returns.
What to send your accountant, every month
- Bank statements for every account, for the full month - not a screenshot of the balance.
- Sales invoices you issued, and the electronic invoices raised in the Revenue Service system.
- Purchase invoices and receipts for expenses, with what each one was for where it is not obvious.
- Payroll changes: joiners, leavers, salary changes, unpaid leave.
- Contracts signed or ended during the month, especially with foreign suppliers - they drive the reverse-charge question.
- Anything unusual, flagged as unusual. A single large transfer explained in the same month costs nothing; explained a year later it costs a day.
Send the month by a fixed date - the 5th works - even when nothing happened. A month with no activity still has a filing obligation, and "there was nothing" is information your accountant needs in order to file the nil return on time.
Why each item matters
| What you send | What it drives | What breaks without it |
|---|---|---|
| Full bank statements | Reconciliation and the completeness of income | Unexplained credits can be treated as taxable income |
| Purchase invoices from abroad | The VAT reverse-charge assessment | An undeclared reverse charge surfaces as arrears with interest |
| Payroll changes | Withholding and pension contributions | Late or wrong withholding, and penalties on the shortfall |
| A flag on the unusual | Correct classification of one-off items | A large transfer misread a year later, at audit |
The electronic systems
The bank statement that was never sent
A company uses a second bank account for a single supplier and forgets to include it in the monthly pack, for most of a year.
- 1The accountant reconciles what they receive, and the returns are prepared on an incomplete picture.
- 2Every month's figures are internally consistent and collectively wrong, which is the hardest kind of error to notice.
- 3The omission surfaces at year end, when the annual position will not reconcile against the company's own balances.
- 4Correcting it means amending multiple periods rather than one, and each amended period is a filing that draws attention.
Send every account, every month, including the quiet one. An accountant can only be right about the transactions they can see, and the omission is invisible until it is expensive.
Illustrative. Amendment procedure and any associated penalties should be confirmed for the periods involved.
Georgia runs electronic invoicing and waybills through the Revenue Service portal, and for defined transactions they are compulsory rather than convenient. The practical consequence for a foreign-owned company is that someone with portal access must be able to raise them in real time - which is a reason to set user permissions properly at activation rather than sharing one login.
- Electronic invoices document taxable supplies and are the backbone of the VAT system; the waybill accompanies the movement of goods and must, as a rule, be issued before transport begins.
- Access is per-user in the company profile. Give the accountant their own user rather than sharing the director's credentials, so access can be granted and revoked cleanly.
- Because these are raised as transactions occur, they cannot be batched at month end - the company, not the accountant, is usually the one holding this obligation in real time.
Changing accountants in the middle of a year
A company decides in September to move from one accounting provider to another from 1 October.
- 1Agree the cut-off explicitly: the outgoing provider files September, the incoming provider starts with October.
- 2Obtain the full trial balance, the fixed-asset register and the filed returns to date - not just the last month.
- 3Transfer portal access formally: the new provider gets their own user in the company profile, and the old one is revoked the day the relationship ends.
- 4Reconcile the bank position at the cut-off date so both providers agree on the opening balance.
- 5Confirm in writing who files the annual statements for the year that spans both.
The month that gets lost in an accountant change is almost always the cut-off month, because each side assumed the other had it. Naming it in writing removes the failure entirely.
Illustrative. Handover obligations may also be set by your engagement terms.
How Trustlex handles it
Our accounting service is monthly, and the obligations appear on our deadline board with an owner and a date, alongside every other dated obligation on the case. If a month goes quiet, that is visible to us before it is visible to the Revenue Service.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Filing obligations and deadlines depend on your company's profile and on the law in force at the time.